Hacking the iPhone App Store's Ranking Algorithm
If you're a mobile app developer, one of your biggest concerns is getting noticed. Companies like Smule and Tapulous already have recognized brands; however, for the independent app designer, the promotion process requires a fair amount of strategy. One proven method of increasing downloads is becoming listed as one of the App Store's top selling services. We spoke to faberNovel's Baptiste Benezet to find out how indie developers can hack the App Store ranking algorithm.
Benezet explains that although Apple offers a variety of featured content within the web-based App Store interface, 80% of sales are made via the mobile ecosystem. While sales are driven by Apple editorial content, category browsing and rankings, because there are no opportunities to advertise in the mobile app store, it's more important than ever to promote your app using the right marketing mix. The company collected data from the Regie Autonome Transports Parisiens (RATP) French commuter app to create a good formula for product, pricing, placement and promotion.
Product & Pricing: faberNovel found that a differentiated pricing strategy was a good way to earn revenue. While the company hit a few hiccups with its initial pricing of 1,59€, after cutting the premium service cost by 50% and building a phenomenal free experience, the new pricing strategy generated 3 times more sales. Says Benezet, "A good free version is crucial in pushing users towards the premium service, especially when the cost of the paid app is high." In addition to monetizing via app sales, the company earned a good chunk of revenue through in-app advertising in the free version.
Promotion: Buying impressions on major websites was abysmal in drawing new users. From 500,000 impressions purchased on major French networks, the site was only able to generate 4 app sales. Benezet suggests that cross-application advertising is a better solution as relevant users are targeted via the devices they'll use to download the new apps.
Place: Benezet argues that in the world of iPhone applications, size matters. Once the RATP application download was reduced below 10Mb, the company saw its largest sales peak ever as users were able to access the service via their 3G networks (rather than via the web-based App store). In addition to this consideration, Benezet's most groundbreaking finding was in the App Store's ranking algorithm. Explains Benezet, "The formula for App rankings only accounts for your last 4 days of sales." The formula is 8 times the sales of the current day + 5 times the sales on the 2 proceeding days + 2 times the sales on initial date.
Benezet suggests that a promotional campaign of 4 consecutive days is more likely to pay off with a top ranking rather than a staggered date campaign. Furthermore, because app sales tend to increase by about 20% on Saturday and Sunday (even with a commuter app), it is most advantageous to be one of the top ranking category apps at the start of the weekend. As your sales increase over the weekend, your app's daily ranking increases and the next four days revenue generation becomes a self-fulfilling cycle.
While the rankings remain relative to other application sales, faberNovel believes this model will help you increase the success of app downloads. After testing the theory, the company welcomes feedback to faberNovel.com.
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This is a very informative post. I really need this one and thank you for sharing your inputs about iPhone.
Hopefully I can be of assistance to up and coming developers. I specialise in the recruitment of iPhone developers and I am a great contact to have if you’re a developer. I have access to some of the best App development companies and I am passionate about what I do!
Drop me an Email: wharford@keypeople.co.uk
Connect with me on LinkedIn: http://uk.linkedin.com/in/wharford(I accept all requests)
Or call me 00441727 817641
well really good info i must say for mobile developers.Some are already having good money while some are struggling with it.I think promotion along with product usability is the main thing.
Thank you for sharing this presentation - interesting stuff!
"the new pricing strategy generated 3 times more sales" - is it true :-(
Very interesting
nice read and absolutely agree with algorithm. We specialise in marketing mobile apps for our client base. We avoid buying impressions too (CPM) unless highly targeted for paid apps. Well planned CPC campaigns across a number of different platforms tend to work best.
If you'd like us to explain how we can help promote your iphone app or any other mobile proposition, drop us a line james@fetchmedia.co.uk
Clearly there will be more sales if more people are actually able to download the app. But, that does not indicate that size is an actual selling point, just that accessibility leads to more sales, which we already knew before hand.
That is really freaking cool! I've never seen or heard of this before!
Thank you for sharing this presentation - interesting stuff!
I am surprised that app store sales only go up by 20% on Saturdays and Sunday. I would have expected the weekend increase to be higher based on my own behavior.
Clearly being ranked high in the charts is critical to the success of an iPhone app, but what do you do from a promotional standpoint once you get there? Nearly all app developers these days are going to need to continue to find ways to drive installs beyond cracking the top charts to maintain their listing. There are some guerilla strategies, like writing a strong app description to ensure that your app shows up prominently in app store search results (see http://blog.w3i.com/2010/05/05/iphone-app-keyword-description-tips/), but more often than not, it’s going to take a promotional budget. Several of the most common and successful promotional tactics are discussed at http://www.clickz.com/3640115.
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