December 15, 2024 • 52 mins
App store presence and optimization can be as simple or complicated as you choose. The short advice is that the more you put in, the more you get out.
We dive into details and suggestions in this episode based on our experiences.
- (00:00) - Introduction
- (01:30) - What is App Store Presence?
- (09:56) - Become a member
- (12:54) - Keywording
- (15:51) - Privacy and age rating
- (20:50) - Clean My Mac
- (24:00) - Visuals
- (32:49) - Learning resources
- (35:31) - SetApp
- (36:46) - Tools
As mentioned in this episode
- https://developer.apple.com/help/app-store-connect/manage-app-information/upload-app-previews-and-screenshots/
- https://www.youtube.com/@appfigures
- https://appfigures.com/resources/guides
- https://subclub.com/
- https://developer.apple.com/app-store/custom-product-pages/
- https://developer.apple.com/help/app-store-connect/manage-featuring-nominations/nominate-your-app-for-featuring/
- https://helm-app.com/
- https://rotato.app/
- https://www.sketch.com/
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- Jay Wilson
- Adam Wulf
- bitSpectre
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Peter (00:02):
What's up, everybody? Welcome to another episode of
The Compile Swift Podcast. I'myour host, Peter Witham, and
your other host is
Geoff (00:09):
Hi. I'm Geoff Pedo. I don't know.
Peter (00:11):
I think we'll just go with
Geoff (00:12):
I don't know why this was suddenly like The hardest
question. I don't know how tointroduce myself on this
podcast. Yeah.
Peter (00:18):
This week, we are talking about App Store presence, which
can be as simple or ascomplicated, I guess, as you
want it to be. But there aresome rules that you have to fall
in line with and also just somepretty good common sense. So
we're gonna dive into it here,but first of all, Geoff, we've
gotta do the obligatory thingeveryone does. What did you do
(00:40):
this week, sir?
Geoff (00:42):
I've been finally getting back into developing some of the
other apps that I have on theApp Store ever since releasing
Bark. That's kind of been mymain focus. And, I've gotten a
little bit back into updatingblack highlighter. How about
you? I know that this is relatedto our topic.
Peter (01:00):
It is. So hold on to your hats, folks. This week, I
shipped my update for job findertracker 1.2. I know I know. It
is months months overdue.
I finally shipped it. And yes,that is what I've got to
contribute to this week'sconversation here because it is
very very relevant to to some ofthe topic in which I updated
(01:25):
screenshots and all sorts ofthings and and really tried to
do a better job of it this timearound. So let's start here. App
Store presence. What what doesit even mean, Geoff?
What what what is App Storepresence?
Geoff (01:39):
Yeah. So I think what we're calling App Store presence
is basically, how does your appappear on the App Store? What
are you telling users? What areyou showing users to try and get
them to download your app?There's some amount of this that
falls under the bucket of AppStore optimization, but also
there's a lot of kind of what isjust the bare minimum.
(02:01):
What are you having to or whatare you showing to users? What
do you have to show to users?What are you choosing to show to
users? Kind of all of the thebasics that you are to tell them
about the app, and then at thenext level, try to sell them on
the app. And, hey, you shouldyou should check out this app.
Here's why you should do that.
Peter (02:18):
Yeah. Now there are certain things, and and this is
one of those, you know, again,you can put as little or as much
effort into this as you want.However, there are certain
requirements you have tofulfill, basically before Apple
will even let you submit it forreview, right. So, you know,
there are some things here andwe'll we'll go through them, but
(02:40):
I'll just give you a very quicklist and then we'll we'll talk
about some specific subjects.Some are self explanatory, I
think.
So for example, right, there'ssome text elements naturally,
right, that you will be expectedto provide an app name. Now that
app name is a free form textentry field, but you know you
(03:03):
really don't want to use a namethat somebody already has
because it's gonna make it thatmuch harder, and we've all seen
in the store as well, right?People try to make twist and
make them clever, and and Ithink my advice, and Geoff you
may disagree, but my advice isit's kind of like domain names.
Don't try and be clever, right,because if you don't make it
(03:25):
obvious, number 1, it's lesslikely to come up in the search,
and number 2, it's less likelyfor people to remember it.
Right?
Geoff (03:34):
Make something that you can find. Make something that
you can search for. You candefinitely add additions to your
to your app in the App Store. Imean so for example, Kineo is my
app's actual name. It's the namethat you'll see on my social
media on the website for it andeverything.
But in the App Store, it's Kineoflip book animations, because
(03:55):
you wanna have a a little bitthere even if a user is just
picking it out of the list orthey're trying to see it in
search results that they'regoing, oh, yes, it's this Kineo
versus maybe there's anotherKineo out there, or maybe they
see it in the list and they'relike, well, I I don't know what
Kineo is. Why would this be thekind of thing that I would want?
So, yeah, I I would still saythat your app name doesn't have
(04:18):
to just be your name. You dowant it to kind of be almost as
much a first impression on theuser as your app icon is.
Peter (04:26):
Yeah. Right. And if I remember rightly, the app name
that you have in the store doesnot have to exactly match the
app name that you would see onthe icon in the home screen.
Right? If I remember rightly.
Geoff (04:41):
Yeah. That's correct.
Peter (04:43):
Now, you know, don't go making them 2 completely
different things because youmight get dinged for that. But,
so for example, right, your appname might be job finder
tracker. Don't bother using it.I've already used it. On the
icon, I could just have like jobtracker or something like that,
right, to give you an example.
So the next one, I actuallydidn't use, previously, but I've
(05:06):
used it this time around, whichis the subtitle. It is an
optional one and I've seenpeople kind of use it for almost
like a short tagline becauseyou're only allowed 30
characters on both of these, bythe way. Right? But I this is
the first time I bothered to putin a subtitle. What about you?
Do you always put a subtitle in?
Geoff (05:28):
I I always, 100% of the time, use a subtitle. It is
basically just another thingthat shows up on almost every
case where you're seeing yourapp's name. And so it's just
another way of letting peopleknow, yes. Hey. This is the app
that you're looking for.
And we'll get into some of theASO stuff later, but, your app
(05:48):
name and app subtitle are veryimportant for that as well.
Peter (05:51):
Yeah. And then the next one, super important, of course,
is the description. Now you'vegot 4,000 characters for that,
but my advice would be get in tothe description. Everything you
feel you need to get in there.Don't do more than you you need
to, right.
Don't try and fill it with stuffjust to make it sound good or,
(06:15):
you know, thinking that it'sgonna work with ASO and and
things like that, right. BecauseI feel like the the longer the
description is, the more likelypeople might be to move on
because, you know, you don'twant to sit there and read
paragraphs and paragraphs oftext, but you should put in
there, hey, list all thefeatures, for example, right?
(06:37):
But make it complement, I think,things like the the screenshots
and or videos, which we'll talkabout here briefly in a moment.
I don't think you should, youknow, don't don't go writing a
book on this thing, right?
Geoff (06:51):
I I agree, but I disagree. And I'll say that I
think that you should aim tofill as much of it as possible.
That is I'm being very much ahypocrite in here because,
especially some of my apps,like, black highlighter have
very little in them. That issomething that I want to work
on. But I do think the answeris, a, do fill a lot of this
(07:11):
out, but, b, make it easilyskimmable.
Make it so that users can findthe information that they want
kind of quickly and easily. Butyou do wanna put a lot in there
because, again, everything thatyou have on the app store is
your chance to tell the user,hey, this is the app that you
want. And so you can go in thereand you can have, like, a
(07:31):
frequently asked questions. Youcan have all of your list of
features, like you said. You canhave, you know, your business
model, if that's important to tothe user.
Like, oh, yeah. No. This is asubscription app. Like, all of
that kind of stuff can be inthere. Just I would say, you'll
see this in a lot of other appsthat you have kind of like these
(07:52):
big titles or new lines thatseparate stuff or, you know,
just ton of asterisks orsomething to to kind of call it
out.
Have good, easily skimmableheadlines. So that yeah. You're
you're right in that you don'twant to be reading it paragraph
by paragraph and and reading awhole book in here. But if you
(08:13):
have instead a set of chaptermarkers, then you can kind of
hop directly to the part in thebook that you want to.
Peter (08:19):
Yeah. Or, you know, another good one is bullet
lists. Right? If you can get,you know, maybe at the front,
now that I think about it, youknow, at the top maybe put a
list a bullet list of all thesuper important key things and
then if there are some that youreally want to focus on, you
know, go into a few some detailsunderneath maybe something like
(08:39):
that. But it actually issurprising how quickly you could
fill 4,000 characters if youtried.
Right?
Geoff (08:47):
Yeah. Exactly.
Peter (08:48):
Same that there's another one here, what's new. Now the
what's new I obviously tend tothink of as, hey, what's new in
this release, right? So whilstyou've got 4
Geoff (08:59):
That's what it is.
Peter (08:59):
Yeah. Whilst you've got 4,000 characters, you know,
unless you've done massivelyextensive work, I would imagine
you're probably not gonna, youknow, overfill this thing,
right. So by all means highlightthe new things. Like, for
example, in my job find atracker app, I've just added an
import resume feature, but Iwould highlight I would use the
(09:23):
what's new to highlight, hey,this is a this is a big deal,
right, in this release, thingslike that. You know, what I
don't like to see is, and yousee this on a lot of apps, not
gonna name any, but many of theones a lot of people use, every
time it's like bug fixes.
It's nice that you're tellingthe user, hey, I fixed a bunch
(09:45):
of bugs but it's not reallymaking the user go, oh, this is
great. I I gotta get this.Right? You know, it's like a
wasted opportunity there is whatI think. Hey, folks.
If you like what you're hearingin this podcast and you wanna
help this podcast to continuegoing forward and having great
guests and great conversations,I invite you to become a Patreon
(10:07):
supporter. You can go topatreon.comforward/compile swift
where you will get ad freeversions of the podcast along
with other content.
Geoff (10:16):
Yep. I I do think that the reason you see that and and
kind of, part of this one andand why I'll say this one is
less important is this issomething that at most is going
to be seen by people who alreadyuse your app. It's very rare
that somebody who has notdownloaded your app is going to
look at these release notes atall. And even the people who do
(10:38):
have your app, in a lot ofcases, most people have just
automatic updates turned on, andso they won't see these
notifications either. Yeah.
I think it's good to write themso that if people are really
worried about a specific featureor a specific bug, they can go
and look and find thatinformation if they need to. So
I think there is a benefit tohaving something here, for kind
(11:02):
of your most dedicated users.But I since this isn't really
seen as kind of the mainpresence of your app, I do think
it's it this would be if youhave to find somewhere to Slack
on a little bit, this might be aplace to to
Peter (11:19):
Yeah. Now I I I agree that, you know, let's say for
example, that you've got somebug, right, your your app has a
login system and there was somebug that made it difficult for
users to log in in the lastversion and you fixed it in this
one and you've got a lot ofreviews or a lot of complaints
mentioning it, that is a goodplace to point out, hey, look,
(11:43):
you know, bug fix hugely fixedthis login bug, right. So, you
know, take advantage of itthere, especially, like I say,
if you've got a bunch of reviewsor something or, you know,
requests for features fromusers, that is a good place to
to put them in there and and buyyourself some goodwill. Right?
