Editor’s note: This article (and report) was written by the clever clogs at Home Games. You can read their original here.  Game’s go through a lot of stages from ideation to executing and testing during the publishing cycle. But having a game published and up and running in the app stores is only the first step in making it accessible to the widest audience possible. For game creators, the app stores are the main point of contact with users, and they are the place where users will decide if a game is worth downloading or not. So, in order to put everything in your favor, you will need to make sure your game is presented in the best possible way, with its main features displayed and with images and wording fully optimized. That’s where app store optimization (ASO) comes into play. Every...

Squid Game games turns Mobile Netflix released the new show, Squid Game, on September 17th 2021. Over 132 million people watched the show in the first 23 days of its release, with 4.4 million new people subscribing to the platform (presumably to see the series). It’s easily a new record for Netflix, overtaking Bridgertons number 1 spot. Netflix have even announced that they’re going to make their own “Squid Game” game, as an attempt to increase its popularity in regions like North America. Netflix aren’t the only ones reaping the benefits of this Korean Battle Royale style show. We’re being flooded with memes, halloween costumes, and merch around the hit, all across the globe. But more importantly, mobile games. We’ve seen hundreds of hyper-casual games enter the app stores, all inspired by the Squid Game theme. With the topic still...

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by TapNation. Make sure to check out their version here. The question of how people find your content is a tale as old as the internet. Having the best story or the most innovative gameplay means very little if no one can find it, never mind play it. Which is why ASO (App Store Optimization) is so important. It plays a crucial role when publishing your game. And it isn’t as time-consuming or complicated as you may think. At TapNation, we help make sure new players find your hyper-casual games by using the best ASO techniques and most effective marketing strategies. If you have great intuitive gameplay, we want to make sure everyone in the world is playing it. But if you’re just looking for some simple advice to get you started, well...

“One does not simply hit the top of the app stores” – Boromir, Lord of ASO. Seriously though. Getting your game noticed on the app stores is no easy feat. Just like websites have SEO (search engine optimization), app stores have ASO (app store optimization). So I thought it best to ask some of the industry experts. I took the time to talk to a bunch of different developers, some with games on the Google Play store, others with games on the Apple store. And some with games on both. Simply to see how they set up their game’s pages, what they felt was most important, and to discover their top tips when it comes to the Mobile Store Page. I’ve compiled them into a bunch of takeaways, but I’ve kept all of the quotes in so you can see...

In June 2019, GameAnalytics hosted a mobile gaming event to talk about casual gaming, which we called ‘The Arcade (R)Evolution: Making Hit Casual Games‘. Valeria Castro of Platonic games somewhat stole the show with her presentation – speaking with wit and passion about how to find a niche in the world of hyper-casual gaming. If you couldn’t make our last event, don’t worry. Here’s Valeria to fill you in on what you missed (and here’s the video of her talk): We’re Platonic Games – a 10-person dev team from Madrid. You might know us if you’ve ever played Kawaii Kitchen, Happy Hop or Sailor Cats. As you can probably guess from those titles, we make super-cute, hyper-casual games. And there’s one question we get asked a lot. Can we actually compete against the big developers? In reality, no. We can’t....

During this event, Valeria from Platonic Games took to the stage, and showed us just how exactly her small-time studio tackled the competitive market by finding their niche in Kawaii mobile games. If you fancy watching the other talks from this event, you can find them here: The Latest Trends for Hyper-Casual Games – GameAnalytics Hyper-casual in a Hyper-competitive Market – Voodoo

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published by our good friends at AppFollow. You can read their version here. Social Quantum is a video game company whose #1 game, Megapolis, was first launched back in 2011. And as most of you will know, their game, Megapolis, is a long-standing city builder that has become one of the top worldwide mobile games over the years. Pretty much from day 1, Social Quantum worked primarily with paid traffic. And for those long-standing developers reading this, back then this was more than enough to attract gamers. But as the app stores were growing, it became obvious that using only paid acquisition was not enough anymore. For Social Quantum, this meant looking for new and more creative ways to get more gamers. In this post, Social Quantum and AppFollow have teamed up to share...

If anything can be said to be ‘old school’ or ‘traditional’ when it comes to digital, it would be classic search marketing. That’s the case for nearly any product you want people to discover online, whether it’s a t-shirt, a gadget, or a mobile game or app. All of these can be searched for online, and are easier to find when good SEO has been applied. Search marketing is about a lot more than just using the right keywords; you have to understand the philosophy and thought process behind creating your game’s app store listing and website in order to properly optimize it. Here’s how to get started. Search Listings = Pull Versus Push One of the first things you should remember and one of the main arguments for the effectiveness of search engine optimization (or app store search optimization...

With more than 500 games submitted to the App Store every day, it’s hard to imagine a more competitive environment to get noticed. That’s why every little improvement to your listing is particularly important. With an average conversion rate of 4.47% (for games on the iOS App Store), even the smallest of changes can be hugely influential to your success or failure. Of course, a quality app or game is what matters the most. A well-optimized listing won’t fix this. Yet, what steps should you take once your game is polished? When your UI is on point, gameplay is fine-tuned, well balanced, and all bugs and glitches are detected and fixed. Once you’ve dealt with all of the above, you’ll want to pay closer attention to App Store page. In fact, optimization of each product page element can take your conversion...

Overview As of 2017 you can find almost 5.3 million iOS and Android mobile apps in App Stores which makes mobile app marketing a huge challenge for new mobile app developers and mobile app marketers. The mobile apps market is highly developed and an increasing challenge for developers with Google Play adding almost 50 000 new mobile apps monthly. Mobile user acquisition cost (UAC) is also growing year by year which does not make it any easier with the average iOS app costing $3.04 in the United States according to Chartboost data. Mobile app developers have many more ways to reach their customers, than those in “classic” commodities and services marketing, although this can be a bigger challenge as well. What most characterizes mobile app marketing is its aim on return on investment (ROI). This factor provides data about the...

Outline One of the most popular questions we get is how to lure more traffic for the Google Play app. We decided to showcase a simple text optimisation for an indie game app with a small amount of installs. Disclaimer: Unfortunately, we can’t disclose the name of the game but all the data in this article is real. Introduction So, what we initially dealt with? App: Game in Google Play Category: Card Strategy Country: USA Preliminary data: Total visits per day: 329 Total installs per day: 92 Average conversion rate from visit to install: 28% The information is taken from the Google Play Developer Console, country is USA, measure by “Country (Play Store organic)”. Step 1. ASO-audit Based on current app metrics we estimated which keywords and keyphrases made users in the US find and install the app as well...

App Store Optimization, or ASO, is an essential marketing tactic for most game developers. App Store Optimization refers to improving an app’s keywords, description and other attributes in order to rank higher in that marketplace’s search results. Making your app more visible on its respective platform earns valuable organic (unpaid) downloads. What’s better than free downloads? Many mobile game companies cite organic users as the most valuable type of users. They are more engaged than users acquired through advertising. They monetize at a higher rate than users acquired through advertising. As reported by TUNE, the majority of app users find new apps by searching the app marketplace, but neither Apple nor Google publish exactly what goes into their search algorithm. Below are a set of best practices to increase your organic downloads and app store visibility. Competitive Keyword Analysis Before...