How to Create App Store Screenshots That Get More Downloads

Coming up, I'm going to share with you how I increased downloads by 30% [music] without changing a single keyword. And the secret was not ASO, it was not ads, or even the app itself. It was these screenshots. [music] In the next few minutes, I'm going to show you why these matter and how you can create professional App Store screenshots faster than ever. Stay tuned. >> [music] >> What is up, App Nation? It is Steve P.

Young, founder of appmasters.com, the place you go, the YouTube channel, the app marketing agency that you go to when you want the no-fluff version of increasing your downloads and revenue. Now, what if I told you you can increase downloads without changing a single keyword? Most app developers, especially the indies, obsess over their ASO, their titles, their keywords, their descriptions. But, they completely overlook the one thing that actually get people to download their app, their screenshots. Look, the truth is two apps could rank for the same keyword, have the same exact optimization, but the one with the better screenshots usually end up winning. And the best part of this video, you don't actually need a designer or an agency to create beautiful screenshots that will increase your downloads. Now, I'm about to show you a simple process that you can follow to create beautiful, high-converting

screenshots in a matter of minutes. So, without further ado, let's get started. All right, let's show you how we increased downloads by 30% for a client by just optimizing their screenshots. And the secret is they were already pretty decent looking, all right? They didn't go from ugly to beautiful. We just made a few subtle changes that I'm about to share with you right now. All right, here is the AB test. You can see A and B. Now, I'm going to give you a second to guess which one won, A or B?

I'm going to give you a second or you can pause this video right now to make that guess. All right, you got it? Great. It was B. 30% increase in downloads. Now, let's break it down. Why did B win when A was already performing pretty well? So, A, calm anxiety and feel better, all right? Interesting. Choose your therapy guide. Learn the power of self-therapy, pretty nice. We have social proof, so you have all the check marks. So, why did B win?

Calm anxiety with cognitive behavioral therapy, editor's choice, little social proof, personalize interactive video guided therapy, all right? Confidential CBT journaling. So, I'm going to break it down for you. The best practices generally come down to a couple of things, leading with the main keyword. Now, this is generic. Calm anxiety and feel better, pretty generic. Calm anxiety with cognitive behavioral therapy, CBT.

That's great. Now, the app itself was already ranking number one for cognitive behavioral therapy and CBT. You want to match your first screenshot and include the keywords that you're targeting in your title, and they should be, hopefully, pretty high traffic keywords because, especially when you're relying on organic downloads, you want to let the user know that they're in the right place. So, if a user is searching for CBT or cognitive behavioral therapy, and you make it big and bold, they're like, "Huh, that's what I was looking for. This is what you're showing me."

Right? You want to match it up. Okay? The other thing that I personally told the client, cuz I started using the app and it helped out really, really well for me, is I love the fact that it was personalized interactive video-guided therapy. I actually didn't care much that I could pick the therapist. It didn't matter to me as much as like, "Wow, this is kind of cool. Like, all I have to do is watch a video, interact with it, and then feel better." Like, that was it. Instead of like meditation, where you just sit there and you listen, you try to calm your mind, this was you listen and then you answer a few questions, and that interactive part was the thing that made it different for me.

So, I told the client that. They're like, "Oh, interesting. Let's add that in there." And I was like, "What other features do your users like?" And they told me, "Users really love the confidential journaling aspect of the app." So, we made it the third screenshots. And everything else was pretty much branded and all that stuff. And so, you can AB test the order of it. This is what we led with, and it improved by 30% just these screenshots.

So, again, let's summarize. Lead with the primary keywords that you're targeting. Have your unique selling points, because a lot of apps claim to calm anxiety and make you feel better. A lot of apps. So, be more niche in how you approach the anxiety relief, how you make me feel better. Have social proof, app of the day, editor's choice. Really great, right? Like, people trust Apple. They love Apple. That's why we love Apple products. And then your unique selling points, right? And then it's obviously the rest is history. Now, I only focus on the first three, because those are the ones that show up on the search results. So, those are the ones that I really pay attention to and these first three are the ones that you want to A/B test. So, you might want to change the order of things. Luckily, we got it right on that first go around, but we could also A/B test and maybe move certain things back and forth, so

forth, right? Like obviously, what mental health one day at a time? Okay, pretty generic. Therapeutic breathwork and mindfulness, a lot of apps have that. Daily mental health habits, a lot of apps have that. And so, we really wanted to lead with a thing that made us different. So, you can A/B test this, but this luckily we got it right on that first go around. All right, now that you understand the basics of screenshot copy and the importance as it relates to ASO and your overall product page view to downloads, I'm going to show you the easiest, simplest way to generate high-converting, beautiful screenshots, localize those screenshots, and the best part?