Geoff (12:06):
And and I think that the there is a benefit to writing
these even if it's not the appstore that you're writing them
for. You can also obviously havethese notes on your website. You
can link to them from yoursocial media. And so it's it's
good to have these additionalrelease notes just so that you
can tell your users about them,but it may not necessarily be
(12:26):
something that you're supergonna be highlighting on your
App Store page itself.
Peter (12:30):
Like, for example, I'm sure many of us do this. Right?
I have a file. I think it's justa text file. I keep the, you
know, the what's new and therelease notes and all that kind
of thing.
I keep them all for all theprevious versions so that I can
reference back to it myself, youknow. Sometimes it can be like,
oh shoot, when did I fix that?Okay. Yeah, it was version 1.7.
(12:55):
The next one is, another, youknow, important one with a with
I think an interesting characterlimit.
So it's keywords and you've onlygot a 100 characters. Now you
can put in here anything youwant as a keyword, but a 100
characters fills up super quick.Now, I do understand this is a
(13:16):
good way to prevent keyword spamand trying to hijack other
people's apps by copying whatthey've done or, again, trying
to be clever. Right? But Iactually find a 100 characters
because I went through thisyesterday when I was filling in
the details for the update formy app.
A 100 characters is not a lot ofkeywords at all. Right?
Geoff (13:39):
Yeah. And that's especially so considering that
when you're entering in thesekeywords, they've all gotta be
comma separated. And thosecommas count in characters too.
Peter (13:49):
And the space after the camera. The space after the
comma.
Geoff (13:52):
Well, don't don't don't include the space after the
comma. That's that's the answerthere. Don't don't include them.
There are a lot of ways to kindof optimize this. I think one of
the resources that we'll link tolater is going to kind of have
some of that information foryou.
But yeah, there are ways tooptimize this keyword list, but
at the same time it is verylimited by design, and you kinda
(14:15):
have to find ways to get aroundthat.
Peter (14:17):
Yeah. Yes. So when I was doing mine, I was testing out at
all and and we'll get into someof that later, but, it was
suggesting keywords based on,you know, essentially what I'd
filled in already, thedescription and everything else.
So what its suggestions werereally good, but I couldn't use
(14:38):
all of the really good onesbecause they just couldn't get
them all in there and at thesame time it it had put a space
after the comma and then Irealized I was like, oh wait, if
I take those out they're stillperfectly, legitimately work as
keywords and I've captured backsome characters. You know,
whereas the reason I say it likethat is, like, in the web world
(15:01):
and things like that, I tend toput a space after them because
it doesn't matter.
Right? So so, yeah, I that onebit me and I got okay. I only
got one extra word in, but hell,that could make all the
difference. Right?
Geoff (15:15):
I I I know another important one that a lot of
people overlook is, don't pluralize your keywords. Mhmm. Don't
have barcodes in there whenbarcode would work fine. That's
that's an extra s character thatyou can save for somewhere else.
Peter (15:30):
Yeah. And and that's another one where in the web
world, it used to train yourbrain to think the other way.
Put barcodes to cover barcodesand barcode. Right? So, again,
when I started doing this, I Icame in.
I'm like, oh, yeah. Keywords,web, da da da, and then very
quickly realized, nope. Don'tneed to do any of that.
Geoff (15:51):
So those are some of the the basic fields that you have
for your app. And then you gottaget into some of the slightly
more complicated, morecalculated parts of your app
presence. And these two thingsare kind of like a survey driven
feature, and those are theprivacy nutrition label and the
age rating of your apps. And forboth of these, you kinda go into
(16:14):
a section in App Store Connectand Apple just asks you a ton of
questions. They go, do you shareany data with 3rd parties?
Do you collect any data in thefirst place? What kinds of data
do you collect? What do you dowith them? Is it shared with
other apps? Is it mingled withother apps?
Is it connected in any way tothe user's actual identity?
(16:36):
We'll ask you a ton of thosequestions. That's for the
privacy nutrition label. For theage rating, they'll do stuff
like, does your app have anysimulated gambling, simulated
violence, that kind of thing?And, basically, you'll answer
all of these questions, and thenApple will give you a final
result at the end of them,whether that's your age rating,
you know, it's, oh, it's a 4plus app versus a 17 plus app
(16:57):
versus whatever.
Your privacy nutrition label,it's a lot more complicated.
It'll say, like, here's theindividual bits of data that you
collect, that kind of thing. Butthese are very much tools that
you only have to go through themonce per app, and then if
anything major changes, youknow, you can't. Oh, yeah. My
app is totally innocent, andit's it's 4, and then you turn
it into a blackjack app the nextupdate.
(17:19):
Apple will go, hang on a minute.This isn't a 4 plus app anymore.
But by and large, you don't haveto update, or you don't have to
touch this again once you'vedone it the first time.
Peter (17:27):
And I really like the way that they've done that because
it takes a lot of the ambiguityout of it, takes a lot of the
guesswork for for maybe somepeople just don't know. Right,
these answers. And, by givingyou a series of questions and
then essentially generating thisfor you, I think is a really
nice way to do it. I'd love tosee, you know, other things,
(17:53):
come along this route because itjust simplifies it and it also
gives me, as the potentialdownloader purchaser in the
store, a standard way of readingand seeing these things, you
know, across all the apps thatI'm comfortable with and
certainly gives a great feelingof trust as well, right. Now
(18:14):
you're quite right as you pointout, you know, hey, just like
with anything else, if youintentionally or unintentionally
make a mistake or try to scamthe system, Apple will more than
likely let you know at somepoint.
And you know, like I say, I lovethe way they do these,
(18:35):
especially because a lot of itcan sound if you're new to doing
these things or maybe not veryexperienced about publishing
apps, a lot of it can soundreally intimidating when you
read through and you're like,oh, this just sounds pretty
heavy duty, right? So just doingthese questionnaires, and
getting through them veryquickly, I find is actually a
really good way and in some waysa lot easier to get along with
(18:59):
than than say like some of theGoogle Play Store.
Geoff (19:02):
Yeah. And contrary to, some of our other experiences
with, developer tools, these arevery good at having a lot of
nice documentation and reallyexplaining everything that you
need to know. You get in thereand you're like, okay. Well,
what does tracking mean? Andthey have a ton of documentation
of, like, okay.
(19:23):
Well, this is the exact thing bywe mean by tracking or by
collecting or by whatever. Thisis what we mean by user data
versus identity data, roughlocation versus precise
location, that kind of thing.That they are very good at
saying, no. This is exactly whatyou're collecting or this is
exactly what you're notcollecting, and helping you to
(19:43):
answer these questions. It's notsomething where they're like,
well, I don't know.
Just put in whatever and, well,maybe you got it right, maybe
you didn't,
Peter (19:48):
and we're only gonna figure
Geoff (19:49):
this out at review time. Yeah. Yeah. I think once you've
you know, a lot
Peter (19:53):
of this, once you've done it a couple of times, you you
get the flow and feel prettypretty confident with it and,
you know, you know what'scoming. And also once you've
done this once and passed appreview, you know, from then on
out you're, for the most part,probably tweaking. Right? And so
(20:15):
you you've only got to do thishard work once, but next time
you do some other app orwhatever, you you know, this
becomes very comfortable veryquickly. And there are some
third party tools out there,again, we'll talk about them
later, that help you work with alot of this stuff.
So you don't have to necessarilydo it in App Store Connect, but
(20:35):
I think, it is, you know, it'sworthwhile doing it in App Store
Connect to begin with whenyou're first starting out and
learning learning the portal andlearning how this works, but
again we'll talk about that alittle bit later on. What's up
everybody? I want to tell youabout CleanMyMac by Macport. Now
(20:56):
I have been using this foryears, So many years that I
don't even remember at thispoint. But if you're a Mac user
and you don't have this tool,trust me, you need it.
So let me tell you what you cando with this. Now, when I open
up the application, not only isthe UI absolutely gorgeous but
(21:17):
I've run SmartCare and all I gotto do is open the app, click on
SmartCare and hit the scanbutton. Now, when I do that,
what's gonna happen it's gonnaanalyse my system and it's gonna
go through and it's gonna lookfor junk. It's gonna check to
make sure that I don't have anymalware or anything like that on
my Mac. It's gonna run someperformance checks.
(21:39):
It's gonna go through and checkfor application updates and then
it's also gonna give me theoption to look at what I would
call the clutter on my machine,kind of my files, right? The
stuff that that I put there andI'm not kidding you every time I
run this and I run this at leastonce a week, it will find at
least a couple of gigs worth ofjunk files to clean out. And all
(22:04):
I gotta do is to tell it goahead and run and it'll clean
out the junk files. The otherday when I ran it, it found 6
gig of files and believe me whenI tell you I am meticulous about
keeping junk off of my machineand it will just find this stuff
splattered all over differentfolders and then it'll run the
(22:26):
performance checks like I sayand it'll just look and see if
there's anything that it thinksneeds to be done. It'll let me
know about any app updates and Ican just have it update them for
me.
Now on top of that, there areother tabs. There's the cleanup
tab and it'll go in there andyou can tell it to do various
cleanup operations for you.Again, it's gonna run an
(22:47):
analysis. As developers, we allknow about Xcode and how much
space it takes up, but you willbe amazed about the amount of
files that can build up andcaches over time that you just
don't think about and you know,they just don't clean themselves
up very well and again, it'll gothrough there and save me
(23:08):
gigabytes of space. It'sabsolutely unbelievable.
The performance tab isfantastic. It'll run things like
flushing the DNS for me andit'll run the maintenance
scripts. It'll check diskpermissions for issues there and
all of those things to give youevery ounce of performance out
of your machine. And if all ofthis sounds good to you and it
(23:29):
should if you're a Mac user,like I say, I consider this like
one of my first installs. Youcan go to
petawhidham.comforward/cmm andthat's gonna jump you to the
right spot where you can go inand you can try out CleanMyMac.
You'll get a 7 day free trial.Personally, like I say every
time they bring out a newversion, it's an instant upgrade
(23:52):
for me. So again, go topeterwedham.comforward/ cmm and
get started with Clean My Mactoday. So let's move on to the
visuals and, you know, you'vegot I think you've got some
pretty good options here. Sowe'll sort of break these down
(24:12):
between us.
First one, first real obviousone, we'll all have seen them,
screenshots. Now, you can do upto 10 screenshots. They have
simplified this process overtime. It used to be that you had
to provide a whole bunch ofdifferent sizes for a whole
bunch of different devices and,of course, as the iPhone range
(24:33):
grew and the iPad range grew,you know, it got to be a real
frankly pain in the butt becauseyou're like, oh my god because
you have to, you have to verymuch meet the requirements here
even down to the pixel size ofthe file, which believe me
folks, it sounds easy to beginwith, but I I don't know about
(24:56):
you, Geoff, but I've done thisso many times in the past, then
you upload them and you're like,ah, crap. I'm I'm like 1 pixel
off in in one direction and itwon't accept you.
Geoff (25:05):
And and and yeah. And it was it wasn't even just pixels.
