CP must see! Don’t miss every corner of the AppStore when tracking competitors!

CP must see! Don’t miss every corner of the AppStore when tracking competitors!
As an App marketer or developer, competitor tracking must be an integral part of your daily work. If we want to make our own app shine more among competitors, we must understand the details of our competitors, such as how they operate, who their target users are, what they can provide to users, and even what actions they may take in the future. 1. Category selection There are 25 categories for developers to choose from on Apple's App Store and 29 on Google Play. How an App can choose the appropriate category is the first factor to be considered in competitive product analysis. It is also the first factor to be considered when the App is launched. Therefore, competitive product analysis should be included in the work content before the App is launched. For example, [Inke] in the social category can also be placed under the photography and video or entertainment category, but the latter two categories already have competing products such as Meipai, Chaozidiao, and Xiaokaxiu , which have a very high overlap of target users. Therefore, looking around the 25 categories, the only one with a relatively high relevance and not so crowded is social. Regarding category selection, the following three dimensions should be included in statistics and comparisons: category traffic, category competition difficulty, and category relevance. 1. Classify traffic Some categories are inherently poor and remote, such as product guide categories and newspapers and magazines. In these categories, the additional traffic brought by high rankings can hardly make up for the traffic deficiencies of these categories themselves.

Figure 1: It is difficult for the top of the sub-list to enter the top 1500 of the overall list 2. Difficulty of Classification Competition The difficulty of competition in classification mainly comes from two points. First, it is difficult to improve rankings. Some lists have a lot of high-quality applications, and most of them are ranked at the top. At this time, the competitors that App faces to get a high ranking are of high quality and large number, and are no longer limited to similar competitors. Second, the degree of crowding of similar competitors. As mentioned above about the choice of [Inke], if there are too many similar competitors on the same page, it is inevitable that traffic will be diverted (i.e. wasted).

Figure 2: There are 6 video apps in the top 10 entertainment lists 3. Classification relevance Most apps will choose categories with high relevance, such as QQ and WeChat in the social category, and Taobao and JD.com in the shopping category. However, there are sporadic cases in the App Store where apps are obviously mismatched with categories. The possibility of operational errors is relatively small. In most cases, these lists have decent traffic but less competition. If the low conversion rate caused by low relevance can be improved, it is an option. However, as the number of high-quality applications on various lists gradually increases, such opportunities are becoming less and less. 

Figure 3: The lazy man got lost while listening to the lecture The significance of choosing a list category is to select a living environment with fewer competitors. Bravely confronting opponents (competing products) head-on only exists in martial arts novels. The App Store is large enough that it is impossible for competitors to occupy all traffic entrances. We need to find the "no man's land" of traffic as cleverly as possible. 2. Keyword Analysis Ranking and keywords are two hurdles that no ASO optimizer can escape, and they are also the two most important parts of ASO . Apple's App Store has a 100-character limit on keywords, while Google Play selects keywords from the app's title and description. But no matter in which application market , it is critical to analyze the keyword distribution of competitors, which can also remind us what the focus of competitors is on keywords. Keywords are an important entry point for App Store traffic, and a large number of users find apps through keyword searches. Keyword popularity and the number of search results are two reference indexes for measuring keyword quality. High-quality keywords often have high search popularity but few competitors (number of search results). More importantly, the relevance between keywords and Apps must be high. A good position under excellent keywords will bring considerable real downloads and ranking improvements.

Figure 4: Various data for keyword search Therefore, the operation of competitor analysis in terms of keywords should not only look at which keywords the competitors cover, but also which keywords the competitors ignore, and the latter will be our breakthrough to surpass competitors! It can not only display timely and comprehensive keyword data to developers, but also compare the detailed keyword data of competitors (coverage, ranking, etc.). The function of exporting data tables also provides more possibilities for developers' advanced analysis.

Figure 5: Keyword competitive product analysis 3. Rank Tracking The ranking trends of your own app and those of competitors can be compared in a timely manner. The ASO optimization methods and strategies of competitors can be used as a reference and reference, which is also a means of evaluating the effectiveness of ASO optimization at this stage. If you are interested in the international market, in addition to the overall and category rankings, it is also worth observing the rankings of competitors in different regions. This is an important source of information to predict the performance of your own App when it goes abroad. In addition, user attributes and App Store environments in different regions are different, so localization of ASO is a necessary process. The performance of domestic competitors in the local area and local native competitors are both areas of focus.

Figure 6: Competitive products are a reference for ASO to localize in different regions IV. Update statistics The significance of updating is not only to fix bugs and improve user experience, but also to express to users that "our App is still alive" and "our App is getting better and better", which can largely prevent the App from becoming a zombie. Moreover, with each update, the ranking on the list will rise and the number of positive reviews will increase, which is beneficial to us. However, it is not reasonable to update too frequently just for the above purposes. Product iteration still needs to be planned and paced. The update strategies adopted by competitors, as well as their performance after the update, are worthy of long-term observation and analysis. Xiao An believes that the important information to be counted in terms of updates include: Update content; Update frequency; Update timing (such as holidays); Updates in response to rankings (e.g., when rankings have dropped significantly or have been tepid for a long time); Updated rankings, comment statistics, downloads, activity, retention, and other data changes (if available). 5. Comments Analysis In addition to our own comment section, we also need to pay attention to the comment sections of our competitors. Although Apple has intentionally lowered the weight of reviews in its search algorithm, they still play an important role in ensuring conversion rates and maintaining user activity.

Figure 7: Comments can be observed in conjunction with rankings. Summary: Competitive product tracking is ultimately intended to help us gain a lead in the competition with our competitors. In the best case scenario, well-done competitive product tracking can even help us predict what our competitors are going to do in the next phase, so that we can get ahead of them. For App developers , competitive product analysis can not only help us with product optimization, but is also very important in promotion. Comprehensive and accurate competitor analysis is an extremely important part of ASO optimization, which is the only way to tap into the application market traffic (increasing exposure, downloads, etc.).

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