Upload them directly into App Store Connect. So, without further ado, let's get to it. All right, the website is called app-screens.com. Thank you to App Screens for sponsoring this particular video. Go check them out. For this video, App Screens is offering 3 months free. No commitment whatsoever for the first 10 people who comment on this video. Now, if you're working with App Masters or you're part of the appfounders.co community, well, you're going to get that 3 months free. All right, now let's check out this amazing tool.

Here it is, app-screens.com right here. All right, now let me show you how easy it is. You can create screenshots fast, start here, and then you can start from a template or an AI screenshot creator. I'm going to do that. I'm going to pick one of our apps, the JPEG to PDF converter app. I really want to test new screenshots for this app anyways, so I'm going to click that. Now, App Screens will automatically generate captions depending on your goal. I have it set to search intent.

Now, you can change this to ASO expert and it's going to regenerate right here. Beautiful, but I'm going to keep it into search intent. And there's so many more options for you right here as you can see. There's search intent, outcome, emoji, direct, friendly, all that stuff. Play around with the copy, but personally, I like search intent because I want users to know they're in the right spot. So, I'm going to keep with search intent.

Don't worry about these captions. You can edit these later. So, I'm going to upload UI. I've got my screenshots right here, so I'm going to move them all the way over here. And I'm going to move things over. Now, I generally like to have a photo of a person as part of the first three screenshots. I'm going to move that over. Now, obviously, this is JPEG to PDF, so I'm going to put some of these a little bit further to the right in the right order that I want them in, okay?

Then, I'm going to hit create screenshots. Now, here, you can quickly create them or you can customize a template. I'm going to actually choose that because I want to show you some of the cool templates. Look at all these great templates right here. Right? I like this one, the Kova, so I'm going to go with that and it's going to go do its thing. Now, you can just save and customize. Now, I've already created these beautiful screenshots within App Screens and I want to show you some of the cool editing features within the platform, okay? The first part is I uploaded an image of this lady. Now, I know that having faces on these screenshots generally perform a bit better than not having any faces at all.

But, I don't want this person in a particular device. So, I'm going to click on this part of the video and her that device. I'm going to change this from device type from flat device mock-up. Now, you can change 3D mock-up, these type of things. You can have them slanted to the right and left, right? With the mock-up, you can do all that stuff. You can do dynamic frame, like that. But, I just want her by herself. So, I'm going to put in full screen. Done. All right? I'm going to save here.

If you wanted to move the order, you can easily do that by tapping that little icon up here and then just moving things around. I'm going to keep it the way it is right now cuz I really like the colors. The other thing you can do is maybe you're not happy with the text, the captions, all right? So, you can easily edit yourself. You can come here, go to the title, and just change the text around. So, maybe it's like snap in seconds.

All right? I like convert in seconds. Okay? Because there's JPEG to PDF converter, right? The other cool thing is you can have app screens auto generate some new text. Again, back to what I was showing you, it could be ASO search intent, but this time I have outcome intent. So, I actually grabbed this convert in seconds. It was something different. I can also change some of the other ones, the export and share to send files faster cuz that's probably what we want to do, right? So, I can come here and then click this little star icon and hit send files faster.

Boom. Now, I can change the color of the text around as well. Let's say I wanted this to be white. So, I'm going to change that and just put in white. Send files faster, and then I want to change this to the purple from before. Right? You can have these colors, use colors. So, I'm going to pick this purple or maybe this purple. Ooh, I kind of like that or this black. Right? I'm going to pick that one. So, that easy. Done. I'm going to hit save.

Now, let's say you're like, "Hey, I actually prefer the other text." So, you can hit undo, right? I'm going to go on do and then just go back, export and share. Now, I can see the color schemes again and then maybe try to match it again. Maybe you're like, "I like the other one." So, I'm going to go back, do this again. Send files faster. Done. I want the copy. I want to change the colors again to match. Now, I've changed the colors back to where they originally are. I like this copy a lot better than what I had. Share and export sounds kind of boring. Send files faster. That's more indicative. All right. The other cool part, the localization, I put easy as candy here just to show off the nuances of that. When you localize, you can add different languages here. So, I've added English US, English Australia, English British, and Spanish Mexico, but you can add more if you want. Right? And then

you can hit translate text and App Screens will translate all the text. Now, let's take a look at English. The first screenshot, it's all JPEG to PDF. I don't think it will change much. Yeah. [snorts] Change The Spanish version is JPEG a PDF. The six screenshots, which has easy as candy, and the only reason I put candy is there is to show you that App Screens understands even the nuances of the English language. So, easy as candy in the US, that's candy. In Australia, it's lollies. In Britain, it's sweets.

