Writing an App Store description that converts

You’ve got your app name and icon sorted. Your potential user was interested enough to open your app’s page, now it’s time to convince and convert that opportunity in a download. That’s what your description is for (along with icon and screenshots). Keep in mind, for most RADIO apps this is overkill. Your listeners are already sold on you and are simply looking or the app. So a simple description is usually enough. But, if you want a deep dive…

Start your description with something that really grabs the attention.

Go take a look at the App Store and have a look at how much of the description is shown by default (before you click ‘More’). Not much, is it? On Apple’s App Store you have about three lines of text. That’s how long you have to convince a user that your app might be worth their attention.

Unless that first sentence makes you want to read more or take a look at the screenshots, you’re going to be losing potential customers at the first hurdle. Be concise and make it interesting.

So make it the best pitch you can come up explaining what your app does, who it does it for and why it’s unique or better than others.

Here’s some great advice for what to include, courtesy of Joanna Wiebe of CopyHackers.

• Lead with the most powerful, crisply stated message that your visitor wants to see
• Cut the nonsense or filler – like “Our product is designed in Florida to…” – and just get straight to what it does and why that’s awesome
• Make the user want to click to learn more (so, in many cases, TEASE!)
• Explain exactly what makes your app unique – why should people choose you over the competition? Make sure it isn’t just a long list of features.

Now it’s time for some social proof and validation.

Add any press mentions, blog reviews or customer testimonials. Anything that can back up your claims on how good your app is.

Then it’s time for benefits and features. The best technique to list features and make sure they’re relevant and help you “close the sale” is to always ask yourself why each is important for your user/customer. Answer the “why it’s important for the user?” question for each of your features, and mention it just before or after the feature itself.

By following this simple technique, you take the perspective of your user or customer and explain your features together with the benefit they offer. If you come across a neat technical feature but you can’t come up with a reason why it matters, then just skip it, it’s not about quantity.

Remember, this is a sales and marketing document not a tech spec. That’s especially important if you’re using bullet points. Make it about them, your users, not your app or it’s technical superiority.

This is sales, you need to convince and overcome objections. Some of these might be about whether the app is completely free or not, whether an iPad or tablet version is available or how frequently content in the app is updated. Make sure to mention these points, perhaps using a bulletpoint list, to overcome common objections (you’ll learn from user reviews what people are concerned with).

How about keywords? While on Apple’s App Store descriptions are not considered in the ranking algorithm, they do count on Google Play, so you should be quite careful about how and what words you use. Our recommendation to improve the discoverability of your app is inserting your main keyword once in the title, and 5 times in the description.

Consider using keywords relevant to your app, as well as ones with lower difficulty scores. Lastly, pick the keywords with the highest Traffic Scores, as this will bolster your chances for achieving higher rankings. MobileDevHQ and SearchMan are a couple of tools that’ll help find the best keywords for your app.

Got any questions on how to write a great description for your app? Just reply, we’re glad to help!

Suggested reads:
The Psychology Behind Writing a Successful App Store Description
How to Write a Fantastic Mobile App Description