How to rank up and make your app become trendy in Google Play Store?
This article may give you some ideas and directions. Google play store consist of millions of mobile apps. There is just merely around 30 categories.
Assumption on an average, you are competing across 100,000 apps in your category. Every mobile app developer wants their app to stand out and get ranked as the top app.
The high ranking of your app depends on various factors. It takes time to understand your target audience and need patient to fine tune everything related to the app in order to reach the apex position.
If you are running an app business or you are an app developer looking to improve your app ranking and ultimately aiming to get your app as Rank 1, you have to pay attention to the following factors:
- Build a Product Which People Want
- Daily Downloads
- Organic Growth
- Time Spent
- Retention
- App Usage Statistics
- App Store Rating
- App Store Review
- Active User
1) Build a Product Which People Want
Your app has to be fitted around a niche segmentation which can fulfil the need of the users.
The test of a great app is “the toothbrush test”. If you build a product which users cannot survive without using it daily like say a toothbrush, you are on your way to becoming a successful app business.
Google measures how much time users spend daily on your app, the frequency of app usage and retention i.e. for every 100 users, how many do not uninstall your app.
2) Daily Downloads
When Google chooses to feature an app, the app with highest daily downloads also counts along with the above factors.
Hence, generating downloads with an appropriate marketing strategies is really important. From what I know and experienced, app gets featured in Trending List if the downloads increase extremely at high rate for short period.
It also mentioned in developer blog of android “Trending”: New arrival growing quickly in installs”.
But its not necessary that the app should be new. There are apps which get higher install rate due to some campaign, discounts etc and see themselves in Trending List for a time.
Number of total downloads
Growing your app by improving your products and downloads is very important. Indeed, a consistently healthy rate of downloads improves the rating of your app.
3) Organic Growth
Google will take into consideration on your app by analysing paid downloads or organic downloads. also Are you getting paid downloads or does your app have organic downloads?
Google tracks the source of your customer acquisition. Organic downloads are those which users discover without you displaying ads across various ad networks like Google Play Store and Facebook.
Content Marketing, your app Social media and in-app referrals are 3 most effective mediums of organic growth. Beside that, you may try using method of ASO.
Practising App Store Optimization (ASO) can help to rank your app on higher rank of store listing, so that everyone can see your app on the first page, that might helpful for you to gain organic downloads from people searching keywords for their desire app.
ASO tips will be share on future article.
4) Time Spent
Google will also take into consideration on the spending time of user in your app.
If you make an app which users love, they will start spending more and more time each week after they have downloaded your app.
The best apps featured and ranked as no 1 on Google has time spent per user of more than 1 hour per week. Great apps like Wechat, instagram and facebook have users spending a couple of hours per day on them.
5) Retention
Google will also take into consideration on the retention rate of the user after download the app.
How many user remaining after months and how many users have uninstalled your app. The app with the highest retention in a category has the maximum chances to be featured as rank no 1 on Play Store.
6) App Usage Statistics
How frequently your app is opened and used. If people download your app but never use it, you have less chance of reaching the top ranks.
7) App Store Rating
- The average star rating
- The amount of keywords used in each review
- The frequency of reviews written
- How recent the reviews are and their ratings per update
Your app’s rating is one of the most important factors influencing its ranking in the Google Play lists and search results.
It’s also one of the key metrics that the editorial staff looks for when curating apps and games. Reviews and ratings are a “a very strong signal for Google”.
Therefore, the best apps in any category should have ratings above 4.0 out of 5. App developers should not try to get fake ratings and reviews as Google measures ‘time spent in the app’ and ‘retention’ of the user who gave your app a 5-star rating.
If Google measures any asymmetric correlation between these two then it might penalize your app by decreasing your ratings.
The best way to boost your ratings is to keep on improving your product, interacting 1 to 1 with your users and taking in their feedback constantly. Loyal app users love when they see their feedback being implemented as new features in the app.
The Average Star Rating
- The total number of reviews
- The amount of keywords used in each review
- The frequency of reviews written
- How recent the reviews are and their rating per update
8) App Store Reviews
Google tracks keywords like ‘good’, ‘useful’, ‘like’, ‘love’ and other positive keywords in the app reviews the users write along with app store ratings.
Negative keywords are also taken into consideration like ‘not-useful’, ‘bad’, ‘hate, etc. If users leave negative reviews of your app on Play Store then try contacting them personally.
Seek out their concerns and try to work on that. You should contact them again and request them to revise their reviews.
The apps which get featured have positive keywords count of 1000 or more.
9) Active Users
90% of the mobile apps have active users below 10%. Active users are those who have downloaded the app but yet not uninstalled it.
The apps getting featured have an active user base of above 30% except for gaming apps. Instagram, the most trending app these days has an 500 million daily active user base of 45%.
Once you fulfilling the above 10 factors, it will help to improve your app’s ranking in the app store.
