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How to Name Your App for Growth (ASO)

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App Masters10:28Open on YouTube
Chapters show their main points

The bottom line

Name your app after keywords with real search volume, not a random name. A data-based name can lift downloads sharply, and ranking data then shows how to adjust it.

Key takeaways

  • The app name should come from keyword data, not from guesswork. 1:12
    • People think about keywords in ASO but forget to look at how the name itself is chosen.
  • A name that includes a keyword with decent traffic and low competition earns ranking for it. 3:08
    • Sentence Master did not rank at all for "sentence builder". After the rename to Sentence Builder Master, ranks and downloads rose.
    • The rename gave about a 50% increase in iOS downloads. A separate new icon gave 50% more conversions in a Google Play A/B test.
  • Pick name keywords by search volume and by where the app already ranks. 4:55
    • For Midnight Owl, "night owl" had strong traffic and the app ranked number two, so it went in the name.
    • "Hibernate" ranked number five but had too little traffic, so it was dropped.
  • Be aggressive with the first name, then adjust based on where you rank. 6:00
    • "Sleep sounds" had high traffic but the app did not rank for it. Thunderstorm sounds ranked 41, from the subtitle alone, so thunderstorm moved into the name in version two.

You look at the data, be aggressive in the beginning, and then make modifications, optimizing based off the data and where you end up coming in.

Steve P. Young

Chapter summaries

0:00 Pick the name with data first

Once the app concept is set, the name is a ranking decision and not a creative one.

  • The name is the step most people skip in ASO. 0:52
    • Most people ask which keywords to use and never ask how to name the app.
    • Two real apps show how data picked the name.
    • The naming comes after the concept is clear, so the data shapes the name and not the idea.
    • The second app is his own, bought recently and optimized from scratch.

1:46 Sentence Master: a keyword added to a brand

The team kept its brand and added the keyword that the data favored.

  • The old name used all 50 characters but still missed the best keyword. 2:01
    • The old name was Sentence Master English sentence builder and maker.
    • The team wanted to keep "Sentence Master" because they loved the brand.
    • Competing for "learn English" looked too hard in the data, so it went.
    • The new name, Sentence Builder Master, is far shorter than the old one.
    • The old name was long, and the shorter new name still carried the keyword.

3:50 Midnight Owl: a name built from a keyword sheet

A spreadsheet of keyword data decides which words earn a place in the name.

  • A bought app became a test of aggressive ASO. 4:29
    • The app had no clear name, so he pulled in many keywords and checked the data.
    • The same spreadsheet is used for client apps.
    • He bought the app through Flippa to see how far ASO could go.
    • The sheet also covers a Spanish (Mexico) localization.
    • He wanted both "owl" and "midnight" in the name.

5:14 Reading the keyword data

Search volume decides which keywords earn a place in the name, even when the app already ranks for them.

  • A keyword the app ranks for can still be too small to use. 5:16
    • With more traffic behind it, the name might have been "Hibernate Owl".
    • The app ranks number five for hibernate, yet the volume is too low to justify the name slot.
    • Fubar sits at rank ten, and no clear reason is given for it.
  • Sorting the list by traffic shows which big keyword is worth a test. 6:05
    • Sleep sounds comes out at the top for traffic.
    • Putting it in the name for a round shows where the app lands.
    • The app had no ranking for it, so the test risked almost nothing.
    • Ideally the app would rank well for sleep sounds, but it did not.

6:22 Version two: renaming around thunderstorm

The second version drops the weak keyword and puts the proven one in the name and subtitle.

  • The old subtitle failed to copy the sleep sounds ranking, so version two drops it. 6:51
    • The subtitle read "Sleep sounds with thunderstorm".
    • The new name goes hard after thunderstorm sounds.
    • The Spanish Mexico app name already carries thunderstorm sounds.
    • Thunderstorm sounds will probably also go into the subtitle.
  • A name chosen from traffic beats a name made up on a whim. 7:39
    • Another app, Base V, was named from the traffic seen at the time.
    • So far it is doing pretty well.
    • The first guess is aggressive, then adjusted to where the app ends up ranking.