It was like the content of theimages as well was always super
weird. You know? If you, weredoing even entirely custom
screenshots that have, you know,the text over them, and they've
got the backgrounds to them.
And then you have, like, yourapp framed inside of a phone on
(25:27):
the thing. One of the thingsthat they would ding you for is,
oh, well, on your large sizeimages, you have the notch on
your iPhone. And then on smallsize images, you also still have
the notch because you justcopied and pasted them. And, oh,
actually, the small size image,it needs to have the whole,
like, little forehead icon. Youcan't show, a notched iPhone on
(25:48):
the smaller screen size.
And it was just like, why do wehave to do all of these? And, it
was even more hilarious on theiPads where it was, like, okay.
Well, the iPad looks almostidentical if you, like, simplify
it enough. It looks almostidentical between the 2, as long
as you just, like, don't evershow the bottom of the iPad. And
so that was the trick that I gotaway with for the longest time.
(26:11):
It's just, like, oh, yeah.You're just showing the top part
of the iPad, and you cut off thebottom so that they can't see
that you don't have a homebutton. And, it it works it
works great for that. I was
Peter (26:20):
gonna say yeah. People tend not to notice, like, you
know, where the power button ison the side and the volume
buttons. But as soon as youstart putting in the home button
on devices that don't have thehome button or the reverse,
yeah, suddenly people get realtouchy about this.
Geoff (26:40):
Yeah. And so yeah. Thankfully, that is now no
longer the case per devicefamily, I guess. So you need 1
screenshot size for the iPhone,1 screenshot size for the iPad,
1 screenshot size for the AppleWatch. Presume the same is true
for the Mac and tvOS.
I don't have any tvOS app. Idon't know.
Peter (27:01):
Yeah. I don't know. Does anyone have any TV?
Geoff (27:06):
For those kinds of device families, yeah, you only need 1
screenshot size per device.Yeah.
Peter (27:11):
So thank you.
Geoff (27:12):
That is significantly nicer in terms of getting that
done at the end of the what isoften a a long development.
Peter (27:19):
Yeah. No. I don't know about you, but I sort of, you
know, learned the hard way to belike, okay. What I need to do is
just start. In my case, I useAffinity Designer and Sketch.
So I made myself the pixelperfect templates and I go to
those every time and so it'slike here's my space, fit them
(27:40):
in there, great, You know,export 1 to 1. I should be good
to go. You know?
Geoff (27:47):
Yeah. And and, yeah, that that is my tip as well. I I know
we're gonna get into tools alittle bit later. But, yeah,
it's you can, in theory, andwhat Apple even, like,
originally said, like, youshould do is just take a
screenshot of your app andupload that. It's, a, much
harder to do, honestly, and, b,like, it doesn't look as good,
(28:11):
as just taking your screenshotsat whatever size you want,
putting them into a design toollike Sketch or Figma or Affinity
Designer or whatever.
And and kind of just, you know,placing them pixel perfect. How
you do there? Add whatever text,add whatever backgrounds, add
whatever that you want in these,to do it that way rather than
(28:33):
just try to, you know, take abunch of screenshots. It
honestly is easier. You're gonnaget better results, and I it's
gonna be nicer overall to justdo screenshots in a design tool
than to do them in
Peter (28:47):
your app. And also because depending on the app or
game or, you know, sort of usingapp in a very broad sense here,
It may not be possible to getscreenshots that really tell the
story of what the app does andhow it does it. Right? I mean,
okay, if you've got, you know,like your app has a form, by all
(29:07):
means do a screenshot of theform. It's pretty self
explanatory.
Right? But it doesn't, forexample, say, you know, why am I
doing this? Right? So, yeah, onthe surface, images and and
also, videos, you can have 3 ofthose, sounds very simple to do
and and, yeah, in a sense, youyou can do it and fail very
(29:31):
easily, but to tell a story fromthose or to to convey whatever
you're looking to conveyfunctionality, whatever, it's
actually a lot harder than thanyou think, which is where it
circles back to again like I wassaying about that description,
right. Try to use them together,right, you know, maybe your
bullet list in your descriptionis your screenshots with more
(29:55):
details underneath.
Try to make them work together.Right?
Geoff (29:58):
Now you mentioned the app preview videos. These are an
additional thing that you canoffer in the app, and that's
just some quick short samedimensions as your screenshots,
but short I think up to a minutevideos. I should look that up
before I say that. Hold on.
Peter (30:14):
I wanna say 30 seconds, but
Geoff (30:16):
The videos that you provide, they're the same
dimensions as your screenshots,but you have a minimum length of
15 seconds and a maximum lengthof 30 seconds, and you kind of
just have to show your app inuse there. Now the difference
between these and thescreenshots is that they are way
more strict with the apppreviews about what you can
(30:37):
actually show in an app preview.So in this case, it is kind of a
lot better to really just have arecording of your app rather
than try to do anything toosuper custom in your app
preview.
Peter (30:50):
Yeah. I mean, don't don't make a Hollywood trailer. Right?
Yeah. You know
Geoff (30:56):
I I I know that there's there's a ton of stories out
there. I have some that arehilarious that I I can't retell,
but, also some horror storiesof, you know, I think it was the
Halide devs that had somebodyhold the phone in in, like, a
split second of their trailerthing. And it's just like a hand
holding the phone, and Apple wasjust like, nope. We're gonna
(31:17):
block your whole release becauseof this one second thing of
somebody holding the phone. Andit was just like, no.
They they are way stricter aboutwhat you can and cannot show in
an app preview than they are in,a Yeah.
Peter (31:31):
It's interesting. Right? I think the advice there, yeah,
probably would be, you know,show the app. You know, just
show the app, show what it does,get out of there before you get
in trouble. And then, you know,the the last visual here, it may
sound obvious, but, the appicon, right, you know, hey,
you've got the app icon in theapp, right, in your Xcode
(31:55):
project.
Make sure you have a really nicegood clear quality image for
your app icon because, hey, thefirst thing people are gonna do
if they download your app is tryand find the icon on their home
screen. Right? So make it easyfor them.
Geoff (32:11):
Okay. So after you have your basic presence, there's
kind of this market of app storeoptimization where you're really
saying, okay. I've got what Iwant to just tell people about
the app, but how can I reallysell people on the app? How can
I promote my app to people whodon't even really know what
they're looking for? Who knowthat they want an app that kinda
(32:34):
does this thing, but they don'tknow that they want my app?
How do I really get across topeople, or how do I really get
my app in front of people?
Peter (32:43):
Yes.
Geoff (32:44):
And, Peter, do you have any suggestions for where people
might learn more about that?
Peter (32:49):
I do. Now, upfront, we we will both happily say we are not
experts on this. If we were, weprobably wouldn't be doing this.
We'd be retired and richsomewhere. Right?
Yeah. So there is a ton ofdifferent resources out there.
I'm gonna highlight a few, youknow, let's talk about images,
first of all, for inspiration.So you can literally dive into
(33:11):
search engine of choice, ofcourse, and search for app store
screenshots and things likethat. However, there are a lot
of places dedicated to showinggood design, and one of the ones
that I like and I'm a member of,although I don't put much on
there, is dribble.
And, we'll put link in the shownotes because it's dribble but
(33:31):
with some extra b's in it. It'sthe best way to to put that.
And, you know, there's a lot ofreally good very talented
designers on there and you candraw a lot of inspiration from
that. Now, the other thing youcan do here is, you know, go
look at your competition or whatyou think your competition may
be. So so how do you figure thatout?
(33:52):
Well, you know, the most obviousway is to say what what is my
app? What does my app do? Now gosearch on the App Store or on
the web for those kind of appsand see what they have done. Now
don't just flat out copy them.Right?
That's not gonna get youanywhere. If anything, it may
get you in trouble, but you cancertainly draw from what they
(34:12):
have done, right. That that is agood resource. Find the ones
where, you know, you resonatewith it and they've done a good
job and it's a very popular app,for example. And then also, you
know, finding some of the thingsthat maybe you don't wanna do.
Now along with that, while we'retalking about the visual side,
(34:32):
remember some of the sort ofthe, you know, you it wouldn't
hurt you to learn some basicdesign rules. Now for example,
right, one that I think a lot offolks know but, you know, hey,
there's a lot of folks whodon't. Don't use a whole bunch
of different fonts on yourscreenshots, right. Limited to
Personally, I like to limit itto 1 or 2. I think 3 is is
(34:57):
generally the acceptable limit.
So, you know, learn some designskills. You don't have to get
in-depth, but they're certainlygonna help you on the
screenshot. As far as thingsagain like keywords and
descriptions, again look atyour, you know, what you think
is your competition, but alsotry it. Go to the App Store,
search for put a search word in,see what's come comes back. If
(35:21):
what comes back is nothing likeyour app, that's probably not a
good search word to use, right?
So learn from your own searchingexperiences.
Geoff (35:31):
Time for a break.
Peter (35:32):
Hey, everybody. It's Peter Whittam here from the
Compulsory podcast. I'm gonnatell you about Setapp. Setapp is
a service that provides asubscription fee of just $10 a
month, and you get access toover 200 Mac applications and
it's also available now on iOSas part of that deal. I use the
(35:53):
service because it just has aton of really good first rate
apps that I use all the time.
And for me it's invaluable as adeveloper to have access to
tools for things like APIs, forplanning projects, writing
emails, writing documentation,and you get all of these things
including database apps, all ofthat kind of stuff right there
(36:15):
on the set app service for just$10 a month. You can use as many
or as few applications as youneed. If you're interested in
checking this out, go topeterwhitham.competerwith
am.comforward/setapp, s e t a pp. And you can see the details
there. And it's got a link thatyou can go over and start using
(36:38):
the service and see how it worksout for you.
I strongly recommend this toevery Mac user.
Geoff (36:44):
Break time over.
Peter (36:46):
Yeah. Along with that, there are a mountain of tools
out there. I've just startedusing 1, you know, I I'm trying
a few and and, you know, maybewe'll we'll dive into them and
talk about them in a moment. Youknow, take advantage of those
tools. Of course, AI is anotherthing now that it's getting a
lot of use and it can be usefulfor generating, I'm gonna say
(37:09):
keywords.
I'm not a big fan of using itjust, you know, copy and pasting
out of this AI chatbot for yourtext because as we've mentioned
in a previous episode, everybodycan spot the text right now that
that AI tools has done andyou're like, oh, yeah, you know,
but you can use it, right, as aas somewhere to start from. So,
(37:32):
you know, maybe take a chattool, pick one of your choice,
put in what you think is a gooddescription and then let it work
through it, right, and and seewhat it comes back with and
adapt it. Another good one, verypopular one, Grammarly, right,
to make hey, you know, it's kindof important to get a good
(37:52):
grammar. So Grammarly is a goodone that I use for just checking
the what I meant to say and whatit actually says is the same
thing, and things like that. Sothere's a lot to do in app store
optimization.
You can, you know, it's justlike web optimization. You you
can specialize on this thingforever, and you can even pay
(38:14):
people. Nothing wrong with that,but I think it's a good idea for
you to learn to do it yourself,and it's gonna be painful at
first, and you probably won'tget it right. It'll take a few
hits, but that's why you can goback on your next release and
tweak these things. So, youknow, Geoff what are your your
thoughts on this?
