Experiences and tips from thousands of developers summarised in one, powerful cheatsheet.
First of all, congratulations on launching your app. Since you are reading this guide, you probably realise that simply releasing your app is only half of the uphill battle. The launch day is just the beginning of your app journey. Now it's time to shift gears into marketing, to tweak and optimise your app to ensure its success and sustainable growth over time.
I asked developers a simple question: "What do you wish you had known before launching your app?"; their answers motivated me to create this checklist. There is a lot to go through - this guide will summarise many different tools and resources that you should be aware of.
These resources will help you understand the bigger picture of app lifecycle. The guide covers topics on acquiring your first users, working with user feedback, achieving an appropriate 'app-fit' and ASO optimization. Resources and tips in this checklist are short statements, with links to supporting sources, which you should read to answer your 'why' questions.
Enough with the intro - let's get started. I split this checklist into different stages that you might be at, so feel free to use the links below to navigate directly to the appropriate chapters / section.
Navigate to the appropriate chapter with quick links below:
We asked thousands of developers: What do I need to know before launching my app?; In this section, we provide the summary of their answers.
Apple support is communicative. They clarify the issues and help you resolve them. So get in touch with them.
Tag your releases so that you can back with one click if something goes wrong in production.
It's great knowing that everything works on your device. But chances are, your app will crash for many others. Especially if your app is available on Google Play store for hundreds of devices. Take a look at Crashalytics.
Your app can get stuck in the App Store review rejection loop for up-to a month! This is because testers will reject your app for the tiniest issues they find. Before submitting, read the guidelines, run the app in flight mode, on a slow network, test IPv6 (e.g. countries like India are transitioning due to IP shortage), and check how timeouts are handled. Test on all devices, from iPod to iPad Pro. Look out for paddings, text accessibility and other obvious issues.
👉 Read the practical guide on passing the 'App Store interview'
It takes a lot of time to become an expert designer, marketers and provide support. Don't try to wear all hats. Instead, validate your idea and outsource. If your app gets some initial traction, prepare to hire a VA, marketer and others. If you are on low budget, many would gladly swap skills with you.
In the pre-launch phase, we want to test our app and complete tasks that will have a big impact with minimal efforts.
If you don't yet have early adopters - get them. Post about your app idea and vision on social media. Do not launch without them. Early adopters will help you identify your customer, better define the exact problem you are solving and provide valuable feedback. Plus they will be helpful during your launch.
Ask your early adopters for feedback and be responsive to it. Arrive to a reduced set of features and a clear product-market fit. Make sure that the few features that you do have work well.
People will spend just a few seconds looking at your app, so get your presentation in order. Learn to optimize your screenshots. For example, people are naturally attracted to text - adding text to your logo and screenshots to improve click-through ratios for your app listings. A/B test your creative assets in future releases for best performance (Google for icon, Apple Ads for screenshots).
👉 Create panoramic screenshots for App Store and Google Play
👉 Create 3D device mockups (for social media, landing pages or screenshots)
Around 15% of the world has a disabilty that affects their device interaction experience. Fix common accessibility issues. You probably don't want an investor using your app with increased font-size and seeing your layout fall apart.
Try not to over-use animations. Watch out for those with vestibular disorders. Design with safer motion in mind.
Read about marketing and growth strategies and learn how to grow your app.
Before going into DIY mode, I need to state: marketing is not easy. How long does it take to learn to code? Well, it's the same for marketing. You want results and you need them now. Outsource it if you can. Good marketers are worth their weight in gold.
Self-explanatory. Here is a list of places to post. What matters is the timing of posts. Initially, post as often as you can to collect feedback and adjust your market-fit. In later stages, coordinate your posts for marketing multiplier effect.
With each feedback point, you should be arriving at your app market fit. Don't worry about negative reviews - you can reset them later. Iterate, break things, iterate.
Investing into learning ASO will pay dividends. You should learn about the ranking algorithms that app stores use and tips that will help you drive more organic traffic to your app.
Take the free ASO for beginners email course by Asodesk. These 10 lessons will give you a good basic understanding of ASO. You will receive a new lesson every day and will be able to read it in just 10 minutes.
👉 Find out more on AppTweak's Beginners Guide to ASO.
People find your app via search in the store. Learn how to optimize your keywords. Research keywords that better matches your app and has most search volume.
Use tools to help you to collect semantic core and find keywords for which your and your competitors' apps already rank, the most popular keywords from your niche, long-tail keywords, search suggestions from the App Store and Google Play, etc. This article is a good starting point.
👉 Start researching keywords with ASO Tools
What does it mean if people select your app from the search results, click on it and then download? That your app is relevant. And it will rank higher if it has high conversion rate.
Define metrics that will quantify your results over time. For ASO, a common one is downloads per impression. This metric combines TTR (tap-through-rate) from app list view and then conversion rate of user downloading. Select others for app performance (crashes / errors), acquisitions (cost per install), engagement and retention as you find appropriate. Iterate your product with these metrics in mind.
You get $100 promo credit. Research relevant keywords that could be used to target users. Use Apple Ads to test different creative sets.
Reviews are usually an extreme emotion and written at a high level. Take the time to understand the review, ask questions and fix any issues. Reply as quickly as possible. Reply positevely - always. Be professional. Make sure your replies are unique.
You can track, analyze and reply to all reviews for all of your iOS and Android apps in one place! And anything else to do with reviews: report unfair reviews, analyze changes in ratings and reviews, get notifications about new reviews, automate work-flows and much more.
👉 Start working with reviews in Asodesk for free
Reviews will either make or break your app. Use them to iterate and build the best product by learning from customers. A review system in your app should pop up at a positive moment in your app (e.g. completing a booking) and incentivize positive feedback by rewarding the user for leaving a positive review.
Lower the frequency of negative reviews by providing a mechanism to submit the negative review directly in app (e.g. by email or form). Don't worry about negative reviews, especially early - you can reset them at any point. Keep your cool and respond as quickly as possible - there is a chance to change any negative review into positive.
Read the 33 hacks for working with reviews. This PDF-guide covers the details about the best practices of working with positive and negative reviews, as well as review tips for different type of apps.
Find out who they are. Track their keywords and creative assets. Understand their ASO strategy.
A quick 2-min summary for those too lazy to read the full checklist.
This guide contains a list of resources and short actionable statements. To understand the why behind these statements, you should read the supporting sources. Unfotunately, there is no way to efficiently summarize the material - you really should be reading the whole list.
Nevertheless, I shall try.
Trip down your app to a few, but well done features. Ship it to your beta testers / first users. Start collecting feedback as early as possible.
Iterate your app as you receive feedback. After 10 or so iterations, you should be arriving to your market fit.
If you can't outsource marketing, learn about it. ASO knowledge will help with your understanding of how app stores work - the environment in which your app lives.
There are no shortcuts. Please read the full guide, with suplementary resources - it contains all of the resources you need to help your app thrive.