In the growth library

Steve P. Young, Host of App Masters and app marketing consultant. App names should be chosen with keyword search volume and competition data rather than picked at random. Two examples show the method: renaming Sentence Master to Sentence Builder Master lifted iOS downloads 50%, and Midnight Owl was named from traffic data.

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Transcript276 lines
0:00

coming up I'm gonna share how to properly name your app for growth stay tuned what is up app nation it is Steve P young happy new year it is 2018 I'm gonna focus more on the YouTube channel I focused on it 2017 it's grown phenomenally well got over I think close to 2,000 subscribers at this moment so if you haven't hit subscribed please do so it's been something I love doing I loved creating these videos rather than writing blog cat blog posts because it's just more fun and more engaging and I just love doing it so I hope you stay around and 2018 we're gonna continue publishing a lot more video content so stay tuned for that but today I want to talk about how to properly name your app for growth a lot of times when you think about ESO you think about okay keywords and what keyword should I have but I think too many times we forget about actually looking at how to name your app now that we have the concept and what we

1:10

want our app to be rather than just coming up with some random name using data to dictate what that name should be I want to walk you through an example of that is one of my apps that I just recently launched and I'm gonna be doing a case study on this app walking you week by week how I'm optimizing it in the app masters Academy so if you want to check that out it is at masters Academy com but for this video I want to show you how I came up with a name for this app and how I use data to actually name it the way I did all right so let's get into it alright guys so one app that I want to show you is an app that we got we work closely with called sentence master great app and Joel and his team I don't think he would mind me sharing this but I wanted to share this as an example so before we work together the app was called as you can see with an app Annie so it's all public records but it's called sentence master English

2:06

sentence builder and maker now obviously back at the time you can have all these 50 characters and that's how you can leverage that so they were really leveraging that and since its master was something that Joel and them came up and said look hey we want to really call it sentence master because we love that app now we did a couple of different things if you've been following the videos I showed you that actually change the icon and that increased conversions on Google Play we did an a/b test on Google Play you know real data and that this new icon that you're seeing on a penny increased conversions downloads by 50% just that new icon so it does make a huge difference okay the second one is look how I named the app so I found doing our research that sentence builder actually had really good search volume not really good but really decent right and low competition I said look guys since its masters great and trying to

2:57

really focus on learn English or English itself it's harder to focus on that particular keyword so it's gonna be really difficult because of the data right so now we renamed it sentence builder master and look at what happened right we weren't ranking at all for sentence builder which had decent traffic right and suddenly because of the name change from there's a really long sentence bastard blah blah blah to sentence builder master we got to really increase the ranks and downloads I think we did a 50% increase in downloads on iOS on Google Play we did fifty percent just with that app icon change in our iOS we did a 50 percent increase in downloads just by changing that app name from sentence builder or I'm sorry sentence master - blob learn English and all this other stuff - sentence builder master so really using data to determine what your app should be called so the next thing I want to show you is this is

3:52

my app this is a new sleeping app that I just bought here I'm gonna show you a little quick little link for it it's called midnight owl sleep sounds and then you see the the graphics that we have I'm really digging this these type of screen shots I think it's really engaging and then having different screen shots here okay really digging this so the apps doing well I haven't looked at the data but I wanna and that's not important for this particular video and I'll share this again I'm gonna show the backstory of all this in the app masters Academy but for here I really want to show you how I've determined how to name this app now what I decided to call it midnight owl again I didn't know what to call it I had the app I bought the app actually through flip topia so I bought the app to flip topia and I wanted to optimize it and see what I do what how I can go crazy with ASL so I just pulled in a bunch of different

