The two halves of ASO
Visibility decides whether people find your app. In store search, the title, subtitle (iOS), short description (Android), keyword field (iOS) and the full description (Android) all influence which queries you rank for. Ratings, install velocity and retention also feed ranking.
Conversion decides whether people who find you install. The icon, the first two or three screenshots, the preview video, the rating, and recent reviews do most of the work. Most visitors never scroll past the first screen of the listing.
Store conversion rate
The core ASO metric is store conversion:
store conversion rate = installs / store page views x 100
A worked example: your listing gets 40,000 page views in a month and 12,000 installs, a 30% conversion rate. A new screenshot set lifts it to 36%. With the same traffic that is 2,400 more installs a month. If half of your page views come from paid ads, the same change also lowers paid CPI by roughly a sixth, since each paid click now converts more often.
Both stores let you test listing changes: product page optimization on the App Store and store listing experiments on Google Play.
ASO and paid acquisition
ASO and paid UA are tied together in three ways:
- Shared landing page. Every paid click ends on a store page, so conversion gains apply to all channels.
- Custom listings. Custom product pages (iOS) and custom store listings (Android) let you match the store page to a campaign's message.
- Organic lift. Paid installs raise install velocity, which can improve search ranking and bring extra organic installs.
Measuring ASO alongside attribution
Store consoles report page views and conversion; your MMP shows what happened after the install. Linkrunner separates organic installs from paid ones, so you can watch organic volume and organic retention as you change your listing. Linkrunner also supports custom store listings on its links, so a campaign can send users to the store page made for it. Compare your paid CPI with the cost per install benchmarks to see how listing changes move it.