Geoff (38:33):
Yeah. As you said, neither of us are experts, but,
I do know that there are expertsout there that can help you with
this kind of thing and help youlearn this. You know, there are
people out there who are sharingthese these tips and tricks. I
think my big 2 that I willreference is Ariel from
Appfigures. He does a lot ofboth a YouTube channel and a lot
(38:55):
of blog posts about, hey, hereare some of the tips and tricks
to kind of get your app to showup for the keywords that you
want to get it to show up for.
Obviously, he has a vestedinterest in selling his tool,
Appfigures, but he also does alot of this conversation and
stuff of, like, here's thethings that you can do that are
completely free, Don't have youdon't have to be an Appfigures
(39:16):
subscriber to to use any ofthis. It's just like, here's
some of the basics. You know? Aa lot of the things that we've
already discussed, like, hey.Don't use plurals in your
keywords list, are things that Ipicked up from his tips and
tricks and and guides.
The other one that I'll I'llrecommend maybe a little bit
less tightly for our audiencebecause it is more geared
(39:38):
towards a larger company's typedeal, is the RevenueCat Subclub
podcast. Definitely, I would saygo through there, look up the
podcast titles and say whichones sound interesting or sound
relevant to you, and go listento them. Often, they'll have
people on that are talkingabout, like, oh, you know, I'm
(40:00):
doing this for my app storeoptimization, and, you know, I
only had a small budget of$30,000. And so maybe that's a
little bit less relevant to thepeople that are listening to
this podcast, but there aredefinitely some out there that
they have things that are arerelevant to you and that you can
definitely learn from for here'sthe tips and tricks that work
(40:20):
for big companies, but they'llalso work for small companies as
well. But that one, I'lldefinitely say, like, don't just
go listen to every singleepisode that they've got because
a lot of them aren't going to berelevant.
But and and if you if they arerelevant to you,
patreon.com/ma'am.
Peter (40:33):
Yeah. I was because I'd like to have $30,000 budget on
just about anything in life.Right? Yeah. Now I I do want to
throw in one extra word ofcaution here and as we're
recording this, we're justcoming off of well, literally
just come off of Cyber Monday.
Right? It's just just wrappingup here in in the US. Mhmm. It's
(40:56):
all too easy to convinceyourself, you know, toolxyz is
gonna magically solve thisproblem for you, and I I say
that, with all due respect toall of these tools because over
the past few days, while there'sbeen deals going on and things
like that, I've looked at a fairfew of them and many of them are
very good and but some of themare expensive. That's not to say
(41:19):
that they're no good, you know,they're probably well worth what
you're paying for them, but myword of caution here is that no
tool will magically solve thisproblem for you and get it
right.
Like we have said about so manythings in the past in other
episodes, only you know what'swhat's right for your apps and
what's gonna work for you andwhat and perhaps more
(41:41):
importantly what you'recomfortable with. So there's
gonna be a lot ofexperimentation here. It's
probably not gonna go great atfirst. What I try to go for is
every time I do a new release isI just try to improve it in some
way, and the best way to startthere is, you know, Geoff, you
(42:02):
alluded this earlier on,learning from what you did last
time and how well that workedfor you. Right?
And comparing it, you know,maybe you've done this 4 or 5
times and tried a few differentthings. You know, what are those
points that worked? What are theones that didn't? And and just
try to, you know, elaborate onit in, you know, a more
(42:22):
successful way next time around.Any thoughts on that?
Geoff (42:25):
Yeah. Tools are not going to magically solve anything for
you. Having an ASO tool is notgoing to magically make your app
number 1 in all app store searchresults any more than a kitchen
tool is gonna make you aMichelin chef. You have to have
your knowledge, your expertisein order to kind of build this
(42:48):
out, and then the tools can helpyou. And, yes, I'm I'm not, like
Peter said, I'm not saying thatthese tools are worthless.
I'm saying don't go intoexpecting, oh, yeah. If I just
sign up for this tool that I'msuddenly going to be making n
1,000 more dollars. It it isvery much learn what works for
(43:09):
you, what you can do, and thenuse the tools to help you. Yeah.
There's a lot more advancedcomponents inside of App Store
Connect, and I've done some ofthese, and I you may have also
done some of these, but, I'mgonna kinda list them, and then
we can dig into specifics if weif we wanna talk about
specifics.
The big one that I think Apple'sreally been kind of pushing
lately, but it's also kind ofone of the most complicated ones
(43:33):
to get into, is the idea ofhaving custom app store product
pages. And this is having anentirely separate app store
presence that users can bedriven to through different ways
of of, you know, whether it's adifferent link or a a different
direction in the App Store. Andthis is saying, okay. I'm gonna
(43:53):
build my main App Store presencethat people, if they're just
coming into the App Storewithout looking at anything,
they're gonna see this version.That's what we've been talking
about this entire time.
But what I could do is I couldsay I have a special App Store
product page for people that aredoing some specific thing. So, I
think the kinda big obvious onemight be, say you've got an app
(44:14):
that has something to do withsports. Well, we're gonna have
our main, like, just generalsports product page, but then
maybe we have a specific pagejust for baseball fans and our
specific page just for soccerfans, that kind of thing, and
say, this is the best app forbaseball. This is the best app
for sport, whatever sport youwant to. And so you can kind of
drive people to that and say,like, I know that these people
(44:36):
are already interested in thissport, so let me show them the
version of the app store thatreally sells them on why they
should get this app for thissport.
Something that they added tothis this year is now if your
user downloads the app from oneof those product pages, you'll
actually get a link that isopened the first time that you
launch the app, and you canchange your app around based on
(44:59):
what product page they camefrom. So say you know, hey. This
user likes baseball more thananything else. When they launch
the app for the first time, youcan go ahead and set them up for
their specific sport so thatthey are taken immediately into
the part of the app that youknow that they're gonna want
because that's the version ofthe app that got them to or now
(45:19):
kind of akin to this is whatthey call product page
optimization. I think a lot ofpeople are gonna know this more
as just AB tests, where this isgoing back towards your generic
App Store presence.
But what's happening is that youcan provide up to 3 different
versions of your main App Storepage, and Apple will give
(45:40):
different ones to differentpeople at random. And what
you'll see is you're able totell, hey. What version of my
App Store page is getting moredownloads, is getting more
views, is getting more people tolook at it? And so in that way,
you can kind of set up multipledifferent versions of your page
and see which version worksbest. And that allows you to
(46:02):
kind of have more insight intowhat is or is not working.
And so we talked earlier about,like, making incremental
improvements over time to yourApp Store page. This can be one
way of making those incrementalimprovements without completely
ruining every version of yourpage if you end up doing
something that actually doesn'twork. Now it's worth noting that
(46:23):
as opposed to the custom productpages, there is a little bit
more of a limitation with the ABtests. You really only can
change in your AB tests the appicon and your app screenshots
and previews. You really onlyget to change a little bit of
the visual style of the thing.
You don't get to add newkeywords. You don't get to have
a completely custom description.You don't get to have any of
(46:44):
that kind of thing. It is reallyjust little tiny tweaks in
trying to see which version ofthe app kinda draws people in a
little bit more. And thenthere's 2 somewhat similar
features that are aboutpromoting your app outside of
your app page entirely, and thatis in app events and featured in
app purchases, which isproviding information about
(47:07):
specific parts of your app.
And so in app events are, hey.We've got some special thing
going on, whether that'ssomething in the real world or
something in the app, and wewant to promote our app in
relation to that event ratherthan promoting our app directly.
So, for example, maybe you havea sale going on in your app. You
(47:27):
know, it's it's like we saidearlier, Cyber Monday. Maybe you
wanna say, hey, everything inour app is on sale, and we're
going to promote this salerather than specifically our
app.
And so this is a way that youcan have your individual events
show up in the app storeseparately from your app as a
whole. Alongside that samething, you have additionally
(47:50):
featured in app purchases. Soyou could say, hey, here's this
feature that you unlock if youget this in app purchase. You
can sell that feature separatelyfrom your app as a whole, and if
users see that in app purchasein their search results, then
they're able to purchase the inapp purchase right there from
(48:10):
the App Store, and then get theapp and the app will already
have your purchase made. So forexample, you could say, hey, my
subscription unlocks feature x.
And if somebody goes and they'researching in the App Store for
feature x, they could go, oh,well, I'm clearly gonna want
that feature. Why don't I goahead and subscribe now and then
get the app and they're alreadysubscribed in the app?
Peter (48:31):
Folks, take advantage of these. Now I do wanna say
though, there are requirementsfor these. Right? Just like with
everything else, so go checkthem out because what I fell
foul on, I created everything Ithought I needed and everything
was great and the one thing thatI didn't do that was the reason
(48:52):
that Apple wouldn't accept it, Ididn't supply a deep link direct
to the event in the app that Iwas talking about.
Geoff (49:00):
Yeah. For both for both of these, you do need to supply
a couple extra things. You needto supply some new images. You
need to supply some new icons.For in app events, you need to
supply a deep link for the inapp purchases.
You actually have to hook upsomething differently with
StoreKit. There are yeah. Sothere are these additional
requirements, but they are nice.And yeah. Definitely, you should
take advantage of these morebecause it's literally just
(49:23):
extra ways your app could showup in the search results.
And you always want more ways todo that. I, myself, I've only
done the featured in apppurchases. I know I totally
should have done more featuredin app purchases with Bark for
the Apple Wallet thing, becausethat was something that people
really wanted. I should havebeen like, oh, yeah. Bark
unleashed and, like, reallysell.
Hey. This has Apple Walletexport and really sell just like
(49:47):
if people are looking for AppleWallet, they're gonna see the
Bark Unleashed subscription andthen go through that. That would
be a good idea. I've done thefeatured in app purchase for
black highlighter. It's it'sworked.
I mean, it's it's definitelyanother way of people getting
access to this. So, yeah, thatis that is something that I need
to continue to do in bark. Ithink I'm also gonna do a bark
(50:08):
in app event for New Year's justto be, like, all of the people
whose New Year's resolution isget organized. Maybe they want a
thing to organize all theirbarcodes. Definitely just having
these extra ways to kind of getin front of people in the App
Store, super useful.
Take advantage of them when youcan. It's free. Yeah. Now do it.
Peter (50:27):
So this may sound like a lot of work, and it is. And, you
know, some of you may bethinking, well, should I bother?
And the answer is, yes. Yeah.You absolutely should.
Key thing is, you know, do yourbasic homework first. Right? Go
through and do all the stuffwe'd spoke about at the
beginning that you may not needto touch some of that stuff ever
again or rarely. So, you know,it pays off there. Taking it up
(50:53):
to this next level and doingthese these extra things here
that Geoff's talking about, yes,you know, you could say, well,
it's a lot of effort and andyes, it could be optional.
Yeah. But that's it. That that'swhat we got for you. I'm hoping
folks the the takeaway you gethere from the last 2 or 3
episodes where we've covereddifferent parts of this whole
(51:16):
app process. Right?