And in Spanish, it's And I'm not even going to try to pronounce that, right? Now, you can change it, right? Yourself. So, I'll take off automatic translations, and then you can change it. You're like, "Oh, no, it's not lollies. Maybe it's something else, right?" And sweets, I want to capitalize this a little bit. You can change all of this in here. Or, if you already have your own localization, you can bulk import and export as well, right? So, I'm going to hit save. And then, if you want to just double-check that everything looks good in all the different languages, you can go Australia. Easy as lollies.

Go Britain. Easy as sweets. And then, in Spanish, you have all the Spanish-related terms right here, right? They all look good, and it's easy to export. Now, the only reason I left this in here was I actually don't want this in here. So, I'm going to delete that. And that's how easy it is to delete any screenshot. Perf. Now, the last thing I want to show you guys is one of my favorite, favorite tools of all time. If you guys have ever manually tried to upload your screenshots within App Store Connect, you've probably experienced some errors.

Not your fault. It's just App Store Connect. It sucks. When you upload those screenshots, sometimes you get an error on the upload. A lot of times, they're not in the order that you actually named them in or uploaded them in. App Store Connect will randomly put different orders, and then you have to fix it. Well, all that is taken care of through App Screens. And especially if you have multiple localizations that you're constantly updating and trying to AB test, it is going to be a pain in the butt. So, let me show you how easy it is within App Screens. All right.

All you have to do is hit preview and export up here. I'm going to go to this preview section. Now, you get to see your screenshots as a user. Not big and bold as a designer, but as a true user. So, this one shows you how it would look in the search results. Again, the first three screenshots are the most important. And then this on the right shows you how it would look on your product page view. So, I can scroll and you can see the screenshots in all its glory and you can just scroll to see how well it looks as a user, right?

The other thing, we don't want to do this part, but you could download the zip file of all your screenshots in all the different languages. Or my favorite way of doing it is upload directly to the App Store. Now, you can upload all the different localizations, but for me, the English one is the one I'm going to be focused on. So, I'm going to just pick US English. And then you can replace your primary listing right here if you wanted to.

You can also append it if you just wanted to say, "Hey, let's keep the old ones on there and let's just append these ones if you are modifying." But I'm going to hit replace. And the other thing I want to do is actually create a product page optimization. So, this is an AB test to see which screenshots will perform better. So, I'm going to hit one treatment because I only have one true test. I didn't create two different versions. I'll only hit one. So, I hit one. And then I'm going to call this app screens.

And then I'm going to hit create. Done. Now, you can see your screenshot right here. Test that you can do. Now, be careful when you're selecting the size because for me, I only have the 6.5 uploaded. So, I want to make sure I only upload that 6.5. So, I'm going to deselect the 6.9 and the iPad version. I have the English version. That's it. And then I am good to go. So, I'm going to click on upload to App Stores. Continue.

And let App Screens do its magic. Boom, we're done. All right. The moment of truth. I'm going into product page optimization. I see my July 14th test. And I've see the screenshots automatically uploaded and in their proper order. Now, I can easily start the test. Boom. Add for review. And submit for review. Done. That easy. I was able to easily generate, localize, and upload those screenshots, AB test those screenshots, create custom product pages, all within appscreens.com.

All right, that is it. [music] Thank you to App Screens for sponsoring this video and offering 3 months of App Screens for free. No commitment required for the first 10 commenters. And if you're already working with us or you're part of our App Founders community, well, you already unlocked that particular promo and you can get 3 months of access for just working with us. Oh my god, thank you App Screens. I love you for this particular offer and [music] I love using their platform. All right, guys, all you had to do was leave a comment so you could either put A or B for that AB test as a guess. Or what I would love as well is your favorite feature that I've highlighted within appscreens.com.

[music] And if you lucked out, all you got to do is go to appscreens.com, start using their tool. It is super affordable. The founders are indie developers [music] themselves. They built it because they had a need and they're making it super affordable for all you indies out there. Whether you're an agency, an indie developer, or a big company leading to create screenshots as a marketer for custom product pages, product page optimization, or anything else and you just want to redo your entire screenshots, well, appScreens [music] makes it super easy. Go check them out. It is appscreens.com.

Once again, appscreens.com. I'll see you on the next video.