The Starting Point for Growing Organic Users

Starting with the store from the user's perspective, not the provider's store console

This post is about sharing my actual experience with organic growth.
It covers the various trial and errors of clearing a wasteland to cultivate a field. (It's not quite fertile yet...)

The organic user acquisition funnel: A simple yet complex funnel

Organic user acquisition seems simple to optimize in the sense that you "just need to manage the store well."

Users perform a search in the store, and if our app is well-exposed, it leads to a product page view and installation.

This is exactly what people mean when they say you only need to do KWO (Keyword Optimization) and ASO (App Store Optimization) well. In reality, it boils down to a simple funnel of at most three steps, as shown below.

However, it's not actually that simple. In fact, it's incredibly difficult.

If we look at why it's difficult, the most fundamental reason is that all dependencies lie with the store.

1. We can't see the data that the store doesn't provide.

: Since the data is limited, it's difficult to determine which variables have a major impact on organic downloads.

• Ex 1) In the App Store, you cannot see "impressions" and "downloads" separated by keyword = it's difficult to figure out which keywords are important to us.

• Ex 2) In the Play Store, you cannot see the number of downloads and conversion rates directly from the search results page = it's difficult to prioritize whether to manage the search results page or the store listing screen.

2. We cannot control all the variables in the store as we please.

: Even when data is available, multiple variables are mixed together, making it difficult to precisely judge which variable had a bigger impact.

• Ex 1) It's hard to precisely observe changes in organic downloads after changing the app name in the App Store. The search volume itself might have changed around that time, or the users' rating scores might have influenced it.

• Ex 2) It's hard to precisely observe how increasing the average rating of top reviews in the Play Store affects organic downloads. Since it's difficult to increase in a short period, the effects of various variables become heavily mixed during that time.

Simply put, the store—our main distribution channel—is a channel filled with thick fog. Moreover, the fact that the distribution channels (Play Store, App Store) for the two OSs (Android, iOS) are "very" different from each other makes the fog even denser. It's almost as if they're trying on purpose not to resemble each other; even the terminology used doesn't overlap, and the features and data provided are different.

However, while the fog is thick, it's true that the funnel itself is simple. If you can't see the path, you just have to wander around and draw the map yourself. The starting point for that was not "numbers," but "intuition" based on UI/UX.

When we obsessed over intuition based on UI/UX instead of numbers, the numbers went up

As mentioned earlier, because the data is limited, it is impossible to accurately grasp the situation by relying solely on "numbers."

Impressions went up. Did the search volume increase? Did our keyword rank go up? Did the number of screenshots shown during exposure change? You have to look at the store's UI/UX yourself to see the phenomena behind the numbers. This is because there are truths that the numbers don't tell you.

Also, in a situation where even variables are often jumbled up, obsessing too much over "numbers" makes it hard to take a single step forward. This is because the causal relationships between numbers are often obscured by the influence of uncontrolled external variables. If you think about it intuitively and judge that "this will have a positive impact on organic downloads," it's best to steadfastly turn it into an action item for at least a month. Then, if you're lucky, when you look back at the numbers macroscopically, you might gain an inductive lesson like "the numbers went up, they didn't go up, they went down." However, rather than wasting too much time checking numbers, it is a better strategy to develop each action item toward efficiency and automation and sustain it in the long run.

Let's look at why intuition is important through 3 Q&As related to the store UI/UX.

01. If you search for a keyword in the Play Store, which of the exposure UIs below will be shown?

The answer is both. The former is for the US store, and the latter is for other countries. Because the UI is different, the UX is different as well. In the former, while the "number of apps" exposed at a glance on the search result screen increases, there is almost no meta information (like screenshots) exposed per app. Therefore, while store listing visits increase, the store listing conversion rate drops. If you were only looking at the numbers, you might have rushed to focus on improving screenshots due to the sudden drop in the acquisition conversion metric. But if you look at these UI/UX changes together, you can sharpen your approach strategy by country. For example, in the US, it might actually be better to focus on app name and icon experiments rather than screenshot experiments. Since screenshots are no longer visible when exposed in search results, you have to hook the user with the few pieces of meta information available.

02. If you search for a keyword in the App Store, which of the exposure UIs below will be shown?

The answer is both. The former is when you search for a "specific app name," and the latter is when you search for a general keyword that is not a "specific app name." In the former case, only the app corresponding to that app name has more of its meta information exposed, while other apps are simply listed. Because of this, even if a "competitor app name keyword" has high relevance to our app and high search traffic metrics, its management priority should be lowered. Even if you raise the rank, our app's screenshots won't be exposed, and the probability of being chosen by the user will be low. These are exactly the kinds of things that are difficult to judge based on numbers alone.

03. In the App Store/Play Store, downloads are possible right from the search results page, and also after entering the product page. Which way are users downloading more often?

The answer is, "It depends on the app." You can see which of the two points the download occurred at by breaking it down with the "Page Type" filter in the Analytics tab within the App Store console. Also, the priority of meta information will vary depending on which side has a larger proportion. For example, there are 10 screenshots in total, but only 3 are shown on the search exposure screen. If the former proportion is dominant, optimizing the latter 7 screenshots wouldn't be very important. Conversely, if the latter proportion is dominant, the priority of optimizing the detailed information values on the product page would increase. Meanwhile, unlike the App Store, the Play Store doesn't provide a filter to distinguish acquisition points. So it can be difficult to judge which point of user acquisition should be focused on more. Currently, our team considers the value of "total user acquisitions" minus "store listing acquisitions" as the "acquisitions from the search results page." The important thing is not looking at the numbers in the console (e.g., "downloads") exactly as they are, but processing them around to fit the user behavior you want to see before you can finally grasp meaningful phenomena.

Lastly, besides commonly managed meta information like app name/icon/descriptions/screenshots/videos, what other meta information has a huge impact on users?

When you enter the store from a user's perspective, you are exposed to a variety of variables. The reviews shown at the top seem important, and the promotion of in-app events, subscription products, etc., also seems to have an effect. Additionally, the release notes, "What's New," appear to take up more space on the screen than expected. These things are not represented by any numbers within the store console. How many reviews did they read? Did they tap on an in-app event? How much did the subscription product promotion increase viewability? — We have no way of knowing.

But intuitively, I definitely feel that these will have a positive impact on users' app downloads. So, without overthinking it, we just steadfastly get moving. For instance, if the ratings of the top reviews are high, wouldn't that naturally help drive downloads? Then we first find a way to get highly rated reviews exposed at the top and put it into action.

Through follow-up posts, I plan to summarize how we at DelightRoom have optimized various variables over time and what their actual effectiveness was.

Although I've written this post quite boldly, I still find organic growth to be difficult too. Sometimes I wonder if our past growth track record wasn't entirely thanks to our hypotheses, but simply a seasonal issue. So I took a quick look, and one thing is for sure: there was no such growth trend in Q3 of last year or the year before. Dispelling my anxiety with this kind of light cross-check gave me more confidence.

The majority of growth marketers stay within the store console. They examine the numbers provided by the console and optimize the A/B test variables provided by the console. One thing for certain is that it's more important to visit the store itself frequently than the store console. Thinking from the user's perspective is the starting point of growth, and numbers are just a means to observe user behavior. In other words, predicting user behavior in the store is the starting point, and looking at the numbers in the console comes after that.