You know, again, you know,development's part of it. All
this is the other stuff. Right?I hope that, you know, you you
listen to all these episodes andtake away that you will be
rewarded based on on how much ofthis you, you know, take into
account and try to do a good jobon. I say try to do a good job,
(51:36):
you know, any level of effort isbetter than doing nothing,
Right?
Simple as that. But we want youto have a good experience and
especially for those folksgetting started, maybe people in
particular who've never releasedtheir first app. We feel like
we've given you a good sensibleplace to, you know, take lots of
notes and think about it. Right?Play these episodes a few times
(51:58):
maybe.
With that, Geoff, I think we'vecovered this. So, where can
folks find you?
Geoff (52:04):
You can find everything everything about me that you
need to know at cocoatype.com,including the latest demos.
Peter (52:11):
And you can find everything me at Peterwitham.com
, and you can find this podcastat compileswift.com
and compileswift on all thenetworks. That's it folks.
What's up, everybody? Welcome to another episode of
The Compile Swift Podcast. I'myour host, Peter Witham, and
your other host is
Geoff (00:09):
Hi. I'm Geoff Pedo. I don't know.
Peter (00:11):
I think we'll just go with
Geoff (00:12):
I don't know why this was suddenly like The hardest
question. I don't know how tointroduce myself on this
podcast. Yeah.
Peter (00:18):
This week, we are talking about App Store presence, which
can be as simple or ascomplicated, I guess, as you
want it to be. But there aresome rules that you have to fall
in line with and also just somepretty good common sense. So
we're gonna dive into it here,but first of all, Geoff, we've
gotta do the obligatory thingeveryone does. What did you do
(00:40):
this week, sir?
Geoff (00:42):
I've been finally getting back into developing some of the
other apps that I have on theApp Store ever since releasing
Bark. That's kind of been mymain focus. And, I've gotten a
little bit back into updatingblack highlighter. How about
you? I know that this is relatedto our topic.
Peter (01:00):
It is. So hold on to your hats, folks. This week, I
shipped my update for job findertracker 1.2. I know I know. It
is months months overdue.
I finally shipped it. And yes,that is what I've got to
contribute to this week'sconversation here because it is
very very relevant to to some ofthe topic in which I updated
(01:25):
screenshots and all sorts ofthings and and really tried to
do a better job of it this timearound. So let's start here. App
Store presence. What what doesit even mean, Geoff?
What what what is App Storepresence?
Geoff (01:39):
Yeah. So I think what we're calling App Store presence
is basically, how does your appappear on the App Store? What
are you telling users? What areyou showing users to try and get
them to download your app?There's some amount of this that
falls under the bucket of AppStore optimization, but also
there's a lot of kind of what isjust the bare minimum.
(02:01):
What are you having to or whatare you showing to users? What
do you have to show to users?What are you choosing to show to
users? Kind of all of the thebasics that you are to tell them
about the app, and then at thenext level, try to sell them on
the app. And, hey, you shouldyou should check out this app.
Here's why you should do that.
Peter (02:18):
Yeah. Now there are certain things, and and this is
one of those, you know, again,you can put as little or as much
effort into this as you want.However, there are certain
requirements you have tofulfill, basically before Apple
will even let you submit it forreview, right. So, you know,
there are some things here andwe'll we'll go through them, but
(02:40):
I'll just give you a very quicklist and then we'll we'll talk
about some specific subjects.Some are self explanatory, I
think.
So for example, right, there'ssome text elements naturally,
right, that you will be expectedto provide an app name. Now that
app name is a free form textentry field, but you know you
(03:03):
really don't want to use a namethat somebody already has
because it's gonna make it thatmuch harder, and we've all seen
in the store as well, right?People try to make twist and
make them clever, and and Ithink my advice, and Geoff you
may disagree, but my advice isit's kind of like domain names.
Don't try and be clever, right,because if you don't make it
(03:25):
obvious, number 1, it's lesslikely to come up in the search,
and number 2, it's less likelyfor people to remember it.
Right?
Geoff (03:34):
Make something that you can find. Make something that
you can search for. You candefinitely add additions to your
to your app in the App Store. Imean so for example, Kineo is my
app's actual name. It's the namethat you'll see on my social
media on the website for it andeverything.
But in the App Store, it's Kineoflip book animations, because
(03:55):
you wanna have a a little bitthere even if a user is just
picking it out of the list orthey're trying to see it in
search results that they'regoing, oh, yes, it's this Kineo
versus maybe there's anotherKineo out there, or maybe they
see it in the list and they'relike, well, I I don't know what
Kineo is. Why would this be thekind of thing that I would want?
So, yeah, I I would still saythat your app name doesn't have
(04:18):
to just be your name. You dowant it to kind of be almost as
much a first impression on theuser as your app icon is.
Peter (04:26):
Yeah. Right. And if I remember rightly, the app name
that you have in the store doesnot have to exactly match the
app name that you would see onthe icon in the home screen.
Right? If I remember rightly.
Geoff (04:41):
Yeah. That's correct.
Peter (04:43):
Now, you know, don't go making them 2 completely
different things because youmight get dinged for that. But,
so for example, right, your appname might be job finder
tracker. Don't bother using it.I've already used it. On the
icon, I could just have like jobtracker or something like that,
right, to give you an example.
So the next one, I actuallydidn't use, previously, but I've
(05:06):
used it this time around, whichis the subtitle. It is an
optional one and I've seenpeople kind of use it for almost
like a short tagline becauseyou're only allowed 30
characters on both of these, bythe way. Right? But I this is
the first time I bothered to putin a subtitle. What about you?
Do you always put a subtitle in?
Geoff (05:28):
I I always, 100% of the time, use a subtitle. It is
basically just another thingthat shows up on almost every
case where you're seeing yourapp's name. And so it's just
another way of letting peopleknow, yes. Hey. This is the app
that you're looking for.
And we'll get into some of theASO stuff later, but, your app
(05:48):
name and app subtitle are veryimportant for that as well.
Peter (05:51):
Yeah. And then the next one, super important, of course,
is the description. Now you'vegot 4,000 characters for that,
but my advice would be get in tothe description. Everything you
feel you need to get in there.Don't do more than you you need
to, right.
Don't try and fill it with stuffjust to make it sound good or,
(06:15):
you know, thinking that it'sgonna work with ASO and and
things like that, right. BecauseI feel like the the longer the
description is, the more likelypeople might be to move on
because, you know, you don'twant to sit there and read
paragraphs and paragraphs oftext, but you should put in
there, hey, list all thefeatures, for example, right?
(06:37):
But make it complement, I think,things like the the screenshots
and or videos, which we'll talkabout here briefly in a moment.
I don't think you should, youknow, don't don't go writing a
book on this thing, right?
Geoff (06:51):
I I agree, but I disagree. And I'll say that I
think that you should aim tofill as much of it as possible.
That is I'm being very much ahypocrite in here because,
especially some of my apps,like, black highlighter have
very little in them. That issomething that I want to work
on. But I do think the answeris, a, do fill a lot of this
(07:11):
out, but, b, make it easilyskimmable.
Make it so that users can findthe information that they want
kind of quickly and easily. Butyou do wanna put a lot in there
because, again, everything thatyou have on the app store is
your chance to tell the user,hey, this is the app that you
want. And so you can go in thereand you can have, like, a
(07:31):
frequently asked questions. Youcan have all of your list of
features, like you said. You canhave, you know, your business
model, if that's important to tothe user.
Like, oh, yeah. No. This is asubscription app. Like, all of
that kind of stuff can be inthere. Just I would say, you'll
see this in a lot of other appsthat you have kind of like these
(07:52):
big titles or new lines thatseparate stuff or, you know,
just ton of asterisks orsomething to to kind of call it
out.
Have good, easily skimmableheadlines. So that yeah. You're
you're right in that you don'twant to be reading it paragraph
by paragraph and and reading awhole book in here. But if you
(08:13):
have instead a set of chaptermarkers, then you can kind of
hop directly to the part in thebook that you want to.
Peter (08:19):
Yeah. Or, you know, another good one is bullet
lists. Right? If you can get,you know, maybe at the front,
now that I think about it, youknow, at the top maybe put a
list a bullet list of all thesuper important key things and
then if there are some that youreally want to focus on, you
know, go into a few some detailsunderneath maybe something like
(08:39):
that. But it actually issurprising how quickly you could
fill 4,000 characters if youtried.
Right?
Geoff (08:47):
Yeah. Exactly.
Peter (08:48):
Same that there's another one here, what's new. Now the
what's new I obviously tend tothink of as, hey, what's new in
this release, right? So whilstyou've got 4
Geoff (08:59):
That's what it is.
Peter (08:59):
Yeah. Whilst you've got 4,000 characters, you know,
unless you've done massivelyextensive work, I would imagine
you're probably not gonna, youknow, overfill this thing,
right. So by all means highlightthe new things. Like, for
example, in my job find atracker app, I've just added an
import resume feature, but Iwould highlight I would use the
(09:23):
what's new to highlight, hey,this is a this is a big deal,
right, in this release, thingslike that. You know, what I
don't like to see is, and yousee this on a lot of apps, not
gonna name any, but many of theones a lot of people use, every
time it's like bug fixes.
It's nice that you're tellingthe user, hey, I fixed a bunch
(09:45):
of bugs but it's not reallymaking the user go, oh, this is
great. I I gotta get this.Right? You know, it's like a
wasted opportunity there is whatI think. Hey, folks.
If you like what you're hearingin this podcast and you wanna
help this podcast to continuegoing forward and having great
guests and great conversations,I invite you to become a Patreon
(10:07):
supporter. You can go topatreon.comforward/compile swift
where you will get ad freeversions of the podcast along
with other content.
Geoff (10:16):
Yep. I I do think that the reason you see that and and
kind of, part of this one andand why I'll say this one is
less important is this issomething that at most is going
to be seen by people who alreadyuse your app. It's very rare
that somebody who has notdownloaded your app is going to
look at these release notes atall. And even the people who do
(10:38):
have your app, in a lot ofcases, most people have just
automatic updates turned on, andso they won't see these
notifications either. Yeah.
I think it's good to write themso that if people are really
worried about a specific featureor a specific bug, they can go
and look and find thatinformation if they need to. So
I think there is a benefit tohaving something here, for kind
(11:02):
of your most dedicated users.But I since this isn't really
seen as kind of the mainpresence of your app, I do think
it's it this would be if youhave to find somewhere to Slack
on a little bit, this might be aplace to to
Peter (11:19):
Yeah. Now I I I agree that, you know, let's say for
example, that you've got somebug, right, your your app has a
login system and there was somebug that made it difficult for
users to log in in the lastversion and you fixed it in this
one and you've got a lot ofreviews or a lot of complaints
mentioning it, that is a goodplace to point out, hey, look,
(11:43):
you know, bug fix hugely fixedthis login bug, right. So, you
know, take advantage of itthere, especially, like I say,
if you've got a bunch of reviewsor something or, you know,
requests for features fromusers, that is a good place to
to put them in there and and buyyourself some goodwill. Right?
Geoff (12:06):
And and I think that the there is a benefit to writing
these even if it's not the appstore that you're writing them
for. You can also obviously havethese notes on your website. You
can link to them from yoursocial media. And so it's it's
good to have these additionalrelease notes just so that you
can tell your users about them,but it may not necessarily be
(12:26):
something that you're supergonna be highlighting on your
App Store page itself.