4:46

keywords again if you've been following along this is the spreadsheet that we put together for our clients and I'm willing to share all this with you because it's my app you can see all the keywords and stuff but essentially what I'm trying to do is just pull the data right and what I saw was hey niteowl had really good traffic right you can see 4.1 46 I'm ringing number two for night owl X right and so now you can see why I put I wanted all in there and I wanted midnight so I thought night and then you could see the Spanish Mexico localization in here as well and then also hibernate so maybe if there was good traffic for this if hibernate was a little bit more I might have called it hibernate owl right because there's really good traffic but unfortunately hibernate although we're ranking number five for this keyword we don't rank there's not enough traffic volume for this right and then fubar don't know

5:37

really why but I wanted number ten and so forth so again really utilizing the the data and the search volume to determine what your actual app name should be called now obviously we would love to be sleep sound like I'd love to rank really well really well for that but of course I don't so typically what I do in that first round is I just focus on all right I'm gonna be a little bit more aggressive so I do want to see where I come in for sleep sounds right here if you look at this here let me sort this by traffic so you can see sleep sounds really high traffic right so I've said all right it's worth it for me to go after this keyword in the app name for the time beat because I want to see where I end up obviously I'm not doing diddly squat so I'm gonna rename my app this is the second iteration this is version two iteration a so that you're seeing here rename my app midnight owl and then the

6:32

under storm because I really want to get aggressive with thunderstorm is if you look over here at the bottom you see thunder storm sounds you see I'm 41 for this keyword and it was only in the subtitle here's my subtitle sleep sounds with thunderstorm alright so I was trying to duplicate seep sounds didn't work so I'm gonna crap sleep sounds I'm tired entirely and go aggressively for thunderstorms so you can see my Spanish Mexico app name has to under some stones in it and then sleep sounds with thunderstorm I might put thunderstorm sounds in this one too I probably will but I wanted to go after sleep sounds as well so I'll probably put thunderstorm sounds in the actual subtitle here - so I'm gonna duplicate thunderstorm and then go after aggressively thunderstorm sounds and that's how you name your app like you look at the data be aggressive in the beginning that's how I always am and then go after make modifications

7:32

optimising based off the data and where you end up coming in so that's the best way to do it that's how you should determine rather than coming up with some stupid that's some stupid app name that I could've came up with this for this for this app I just said hey I'm gonna call it base V I'm gonna name the app based on the traffic that I see right now so far it's doing pretty well alright guys that's it so I hope that was helpful if you have any topics that you want me to cover on this amazing YouTube channel please let me know it is easy stiva app masters co stiva at masters co just email me there and let me know what you want to see or just leave in the comments below what kind of topics that you want to see and I'll monitor that as well and if you haven't already hit subscribe make sure you do so because you're gonna get a lot more information from me this is the one channel that I want to continue producing content for

8:26

along with the podcast because I love doing it it's a lot easier to talk and show you guys different things and write out a freakin blog post for it so hit that subscribe button and lastly if you're in California or anywhere in the world I've got a friend coming from Germany so there's no excuse but we are doing an event in LA in Santa Monica I freaking love Santa Monica beautiful Santa Monica and his master's connect comm we're gonna have we're limited to just 30 attendees 30 attendees and it's really meant for you to connect with some high-level app entrepreneurs we're gonna have some amazing speakers David who created color switch we have somebody from he'll wear I'm Heidi you from busan cider who is phenomenal when you're working with YouTube influencers so you're gonna learn all about you working with YouTube influencers from her and it's a really good event I've heard so many great

9:19

things from people who attend and from people who speak because you're willing to one thing is it opens your eyes to what successful app entrepreneurs are doing what kind of apps are they creating how are they driving growth you're really gonna be able to connect one-on-one with really successful app entrepreneurs these are app entrepreneurs running six and seven figure types of businesses so it's like a little mini retreat really meant the mission is for you to connect with some amazing app entrepreneurs I hope to see you there it is once again app masters connect com happening February 21st and 22nd go check it out the tickets are very very affordable I'm not looking to make a huge a lot of money out of this I essentially just want to break even make a little bit of money out of this but what my mission for this event has always been is to connect some really amazing people together because that's how I've been

10:13

able to grow my business and I just fully fully believe in connections wholeheartedly all right once again at masters connect com see you on the next video bye