At the Mobile Gaming USA West conference last month in San Francisco, Beau Ross, Director of Marketing at Medio - a mobile analytics company I really appreciate, made a statement about how improving your app´s icon design can lift the click-to-download conversion by up to 30%.

Listen to the short conversation, which is a piece of the panel discussion about UA for indie developers. Beau´s take is towards the end.

If you want to find out more on how to optimize your icon or screenshot design, feel free to check out

How to test your new app icon

How to run A/B split test´s for app screenshots

Great Mobile App Icons

App Store Optimization (ASO) is a basic tactic whenever launching a new app or running a major update. I can help users to find your app easier in the appstore, increases the visibility and ranking position during search queries in the stores as well as on the web (SERP) and can boost your organic install rate up to 20%.

It should be applied properly and i.e. includes the optimization of your app´s title / name. The following example is not the way to go: stuffing the title with keywords like a turkey on Thanksgiving, making it look untrustworty and awkward, risking a rejection by Apple in worst case.

Some more examples by the same developer can be found here. No wonder, the app never saw some significant performance in countries other than Gambia and Swaziland.

You can and should do better: choose keywords which describe your app´s value and functionality, include a few keywords fitting to your app´s character, nature or brand and do not forget READABILITY.

You´ve seen some crazy looking or extremely long app titles? Feel free to comment or send your findings to stefan@stefanbielau.com

Ellie Powers (PM Google Play) just put together a neat little check list for all Android developers. She touches the issue of security while setting up your Google Play account, advises on how to configue the developer console UI language and of course highlights the importance updated of meta data. Good read!

Post by @salutegames

Best in class and a great benchmark.

Free Vector “Apple App Store / Google Play” badges.

Very useful for optimizing the conversion from your app landingpage to your appstore page.

Via René Hesse.

Screenshots are key for converting traffic on your app´s appstore page into downloads. Atomico and Sparkpage are two great tools I use for testing variations of screenshot designs, before uploading them to Apple App Store, Google Play or any other appstore out there. Those tools send traffic to mobile web landing pages, which can be designed like your appstore page. Balance the traffic, compare the CTR and decide which screenshot works best for your app.

Good and bad example for copywriting in “What’s new” in Apple Appstore