How To Measure The Success of Your App Store Optimisation? Key Metrics to Track

We all know that a successful mobile app is not just created overnight and it involves years of effort, time, and understanding of the development process and closer monitoring of the app marketing and the key measures targeting App Store visibility and conversion.

Mobile apps, when trying to optimise their visibility and presence across app stores, need to track different metrics based on their marketing goals and objectives. The target objectives or goals also depend upon the stage of marketing an app is passing through. For example, an app can target organic growth of download numbers or can target more installs in fewer acquisition costs. Based on these targets and objectives, the apps have to track the appropriate metrics.

Here through the entire length of the post, we will explain the key objectives and their associated metrics for better ASO output.

Optimize App Store Visibility
The basic and most elementary objective of App Store Optimization (ASO) is enhancing visibility or discoverability of the app across app stores, including both iOS App Store and Google Play Store. App market visibility can be measured by featuring in the user search, top app charts, and Featured lists.  

For monitoring and evaluating the visibility of the app in app marketplaces the common tools that are used include the following.
The search ranking of the app against target keywords.
The ranking of the app in top app charts in categories such as Free, Paid and Grossing.
The ranking of the app among apps in the chosen category like entertainment, news, utilities, lifestyle, etc.
Whether the respective app marketplace features an app is also a key measurement metric for your app.

Now that you know about the key metrics denoting the success or failure of an app in regard to the visibility, you need to check these metrics often and compare the same with competitors.

Product Page Conversion
How many visitors from the App Store or Play Store end up downloading and installing the app? This refers to the conversion rate of your app. Creating a great first impression leading to app download and install is a key factor in achieving this objective.

Some of the key parameters and metrics that are important to track conversion rate include the following.  The app metadata comprising app title, app store description, app logo, screenshots or app images, preview videos are key elements to optimise for business conversion.

Two major conversion rate metrics that apps should focus upon including Click-through rate (CTR) and Conversion rate to Install (CR). The first is about the percentage of users tapping on the app for further information, and the second is about the percentage of visitors who ended up installing the app.

While carrying out A/B testing, you need to check which version of the app metadata achieves better CTR and CR rate. 

Achieving a Better Rate of App Growth
In the context of mobile app marketing and App Store optimization measures, the app growth refers to the growth in terms of a number of apps install or download numbers. The number of app installs a key metric which plays an effective role in measuring the evolution and popularity of the app over time.

Now app installs can be of both organic nature and paid or promoted ones. While the first represents the genuine app downloads and installs giving a true picture of the popularity and growth of the app, the paid installs help an app to create an initial impression about its growth and increasing user base to influence others. 

Obviously, these two types of installs and their comparison also gives marketers a deeper idea about the user acquisition cost for every install and the way increasing organic install can reduce the overall user acquisition cost to a great extent. When measuring app installs is your goal, two major KPIs that you need to target include.

Daily Active Users (DAU) and Monthly Active Users (MAU). Google Analytics can do a great job of tracking these metrics.

Evaluating User Feedback and Reviews
Tracking user ratings and reviews is also a key aspect of evaluating the success of a mobile app. While the ratings and reviews are already included as a determinant factor in the App Store algorithm, the presence of the ratings and reviews also serves an app in the long run to gain more traction and popularity.

Since developers now can directly help users for solving their problems and answering their queries, these measures can easily help to boost the reviews and ratings of the app.

App Monetisation
Finally, the success of an app also relies heavily on the earning it makes and the revenue it generates. For this evaluating the app through metrics for app monetization is important. Some of the common metrics for evaluating app monetization include the following.

Average Revenue per User (ARPU) which is calculated by dividing the total revenue by the user number is a crucial metric. Lifetime Value (LTV) represents the future projected revenue earned from a user based upon the previous traction and the revenue already generated.

Conclusion
All the major objectives and the corresponding metrics and parameters we discussed so far for evaluating the success of the mobile app, make the ground principles of successful app marketing and robust App Store Optimisation (ASO). These metrics and KPIs will continue to play an important role in driving the success of mobile apps.