K-Drama <Start-Up>'s Samsan Tech launches 'Noongil' globally! 👏 But did they localize? 👀

ASO for a global app? Let's start with localizing app store info

The recent hype around the drama Start-Up is nothing short of phenomenal. The tvN weekend drama Start-Up gives real startup folks something new to talk about every single episode! While watching episode 8, many of you probably watched the app launch scene with the same nervous eyes as Samsan Tech's CEO Seo Dal-mi (played by the amazing Suzy!). But perhaps for a slightly different reason.

During the app upload process, the Samsan Tech members impulsively chose to go global rather than just domestic, saying, 'Why not? It doesn't cost money anyway.' Comprised of three homegrown engineers, one overseas-educated designer, and a passionate CEO struggling to secure investment, who at Samsan Tech actually handled localization for this global launch? Or rather, since they just blindly launched it first, who is going to take on this task and how will they do it moving forward?

Localizing the product (app service) and its description to fit the target launch countries and their languages is a crucial task you must pay attention to as users grow, even if you rushed a purely English product to market. If you launch globally without properly prepping your service languages, usability plummets, which can lead to terrible reviews and low ratings, not to mention making it difficult to retain the users you worked so hard to acquire.

Conversely, even if the language is already built into the product, if you don't properly fill out the app store information in the launch country's language, the likelihood of store visitors downloading the app naturally drops. It's rare to find a kind customer willing to run a foreign-language description of an unheard-of app through a translator just to read it carefully. Besides your product, the store is endlessly stocked with thousands upon thousands of other apps, all seducing future users with their slick talk and pretty looks.

A long road to localization, let's start with ASO!

Adding multilingual strings within the product might be something the engineers and designers—who are also doubling as product managers (if, like Samsan Tech, you don't have one yet)—can painstakingly tackle country by country. But swapping out the app title, service description, and screenshots currently live on the app store for each language is a relatively fast and light task you can try compared to improving the product itself. And above all, Samsan Tech, which lacks an initial marketing budget, can secure far more global users than they have right now by executing this 'doesn't cost a dime' App Store Optimization (ASO) step-by-step.

Unless you're in Seo Dal-mi's shoes—freaking out that DAU might explode because you hooked up a paid API with an expensive hourly rate—there probably isn't a single app service operator who doesn't want user growth, whether organic or via marketing. Before nervously spending your marketing budget, you need to widen and solidify the channels through which users can flow in organically to avoid wasting money. One of those ways is exactly what we just mentioned: App Store Optimization, or ASO.

Simply put, ASO is the process of making our product (app) highly visible within various stores like the Google Play Store and Apple App Store. It's easy to think of it as the mobile version of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), which pushes websites to the top of portal sites like Google or Naver when searched. There are two main pillars to ASO work: one is Keyword Optimization, and the other is Conversion Rate Optimization. Keyword optimization is literally the work of making your app show up more easily in search results; the key is ranking high when people search for keywords highly relevant to your app. The prerequisite for keyword optimization is selecting keywords that are highly relevant to your app and have a decent popularity, and then weaving them into your app's metadata elements.

• Hold on, what's metadata?

Metadata is data about data. In music terms, it's not the music file itself, but the structured 'track info.' By looking at elements broken down into artist, album, release date, genre, composer, lyricist, arranger, and track description, users can first decide whether to listen to this song or not. And because of the keywords contained in this fragmented info, people searching for that specific artist, composer, or arranger end up discovering the music file.

Once you've used keyword optimization to get people interested in those keywords all the way to a search results page where your product sits alongside your competitors, you need to boost its appeal so they get curious enough about your brief description to read the details, or better yet, download it on the spot. This is where the aforementioned conversion rate optimization truly shines. It means you have to place elements that increase potential user preference across all the assets your app has on the store (icon, preview video, screenshots, app title, short description, long description, etc.). It's hard enough hitting the sweet spot for people who speak your native language, so how on earth do you charm people from various countries when you don't even know their cultural context?

Google Play Console tips dedicated to Dal-mi, who has to play marketer for a while

For Samsan Tech's 'Noongil' app, which seems to have launched on Android first, here are some ASO tips Dal-mi can easily try right now inside the Google Play Console.

1. Apply store info in local languages all at once for key countries via 'Purchase translation services'

The simplest method is to leverage the multilingual translation service provided by the Google Play Console to bulk-apply translations of your current default store listing. Of course, since this translation service literally only provides 'translation,' applying the right keywords for each country is something you'll have to do later via 'Manage your own translations.'

If you open the translation management toggle on the main store listing and click 'Purchase translation service,' you'll see the translation order page as shown above. Here, you just select the languages you want to translate and proceed with the order. If you only order translations for your store listing text, it usually costs around $10 USD. If you don't have basic info in the local language of the countries you've already launched in, try getting it done in one go through the translation service just to cover the basics for now.

For reference, it's also possible to translate in-app strings and descriptions for paid products, but depending on the volume of text, it could get pricey. Plus, if it's translated literally without considering screen flow, it might actually harm usability, so you should double-check before applying it. (For example, simply translating the English word 'dismiss' into Korean can yield various meanings like 'discard, disband, evict, fire, strike out, dissolve.' Given the nature of in-app strings lacking surrounding context, there's a high chance it translates into the wrong expression.)

