A case study of the latest App Store recommendations!

It has been nearly two years since Apple announced support for Preview videos at WWDC14. Although everyone was excited for a while at the beginning, it calmed down soon after. If you browse the App Store rankings, you will be amazed at how few apps offer Preview. As shown in the figure below, only WeChat offers it among the top 10 free apps, and it is mainly to support its overseas expansion ambitions.

According to analysis, there are mainly the following reasons:

1. Apple has set too many rules and regulations, and the portability to other platforms is extremely poor!

2. The cost of conception is relatively high. How to showcase product features in just 30 seconds is a daunting task.

3. I can’t find a professional production company, or the quote is very high and I don’t think it’s worth it.

4. The preview must also be reviewed. One more element means one more risk. Don’t lose the big picture for the small one and affect the launch of the main application.

Therefore, after careful consideration, many apps gave up the idea of ​​making Previews, and the entire market's attention to this has dropped to an extremely low level, so low that even Apple could no longer tolerate it. Just last Friday (April 22), Apple added a "Fun Selfie" category to the newly revised list of recommended apps . The first five apps on the list were Chao Zipai, B612, Facetune, Airbrush and MeShot.

Here comes the problem

There are countless selfie apps in China. The five selected are not necessarily the best five. Of course, Apple editors have a set of selection criteria that we don’t know, but if you are a little more careful, you will find that these five apps all provide Preview without exception.

When you follow this line of thought and look at the popular app categories, you will find that there are 4 apps that provide Preview in the Top 10, and 4 that provide Apple Watch App. This ratio is much higher than other lists. So can we infer that one of the most important reference criteria for Apple when making recommendations is Preview? "Fun Selfie" may also be a reminder from Apple to developers. It is not known whether it will be changed into other categories in the future. However, even if Apple really wants to do so, the problem it encounters is: there are too few applications that can provide Preview!

This does provide another opportunity for the majority of application developers (excluding games ). If you think your product is of good quality, go ahead and take a high-quality Preview. Who knows, it might be chosen by Apple someday. Let's see how the "Fun Selfie" category performs after being recommended. Facetune is already ranked very high, so I can't see much change and I didn't take screenshots.

As can be seen from the above picture, the lower the ranking, the greater the improvement (understandable), it’s time to make a comeback!

As for whether the preview has an impact on ASO , I can definitely say yes. Of course, this impact is achieved indirectly by improving CTR/C VR . It can generally be understood that CTR will be significantly improved after the preview. As for CVR, if the preview is poorly made, it may even have a negative impact.

Therefore, if you do something, you must do it at a high level. After all, with ASO already deeply rooted in people’s minds, Preview is another tool that can differentiate itself from other competitors and should be taken seriously. Now there is one more reason for Apple to recommend it, so why not act quickly?

For guidelines on making a Preview, please refer to Apple’s official website; (End)