Developing an app is one thing. Nurturing and optimising it to success is a totally different story. Since Apple launched the App Store there have been over 25 billion downloads. We’ve now reached saturation point and standing out from the crowd is tougher than ever, especially when so many apps possess similar features and functionality. If you’re in the business of bolstering your mobile app marketing performance, today we’re exploring the best app store optimisation (ASO) tools.

What is App Store Optimisation (ASO)?

ASO is similar to search engine optimisation (SEO) but for mobile apps rather than websites. If you’re new to the world of ASO there are a few key elements you need to get to grips with: app store rankings, reviews, ratings and keywords. If you’re embarking upon a mobile app development project, it’s essential to consider an ASO strategy well in advance of launch date. Unless you’re lucky enough to be featured by Apple (this is extremely difficult nowadays) you’ll need to think about how your app is discovered by users searching the app store.

If you get this right, you’ll dramatically extend the potential visibility and reach of your app. If you successfully extend the visibility and reach of your app, you’ll stand a far higher chance of generating a consistent number of downloads over a longer period of time. ASO is not nearly as sophisticated and mature as the landscape for SEO, there are far fewer tools and techniques to get to grips with. If you’re new to ASO – this is good news because it makes it easy for you to get started. If you’re already an expert – you’ll just have to work harder with the tools available to stand out from the crowd.

So without further ado, here are Waracle’s best app store optimisation (ASO) tools:

This is our top pick. App Annie enables you to focus ASO efforts in three key areas: analytics, store stats and intelligence. If you’re just getting started in ASO, App Annie is a good place to begin. It’s simple to use and has an intuitive UI with a bunch of useful features. Analytics monitors your app publisher data across all of the main app stores including Apple, Google Play and Amazon, enabling you to dissect data on rankings, ratings, downloads and reviews. The store stats section has great data visualisation and charts to track ongoing ASO performance. You can analyse historical performance, obtain a breakdown of daily rankings and app store ratings segmented by category and country across multiple platforms for the top 1000 apps. The intelligence section enables you to focus on your ASO strategy and explores factors such as buying optimisation, competitor analysis and competitive behaviour.

Distimo is a Netherlands based company founded in 2009 and has some great customisation features. This is cool and enables you to track data that matters most to your business. It lets you chart performance against rankings, revenue growth, ratings, volume of downloads and competitor behaviour. Distimo breaks it’s core feature set down into four key areas: conversion tracking, AppIQ, API and app analytics. Conversion tracking lets you work out which ASO programs are most effective against app downloads and revenue. AppIQ gives you a granular perspective on daily number of app downloads and revenue segmented by each of your apps. The API feature is neat and lets you export data that’s important to you in various formats and enables slick integration with existing systems. Analytics, as you’d expect, charts app performance across the main app stores and ad networks (and it’s free to use – bonus!).

This is one for the Apple aficionados. Appstatistics focuses purely on your iOS and Mac app performance. Founded in 2012, the core service offering is cleverly dissected into three key components: analyse, track and discover. Analyse is cool because it enables you to chart the performance of any app including your competitors. You can take a view on competitive behaviour and performance to understand how their unique marketing efforts directly affect their app store rankings. This can be used to track the performance of your own business app and gives you a bunch of helpful infographics to visualise the data. Track enables you to monitor performance of your iOS (iPhone & iPad) and Mac app rankings by adding them to a simple list. Discover provides data on the top ranking apps globally based on release date. This is really useful as you can visualise which apps are performing well based on user behaviour and what’s currently trending.

If you’re interested in checking out some of the other ASO tools that are currently available have a look at the following:

Here at Waracle we’ve learnt (through experience) that app store success is based on more than just developing a brilliant product. The key to success is how you market and nurture your app after it’s been launched and these ASO tools can help you get up and running quickly. If you found this article useful, try our blog on the 5 steps to app store domination.