2. Polish store info by country via 'Manage your own translations'

Even for multiple countries using the same language, you can polish store info on a per-country basis under 'Manage your own translations.' For instance, in highly price-sensitive countries like India, you might try emphasizing 'free' in the app title and description to encourage users to download it with more peace of mind. (In the case of iOS, using 'free' in the app title or subtitle often triggers a rejection, so try to stick to using it in Android descriptions if possible.)

On the other hand, in the Americas, rather than highlighting 'free,' it might be more effective to focus on keywords that intuitively show the value and the target audience getting help from the Noongil app, like 'help, visually impaired, low vision, assistant.' Periodically research what phrases your competitors are using for the same keywords, and try improving your store info by injecting new keywords. It goes without saying, but for the UK and Australia, make sure your app info is correctly written in British English.

3. Run localization experiments by country and app asset using 'Store listing experiments'

If you're still not sure what tone to use for your info, you can run tests per country and per app asset through Store listing experiments in the Google Play Console. You can immediately apply the better-performing variant from the experiment as your default store info, so make active use of this when changing information for countries where you haven't done enough research yet.

Other things you can try

There were a few times when I was browsing app info for various foreign products entering the Korean market, and I was appalled by copy so awkward that I thought it would be better not to translate it at all. Although now I'm in a position where I feel a sense of camaraderie, knowing exactly why they had no choice but to work that way.

When localizing in a small startup running a global service, it's exceedingly rare to spend money translating or developing separate assets tailored to local design trends for countries with low direct business impact. Most of the time, the work wraps up with a marketer or a passionate product operator trying to cover non-core countries at their own discretion. Since the goal of this effort is 'getting discovered easily in search,' you end up constructing sentences from a 'winning combination of keywords' based on country-specific research, rather than polishing them into brilliantly catchy prose. Though of course, using those keywords to craft a highly polished sentence is the ideal.

1) Ask your international teammates for help

Even if you're still a small startup, if you've hired one or two local employees in key countries as needed, you can politely ask them in advance to periodically handle short translation requests. Because no matter how good a translator you use, it's hard to beat the natural phrasing of a native speaker. In the Greater China-based startup I used to work at, whenever there was a need to write copy for a campaign or ASO, we encouraged native-speaking members regardless of their role to participate, and we adopted their better-localized sentences. Of course, the quality of the output can vary depending on the CMO's style and mediation skills. If you have teammates with international backgrounds in your organization, you'll likely get help much more easily than in the scenario above. For Samsan Tech, actively pulling in help from Jung Sa-ha, who studied abroad, would be the quickest route.

2) Cut the grunt work, up the batting average

When using translators, you'll find some languages translate easily, while others yield results somewhat far from your original intent. When you're not getting the meaning you want, simplifying the sentence to condense the meaning and swapping in similar words while continuously running the target language and original text back and forth will eventually land you the most acceptable version.

Take that best sentence you've found, group similar languages together, and translate them simultaneously to significantly cut down your overall work time. Since all text elements that go into store info, like app titles and descriptions, have their own character limits (Android app title — 50 chars / iOS app title — 30 chars), if you finalize one of the similar languages to fit the length and then translate the rest, you won't have to struggle to meet the character count.

[Country groups with similar fonts and sentence structures]

Southeast Asian — Indonesia, Malaysia

Nordic — Norway, Finland, Sweden

Russian — Russia, Bulgaria, Belarus, Ukraine

Central Asian — Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan

Eastern European — Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Czech Republic

Beyond Google Translate, it's also super helpful to use services like 'Translators', which lets you simultaneously compare translation results from various engines like Google, Papago, Kakao, and Bing. It doesn't support a massive number of languages, but it's incredibly useful when you want to translate short sentences naturally.

3) Steadily collect great phrases written by users and experts

As you listen to reviews from users who actually use your product and offer affectionate advice, there are days when you suddenly spot gem-like phrases. Because users all over the world have entirely different reasons for loving your product and unique ways of saying, 'This app is freaking awesome!', paying close attention to reviews and collecting good expressions acts as a North Star when researching ASO keywords or writing localization text. Passionate users will sometimes even directly fix incorrect translations in the app or email you suggestions for improvement, so don't miss out on their help—and make sure to express your gratitude.

Also, if you're selected for a feature on the store's main page or get covered in the press, you need to meticulously reference the introductory texts written about your product by experts. There is always something to learn from copy written with full linguistic flair by an outsider aiming to grab the attention of the general public—who, like them, still don't know your product well.

The localization process for a global app service is long and arduous, but at the same time, it's an area of work where you can feel the joy of growing together with your users. There is no perfect end or set answer in localization, but I hope this serves as a small compass to help early-stage startups just getting off the ground, like Samsan Tech, safely set sail into the vast ocean.

If you're curious about DelightRoom, which manages 4M MAU, 2M DAU, and 71 languages with an elite team of just 15 members, please check out the link below. :)

DelightRoom