Peter (12:30):
Like, for example, I'm sure many of us do this. Right?
I have a file. I think it's justa text file. I keep the, you
know, the what's new and therelease notes and all that kind
of thing.
I keep them all for all theprevious versions so that I can
reference back to it myself, youknow. Sometimes it can be like,
oh shoot, when did I fix that?Okay. Yeah, it was version 1.7.
(12:55):
The next one is, another, youknow, important one with a with
I think an interesting characterlimit.
So it's keywords and you've onlygot a 100 characters. Now you
can put in here anything youwant as a keyword, but a 100
characters fills up super quick.Now, I do understand this is a
(13:16):
good way to prevent keyword spamand trying to hijack other
people's apps by copying whatthey've done or, again, trying
to be clever. Right? But Iactually find a 100 characters
because I went through thisyesterday when I was filling in
the details for the update formy app.
A 100 characters is not a lot ofkeywords at all. Right?
Geoff (13:39):
Yeah. And that's especially so considering that
when you're entering in thesekeywords, they've all gotta be
comma separated. And thosecommas count in characters too.
Peter (13:49):
And the space after the camera. The space after the
comma.
Geoff (13:52):
Well, don't don't don't include the space after the
comma. That's that's the answerthere. Don't don't include them.
There are a lot of ways to kindof optimize this. I think one of
the resources that we'll link tolater is going to kind of have
some of that information foryou.
But yeah, there are ways tooptimize this keyword list, but
at the same time it is verylimited by design, and you kinda
(14:15):
have to find ways to get aroundthat.
Peter (14:17):
Yeah. Yes. So when I was doing mine, I was testing out at
all and and we'll get into someof that later, but, it was
suggesting keywords based on,you know, essentially what I'd
filled in already, thedescription and everything else.
So what its suggestions werereally good, but I couldn't use
(14:38):
all of the really good onesbecause they just couldn't get
them all in there and at thesame time it it had put a space
after the comma and then Irealized I was like, oh wait, if
I take those out they're stillperfectly, legitimately work as
keywords and I've captured backsome characters. You know,
whereas the reason I say it likethat is, like, in the web world
(15:01):
and things like that, I tend toput a space after them because
it doesn't matter.
Right? So so, yeah, I that onebit me and I got okay. I only
got one extra word in, but hell,that could make all the
difference. Right?
Geoff (15:15):
I I I know another important one that a lot of
people overlook is, don't pluralize your keywords. Mhmm. Don't
have barcodes in there whenbarcode would work fine. That's
that's an extra s character thatyou can save for somewhere else.
Peter (15:30):
Yeah. And and that's another one where in the web
world, it used to train yourbrain to think the other way.
Put barcodes to cover barcodesand barcode. Right? So, again,
when I started doing this, I Icame in.
I'm like, oh, yeah. Keywords,web, da da da, and then very
quickly realized, nope. Don'tneed to do any of that.
Geoff (15:51):
So those are some of the the basic fields that you have
for your app. And then you gottaget into some of the slightly
more complicated, morecalculated parts of your app
presence. And these two thingsare kind of like a survey driven
feature, and those are theprivacy nutrition label and the
age rating of your apps. And forboth of these, you kinda go into
(16:14):
a section in App Store Connectand Apple just asks you a ton of
questions. They go, do you shareany data with 3rd parties?
Do you collect any data in thefirst place? What kinds of data
do you collect? What do you dowith them? Is it shared with
other apps? Is it mingled withother apps?
Is it connected in any way tothe user's actual identity?
(16:36):
We'll ask you a ton of thosequestions. That's for the
privacy nutrition label. For theage rating, they'll do stuff
like, does your app have anysimulated gambling, simulated
violence, that kind of thing?And, basically, you'll answer
all of these questions, and thenApple will give you a final
result at the end of them,whether that's your age rating,
you know, it's, oh, it's a 4plus app versus a 17 plus app
(16:57):
versus whatever.
Your privacy nutrition label,it's a lot more complicated.
It'll say, like, here's theindividual bits of data that you
collect, that kind of thing. Butthese are very much tools that
you only have to go through themonce per app, and then if
anything major changes, youknow, you can't. Oh, yeah. My
app is totally innocent, andit's it's 4, and then you turn
it into a blackjack app the nextupdate.
(17:19):
Apple will go, hang on a minute.This isn't a 4 plus app anymore.
But by and large, you don't haveto update, or you don't have to
touch this again once you'vedone it the first time.
Peter (17:27):
And I really like the way that they've done that because
it takes a lot of the ambiguityout of it, takes a lot of the
guesswork for for maybe somepeople just don't know. Right,
these answers. And, by givingyou a series of questions and
then essentially generating thisfor you, I think is a really
nice way to do it. I'd love tosee, you know, other things,
(17:53):
come along this route because itjust simplifies it and it also
gives me, as the potentialdownloader purchaser in the
store, a standard way of readingand seeing these things, you
know, across all the apps thatI'm comfortable with and
certainly gives a great feelingof trust as well, right. Now
(18:14):
you're quite right as you pointout, you know, hey, just like
with anything else, if youintentionally or unintentionally
make a mistake or try to scamthe system, Apple will more than
likely let you know at somepoint.
And you know, like I say, I lovethe way they do these,
(18:35):
especially because a lot of itcan sound if you're new to doing
these things or maybe not veryexperienced about publishing
apps, a lot of it can soundreally intimidating when you
read through and you're like,oh, this just sounds pretty
heavy duty, right? So just doingthese questionnaires, and
getting through them veryquickly, I find is actually a
really good way and in some waysa lot easier to get along with
(18:59):
than than say like some of theGoogle Play Store.
Geoff (19:02):
Yeah. And contrary to, some of our other experiences
with, developer tools, these arevery good at having a lot of
nice documentation and reallyexplaining everything that you
need to know. You get in thereand you're like, okay. Well,
what does tracking mean? Andthey have a ton of documentation
of, like, okay.
(19:23):
Well, this is the exact thing bywe mean by tracking or by
collecting or by whatever. Thisis what we mean by user data
versus identity data, roughlocation versus precise
location, that kind of thing.That they are very good at
saying, no. This is exactly whatyou're collecting or this is
exactly what you're notcollecting, and helping you to
(19:43):
answer these questions. It's notsomething where they're like,
well, I don't know.
Just put in whatever and, well,maybe you got it right, maybe
you didn't,
Peter (19:48):
and we're only gonna figure
Geoff (19:49):
this out at review time. Yeah. Yeah. I think once you've
you know, a lot
Peter (19:53):
of this, once you've done it a couple of times, you you
get the flow and feel prettypretty confident with it and,
you know, you know what'scoming. And also once you've
done this once and passed appreview, you know, from then on
out you're, for the most part,probably tweaking. Right? And so
(20:15):
you you've only got to do thishard work once, but next time
you do some other app orwhatever, you you know, this
becomes very comfortable veryquickly. And there are some
third party tools out there,again, we'll talk about them
later, that help you work with alot of this stuff.
So you don't have to necessarilydo it in App Store Connect, but
(20:35):
I think, it is, you know, it'sworthwhile doing it in App Store
Connect to begin with whenyou're first starting out and
learning learning the portal andlearning how this works, but
again we'll talk about that alittle bit later on. What's up
everybody? I want to tell youabout CleanMyMac by Macport. Now
(20:56):
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So let me tell you what you cando with this. Now, when I open
up the application, not only isthe UI absolutely gorgeous but
(21:17):
I've run SmartCare and all I gotto do is open the app, click on
SmartCare and hit the scanbutton. Now, when I do that,
what's gonna happen it's gonnaanalyse my system and it's gonna
go through and it's gonna lookfor junk. It's gonna check to
make sure that I don't have anymalware or anything like that on
my Mac. It's gonna run someperformance checks.
(21:39):
It's gonna go through and checkfor application updates and then
it's also gonna give me theoption to look at what I would
call the clutter on my machine,kind of my files, right? The
stuff that that I put there andI'm not kidding you every time I
run this and I run this at leastonce a week, it will find at
least a couple of gigs worth ofjunk files to clean out. And all
(22:04):
I gotta do is to tell it goahead and run and it'll clean
out the junk files. The otherday when I ran it, it found 6
gig of files and believe me whenI tell you I am meticulous about
keeping junk off of my machineand it will just find this stuff
splattered all over differentfolders and then it'll run the
(22:26):
performance checks like I sayand it'll just look and see if
there's anything that it thinksneeds to be done. It'll let me
know about any app updates and Ican just have it update them for
me.
Now on top of that, there areother tabs. There's the cleanup
tab and it'll go in there andyou can tell it to do various
cleanup operations for you.Again, it's gonna run an
(22:47):
analysis. As developers, we allknow about Xcode and how much
space it takes up, but you willbe amazed about the amount of
files that can build up andcaches over time that you just
don't think about and you know,they just don't clean themselves
up very well and again, it'll gothrough there and save me
(23:08):
gigabytes of space. It'sabsolutely unbelievable.
The performance tab isfantastic. It'll run things like
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all of those things to give youevery ounce of performance out
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(23:29):
should if you're a Mac user,like I say, I consider this like
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You'll get a 7 day free trial.Personally, like I say every
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(23:52):
for me. So again, go topeterwedham.comforward/ cmm and
get started with Clean My Mactoday. So let's move on to the
visuals and, you know, you'vegot I think you've got some
pretty good options here. Sowe'll sort of break these down
(24:12):
between us.
First one, first real obviousone, we'll all have seen them,
screenshots. Now, you can do upto 10 screenshots. They have
simplified this process overtime. It used to be that you had
to provide a whole bunch ofdifferent sizes for a whole
bunch of different devices and,of course, as the iPhone range
(24:33):
grew and the iPad range grew,you know, it got to be a real
frankly pain in the butt becauseyou're like, oh my god because
you have to, you have to verymuch meet the requirements here
even down to the pixel size ofthe file, which believe me
folks, it sounds easy to beginwith, but I I don't know about
(24:56):
you, Geoff, but I've done thisso many times in the past, then
you upload them and you're like,ah, crap. I'm I'm like 1 pixel
off in in one direction and itwon't accept you.
Geoff (25:05):
And and and yeah. And it was it wasn't even just pixels.
It was like the content of theimages as well was always super
weird. You know? If you, weredoing even entirely custom
screenshots that have, you know,the text over them, and they've
got the backgrounds to them.
And then you have, like, yourapp framed inside of a phone on
(25:27):
the thing. One of the thingsthat they would ding you for is,
oh, well, on your large sizeimages, you have the notch on
your iPhone. And then on smallsize images, you also still have
the notch because you justcopied and pasted them. And, oh,
actually, the small size image,it needs to have the whole,
like, little forehead icon. Youcan't show, a notched iPhone on
(25:48):
the smaller screen size.
And it was just like, why do wehave to do all of these? And, it
was even more hilarious on theiPads where it was, like, okay.
Well, the iPad looks almostidentical if you, like, simplify
it enough. It looks almostidentical between the 2, as long
as you just, like, don't evershow the bottom of the iPad. And
so that was the trick that I gotaway with for the longest time.
(26:11):
It's just, like, oh, yeah.You're just showing the top part
of the iPad, and you cut off thebottom so that they can't see
that you don't have a homebutton. And, it it works it
works great for that. I was
Peter (26:20):
gonna say yeah. People tend not to notice, like, you
know, where the power button ison the side and the volume
buttons. But as soon as youstart putting in the home button
on devices that don't have thehome button or the reverse,
yeah, suddenly people get realtouchy about this.
Geoff (26:40):
Yeah. And so yeah. Thankfully, that is now no
longer the case per devicefamily, I guess. So you need 1
screenshot size for the iPhone,1 screenshot size for the iPad,
1 screenshot size for the AppleWatch. Presume the same is true
for the Mac and tvOS.
I don't have any tvOS app. Idon't know.
Peter (27:01):
Yeah. I don't know. Does anyone have any TV?
Geoff (27:06):
For those kinds of device families, yeah, you only need 1
screenshot size per device.Yeah.
Peter (27:11):
So thank you.
Geoff (27:12):
That is significantly nicer in terms of getting that
done at the end of the what isoften a a long development.
Peter (27:19):
Yeah. No. I don't know about you, but I sort of, you
know, learned the hard way to belike, okay. What I need to do is
just start. In my case, I useAffinity Designer and Sketch.
So I made myself the pixelperfect templates and I go to
those every time and so it'slike here's my space, fit them
(27:40):
in there, great, You know,export 1 to 1. I should be good
to go. You know?
Geoff (27:47):
Yeah. And and, yeah, that that is my tip as well. I I know
we're gonna get into tools alittle bit later. But, yeah,
it's you can, in theory, andwhat Apple even, like,
originally said, like, youshould do is just take a
screenshot of your app andupload that. It's, a, much
harder to do, honestly, and, b,like, it doesn't look as good,
(28:11):
as just taking your screenshotsat whatever size you want,
putting them into a design toollike Sketch or Figma or Affinity
Designer or whatever.
And and kind of just, you know,placing them pixel perfect. How
you do there? Add whatever text,add whatever backgrounds, add
whatever that you want in these,to do it that way rather than
(28:33):
just try to, you know, take abunch of screenshots. It
honestly is easier. You're gonnaget better results, and I it's
gonna be nicer overall to justdo screenshots in a design tool
than to do them in
Peter (28:47):
your app. And also because depending on the app or
game or, you know, sort of usingapp in a very broad sense here,
It may not be possible to getscreenshots that really tell the
story of what the app does andhow it does it. Right? I mean,
okay, if you've got, you know,like your app has a form, by all
(29:07):
means do a screenshot of theform. It's pretty self
explanatory.
Right? But it doesn't, forexample, say, you know, why am I
doing this? Right? So, yeah, onthe surface, images and and
also, videos, you can have 3 ofthose, sounds very simple to do
and and, yeah, in a sense, youyou can do it and fail very
(29:31):
easily, but to tell a story fromthose or to to convey whatever
you're looking to conveyfunctionality, whatever, it's
actually a lot harder than thanyou think, which is where it
circles back to again like I wassaying about that description,
right. Try to use them together,right, you know, maybe your
bullet list in your descriptionis your screenshots with more
(29:55):
details underneath.
Try to make them work together.Right?
Geoff (29:58):
Now you mentioned the app preview videos. These are an
additional thing that you canoffer in the app, and that's
just some quick short samedimensions as your screenshots,
but short I think up to a minutevideos. I should look that up
before I say that. Hold on.
Peter (30:14):
I wanna say 30 seconds, but
Geoff (30:16):
The videos that you provide, they're the same
dimensions as your screenshots,but you have a minimum length of
15 seconds and a maximum lengthof 30 seconds, and you kind of
just have to show your app inuse there. Now the difference
between these and thescreenshots is that they are way
more strict with the apppreviews about what you can
(30:37):
actually show in an app preview.So in this case, it is kind of a
lot better to really just have arecording of your app rather
than try to do anything toosuper custom in your app
preview.
Peter (30:50):
Yeah. I mean, don't don't make a Hollywood trailer. Right?
Yeah. You know
Geoff (30:56):
I I I know that there's there's a ton of stories out
there. I have some that arehilarious that I I can't retell,
but, also some horror storiesof, you know, I think it was the
Halide devs that had somebodyhold the phone in in, like, a
split second of their trailerthing. And it's just like a hand
holding the phone, and Apple wasjust like, nope. We're gonna
(31:17):
block your whole release becauseof this one second thing of
somebody holding the phone. Andit was just like, no.
They they are way stricter aboutwhat you can and cannot show in
an app preview than they are in,a Yeah.
Peter (31:31):
It's interesting. Right? I think the advice there, yeah,
probably would be, you know,show the app. You know, just
show the app, show what it does,get out of there before you get
in trouble. And then, you know,the the last visual here, it may
sound obvious, but, the appicon, right, you know, hey,
you've got the app icon in theapp, right, in your Xcode
(31:55):
project.
Make sure you have a really nicegood clear quality image for
your app icon because, hey, thefirst thing people are gonna do
if they download your app is tryand find the icon on their home
screen. Right? So make it easyfor them.
Geoff (32:11):
Okay. So after you have your basic presence, there's
kind of this market of app storeoptimization where you're really
saying, okay. I've got what Iwant to just tell people about
the app, but how can I reallysell people on the app? How can
I promote my app to people whodon't even really know what
they're looking for? Who knowthat they want an app that kinda
(32:34):
does this thing, but they don'tknow that they want my app?
How do I really get across topeople, or how do I really get
my app in front of people?
Peter (32:43):
Yes.
Geoff (32:44):
And, Peter, do you have any suggestions for where people
might learn more about that?
Peter (32:49):
I do. Now, upfront, we we will both happily say we are not
experts on this. If we were, weprobably wouldn't be doing this.
We'd be retired and richsomewhere. Right?
Yeah. So there is a ton ofdifferent resources out there.
I'm gonna highlight a few, youknow, let's talk about images,
first of all, for inspiration.So you can literally dive into
(33:11):
search engine of choice, ofcourse, and search for app store
screenshots and things likethat. However, there are a lot
of places dedicated to showinggood design, and one of the ones
that I like and I'm a member of,although I don't put much on
there, is dribble.
And, we'll put link in the shownotes because it's dribble but
(33:31):
with some extra b's in it. It'sthe best way to to put that.
And, you know, there's a lot ofreally good very talented
designers on there and you candraw a lot of inspiration from
that. Now, the other thing youcan do here is, you know, go
look at your competition or whatyou think your competition may
be. So so how do you figure thatout?
(33:52):
Well, you know, the most obviousway is to say what what is my
app? What does my app do? Now gosearch on the App Store or on
the web for those kind of appsand see what they have done. Now
don't just flat out copy them.Right?
That's not gonna get youanywhere. If anything, it may
get you in trouble, but you cancertainly draw from what they
(34:12):
have done, right. That that is agood resource. Find the ones
where, you know, you resonatewith it and they've done a good
job and it's a very popular app,for example. And then also, you
know, finding some of the thingsthat maybe you don't wanna do.
Now along with that, while we'retalking about the visual side,
(34:32):
remember some of the sort ofthe, you know, you it wouldn't
hurt you to learn some basicdesign rules. Now for example,
right, one that I think a lot offolks know but, you know, hey,
there's a lot of folks whodon't. Don't use a whole bunch
of different fonts on yourscreenshots, right. Limited to
Personally, I like to limit itto 1 or 2. I think 3 is is
(34:57):
generally the acceptable limit.
So, you know, learn some designskills. You don't have to get
in-depth, but they're certainlygonna help you on the
screenshot. As far as thingsagain like keywords and
descriptions, again look atyour, you know, what you think
is your competition, but alsotry it. Go to the App Store,
search for put a search word in,see what's come comes back. If
(35:21):
what comes back is nothing likeyour app, that's probably not a
good search word to use, right?
So learn from your own searchingexperiences.
Geoff (35:31):
Time for a break.
Peter (35:32):
Hey, everybody. It's Peter Whittam here from the
Compulsory podcast. I'm gonnatell you about Setapp. Setapp is
a service that provides asubscription fee of just $10 a
month, and you get access toover 200 Mac applications and
it's also available now on iOSas part of that deal. I use the
(35:53):
service because it just has aton of really good first rate
apps that I use all the time.
And for me it's invaluable as adeveloper to have access to
tools for things like APIs, forplanning projects, writing
emails, writing documentation,and you get all of these things
including database apps, all ofthat kind of stuff right there
(36:15):
on the set app service for just$10 a month. You can use as many
or as few applications as youneed. If you're interested in
checking this out, go topeterwhitham.competerwith
am.comforward/setapp, s e t a pp. And you can see the details
there. And it's got a link thatyou can go over and start using
(36:38):
the service and see how it worksout for you.
I strongly recommend this toevery Mac user.
Geoff (36:44):
Break time over.
Peter (36:46):
Yeah. Along with that, there are a mountain of tools
out there. I've just startedusing 1, you know, I I'm trying
a few and and, you know, maybewe'll we'll dive into them and
talk about them in a moment. Youknow, take advantage of those
tools. Of course, AI is anotherthing now that it's getting a
lot of use and it can be usefulfor generating, I'm gonna say
(37:09):
keywords.
I'm not a big fan of using itjust, you know, copy and pasting
out of this AI chatbot for yourtext because as we've mentioned
in a previous episode, everybodycan spot the text right now that
that AI tools has done andyou're like, oh, yeah, you know,
but you can use it, right, as aas somewhere to start from. So,
(37:32):
you know, maybe take a chattool, pick one of your choice,
put in what you think is a gooddescription and then let it work
through it, right, and and seewhat it comes back with and
adapt it. Another good one, verypopular one, Grammarly, right,
to make hey, you know, it's kindof important to get a good
(37:52):
grammar. So Grammarly is a goodone that I use for just checking
the what I meant to say and whatit actually says is the same
thing, and things like that. Sothere's a lot to do in app store
optimization.
You can, you know, it's justlike web optimization. You you
can specialize on this thingforever, and you can even pay
(38:14):
people. Nothing wrong with that,but I think it's a good idea for
you to learn to do it yourself,and it's gonna be painful at
first, and you probably won'tget it right. It'll take a few
hits, but that's why you can goback on your next release and
tweak these things. So, youknow, Geoff what are your your
thoughts on this?
Geoff (38:33):
Yeah. As you said, neither of us are experts, but,
I do know that there are expertsout there that can help you with
this kind of thing and help youlearn this. You know, there are
people out there who are sharingthese these tips and tricks. I
think my big 2 that I willreference is Ariel from
Appfigures. He does a lot ofboth a YouTube channel and a lot
(38:55):
of blog posts about, hey, hereare some of the tips and tricks
to kind of get your app to showup for the keywords that you
want to get it to show up for.
Obviously, he has a vestedinterest in selling his tool,
Appfigures, but he also does alot of this conversation and
stuff of, like, here's thethings that you can do that are
completely free, Don't have youdon't have to be an Appfigures
(39:16):
subscriber to to use any ofthis. It's just like, here's
some of the basics. You know? Aa lot of the things that we've
already discussed, like, hey.Don't use plurals in your
keywords list, are things that Ipicked up from his tips and
tricks and and guides.
The other one that I'll I'llrecommend maybe a little bit
less tightly for our audiencebecause it is more geared
(39:38):
towards a larger company's typedeal, is the RevenueCat Subclub
podcast. Definitely, I would saygo through there, look up the
podcast titles and say whichones sound interesting or sound
relevant to you, and go listento them. Often, they'll have
people on that are talkingabout, like, oh, you know, I'm
(40:00):
doing this for my app storeoptimization, and, you know, I
only had a small budget of$30,000. And so maybe that's a
little bit less relevant to thepeople that are listening to
this podcast, but there aredefinitely some out there that
they have things that are arerelevant to you and that you can
definitely learn from for here'sthe tips and tricks that work
(40:20):
for big companies, but they'llalso work for small companies as
well. But that one, I'lldefinitely say, like, don't just
go listen to every singleepisode that they've got because
a lot of them aren't going to berelevant.
But and and if you if they arerelevant to you,
patreon.com/ma'am.
Peter (40:33):
Yeah. I was because I'd like to have $30,000 budget on
just about anything in life.Right? Yeah. Now I I do want to
throw in one extra word ofcaution here and as we're
recording this, we're justcoming off of well, literally
just come off of Cyber Monday.
Right? It's just just wrappingup here in in the US. Mhmm. It's
(40:56):
all too easy to convinceyourself, you know, toolxyz is
gonna magically solve thisproblem for you, and I I say
that, with all due respect toall of these tools because over
the past few days, while there'sbeen deals going on and things
like that, I've looked at a fairfew of them and many of them are
very good and but some of themare expensive. That's not to say
(41:19):
that they're no good, you know,they're probably well worth what
you're paying for them, but myword of caution here is that no
tool will magically solve thisproblem for you and get it
right.
Like we have said about so manythings in the past in other
episodes, only you know what'swhat's right for your apps and
what's gonna work for you andwhat and perhaps more
(41:41):
importantly what you'recomfortable with. So there's
gonna be a lot ofexperimentation here. It's
probably not gonna go great atfirst. What I try to go for is
every time I do a new release isI just try to improve it in some
way, and the best way to startthere is, you know, Geoff, you
(42:02):
alluded this earlier on,learning from what you did last
time and how well that workedfor you. Right?
And comparing it, you know,maybe you've done this 4 or 5
times and tried a few differentthings. You know, what are those
points that worked? What are theones that didn't? And and just
try to, you know, elaborate onit in, you know, a more
(42:22):
successful way next time around.Any thoughts on that?
Geoff (42:25):
Yeah. Tools are not going to magically solve anything for
you. Having an ASO tool is notgoing to magically make your app
number 1 in all app store searchresults any more than a kitchen
tool is gonna make you aMichelin chef. You have to have
your knowledge, your expertisein order to kind of build this
(42:48):
out, and then the tools can helpyou. And, yes, I'm I'm not, like
Peter said, I'm not saying thatthese tools are worthless.
I'm saying don't go intoexpecting, oh, yeah. If I just
sign up for this tool that I'msuddenly going to be making n
1,000 more dollars. It it isvery much learn what works for
(43:09):
you, what you can do, and thenuse the tools to help you. Yeah.
There's a lot more advancedcomponents inside of App Store
Connect, and I've done some ofthese, and I you may have also
done some of these, but, I'mgonna kinda list them, and then
we can dig into specifics if weif we wanna talk about
specifics.
The big one that I think Apple'sreally been kind of pushing
lately, but it's also kind ofone of the most complicated ones
(43:33):
to get into, is the idea ofhaving custom app store product
pages. And this is having anentirely separate app store
presence that users can bedriven to through different ways
of of, you know, whether it's adifferent link or a a different
direction in the App Store. Andthis is saying, okay. I'm gonna
(43:53):
build my main App Store presencethat people, if they're just
coming into the App Storewithout looking at anything,
they're gonna see this version.That's what we've been talking
about this entire time.
But what I could do is I couldsay I have a special App Store
product page for people that aredoing some specific thing. So, I
think the kinda big obvious onemight be, say you've got an app
(44:14):
that has something to do withsports. Well, we're gonna have
our main, like, just generalsports product page, but then
maybe we have a specific pagejust for baseball fans and our
specific page just for soccerfans, that kind of thing, and
say, this is the best app forbaseball. This is the best app
for sport, whatever sport youwant to. And so you can kind of
drive people to that and say,like, I know that these people
(44:36):
are already interested in thissport, so let me show them the
version of the app store thatreally sells them on why they
should get this app for thissport.
Something that they added tothis this year is now if your
user downloads the app from oneof those product pages, you'll
actually get a link that isopened the first time that you
launch the app, and you canchange your app around based on
(44:59):
what product page they camefrom. So say you know, hey. This
user likes baseball more thananything else. When they launch
the app for the first time, youcan go ahead and set them up for
their specific sport so thatthey are taken immediately into
the part of the app that youknow that they're gonna want
because that's the version ofthe app that got them to or now
(45:19):
kind of akin to this is whatthey call product page
optimization. I think a lot ofpeople are gonna know this more
as just AB tests, where this isgoing back towards your generic
App Store presence.
But what's happening is that youcan provide up to 3 different
versions of your main App Storepage, and Apple will give
(45:40):
different ones to differentpeople at random. And what
you'll see is you're able totell, hey. What version of my
App Store page is getting moredownloads, is getting more
views, is getting more people tolook at it? And so in that way,
you can kind of set up multipledifferent versions of your page
and see which version worksbest. And that allows you to
(46:02):
kind of have more insight intowhat is or is not working.
And so we talked earlier about,like, making incremental
improvements over time to yourApp Store page. This can be one
way of making those incrementalimprovements without completely
ruining every version of yourpage if you end up doing
something that actually doesn'twork. Now it's worth noting that
(46:23):
as opposed to the custom productpages, there is a little bit
more of a limitation with the ABtests. You really only can
change in your AB tests the appicon and your app screenshots
and previews. You really onlyget to change a little bit of
the visual style of the thing.
You don't get to add newkeywords. You don't get to have
a completely custom description.You don't get to have any of
(46:44):
that kind of thing. It is reallyjust little tiny tweaks in
trying to see which version ofthe app kinda draws people in a
little bit more. And thenthere's 2 somewhat similar
features that are aboutpromoting your app outside of
your app page entirely, and thatis in app events and featured in
app purchases, which isproviding information about
(47:07):
specific parts of your app.
And so in app events are, hey.We've got some special thing
going on, whether that'ssomething in the real world or
something in the app, and wewant to promote our app in
relation to that event ratherthan promoting our app directly.
So, for example, maybe you havea sale going on in your app. You
(47:27):
know, it's it's like we saidearlier, Cyber Monday. Maybe you
wanna say, hey, everything inour app is on sale, and we're
going to promote this salerather than specifically our
app.
And so this is a way that youcan have your individual events
show up in the app storeseparately from your app as a
whole. Alongside that samething, you have additionally
(47:50):
featured in app purchases. Soyou could say, hey, here's this
feature that you unlock if youget this in app purchase. You
can sell that feature separatelyfrom your app as a whole, and if
users see that in app purchasein their search results, then
they're able to purchase the inapp purchase right there from
(48:10):
the App Store, and then get theapp and the app will already
have your purchase made. So forexample, you could say, hey, my
subscription unlocks feature x.
And if somebody goes and they'researching in the App Store for
feature x, they could go, oh,well, I'm clearly gonna want
that feature. Why don't I goahead and subscribe now and then
get the app and they're alreadysubscribed in the app?
Peter (48:31):
Folks, take advantage of these. Now I do wanna say
though, there are requirementsfor these. Right? Just like with
everything else, so go checkthem out because what I fell
foul on, I created everything Ithought I needed and everything
was great and the one thing thatI didn't do that was the reason
(48:52):
that Apple wouldn't accept it, Ididn't supply a deep link direct
to the event in the app that Iwas talking about.
Geoff (49:00):
Yeah. For both for both of these, you do need to supply
a couple extra things. You needto supply some new images. You
need to supply some new icons.For in app events, you need to
supply a deep link for the inapp purchases.
You actually have to hook upsomething differently with
StoreKit. There are yeah. Sothere are these additional
requirements, but they are nice.And yeah. Definitely, you should
take advantage of these morebecause it's literally just
(49:23):
extra ways your app could showup in the search results.
And you always want more ways todo that. I, myself, I've only
done the featured in apppurchases. I know I totally
should have done more featuredin app purchases with Bark for
the Apple Wallet thing, becausethat was something that people
really wanted. I should havebeen like, oh, yeah. Bark
unleashed and, like, reallysell.
Hey. This has Apple Walletexport and really sell just like
(49:47):
if people are looking for AppleWallet, they're gonna see the
Bark Unleashed subscription andthen go through that. That would
be a good idea. I've done thefeatured in app purchase for
black highlighter. It's it'sworked.
I mean, it's it's definitelyanother way of people getting
access to this. So, yeah, thatis that is something that I need
to continue to do in bark. Ithink I'm also gonna do a bark
(50:08):
in app event for New Year's justto be, like, all of the people
whose New Year's resolution isget organized. Maybe they want a
thing to organize all theirbarcodes. Definitely just having
these extra ways to kind of getin front of people in the App
Store, super useful.
Take advantage of them when youcan. It's free. Yeah. Now do it.
Peter (50:27):
So this may sound like a lot of work, and it is. And, you
know, some of you may bethinking, well, should I bother?
And the answer is, yes. Yeah.You absolutely should.
Key thing is, you know, do yourbasic homework first. Right? Go
through and do all the stuffwe'd spoke about at the
beginning that you may not needto touch some of that stuff ever
again or rarely. So, you know,it pays off there. Taking it up
(50:53):
to this next level and doingthese these extra things here
that Geoff's talking about, yes,you know, you could say, well,
it's a lot of effort and andyes, it could be optional.
Yeah. But that's it. That that'swhat we got for you. I'm hoping
folks the the takeaway you gethere from the last 2 or 3
episodes where we've covereddifferent parts of this whole
(51:16):
app process. Right?
You know, again, you know,development's part of it. All
this is the other stuff. Right?I hope that, you know, you you
listen to all these episodes andtake away that you will be
rewarded based on on how much ofthis you, you know, take into
account and try to do a good jobon. I say try to do a good job,
(51:36):
you know, any level of effort isbetter than doing nothing,
Right?
Simple as that. But we want youto have a good experience and
especially for those folksgetting started, maybe people in
particular who've never releasedtheir first app. We feel like
we've given you a good sensibleplace to, you know, take lots of
notes and think about it. Right?Play these episodes a few times
(51:58):
maybe.
With that, Geoff, I think we'vecovered this. So, where can
folks find you?
Geoff (52:04):
You can find everything everything about me that you
need to know at cocoatype.com,including the latest demos.
Peter (52:11):
And you can find everything me at Peterwitham.com
, and you can find this podcastat compileswift.com
and compileswift on all thenetworks. That's it folks.
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