Three reasons mobile marketers need to pay attention to iOS 11’s new App Store
With Apple's iOS 11 official release date expected in a few months' time, M&C Saatchi's Bobbie Gersbach unpacks what it all means for mobile marketers.
With the 10th anniversary of the iPhone comes a shiny new version of iOS 11, due to be released in September 2017. There is a range of updates that will occur in the App Store which will no doubt slap Apple fans in the face, but also represent the change they are craving.
It’s more than iPhone consumers who will be struck by these updates however. If we read between the lines, the changes to come will also have a marked effect on mobile marketers who will need to challenge many of the mantras held firm and true over the past few years (translation: a decade by mobile evolution standards).
These are the new battlegrounds a simple operating system update could very well give rise to:
Chart boosting is dead
A considerable portion of the app install market is comprised of providers who drive download volume and velocity for apps – a tactic which commonly results in the app’s ranking improving in the App Store, and the app’s organic visibility improving in turn.
This is predominantly achieved through the buying of incentivised app installs, where the user is rewarded in-game for downloading an app, with the app paying an appropriately discounted amount for that user (who is less likely to be retained).
Both Apple and Google aren’t huge fans of this chart-boosting tactic, however it’s a segment of the market that has scaled to the extent that is has because neither company have provided a non-organic solution until recently for apps to increase their visibility.
iOS 11 threatens to pull the plug on the Apple chart-boosting market in one fell swoop. And it’s for the very simple reason that the Top Charts tab in the App Store will no longer be front and centre:
In the meantime, Google is also making moves to prohibit chart boosting.
Search is the new “core” of the Apple ecosystem
So what tactics will app marketers now have available to them to boost App Store visibility with iOS 11? The answer to this is two key factors – editorial and search. Featured content has always played a role and will continue to do so, albeit in a more curated format. The more marked change will be the (even greater) push towards the search function.
Editorial sits at the core of iOS 11’s new app store
It’s perhaps unsurprising to most that App Store search is being given increased importance. With the launch of paid search ads, it’s clearly a focal area of monetisation for Apple. However, that’s in direct response to the immense scale in App Store search as a behaviour (65% of all installs are known to begin with a search query in the App Store).
Besides the high accessibility of the search function in iOS 11, there’s also a lot more information that will be indexed within App Store search for users. For example, articles and even in-app purchases will now contend with apps within the search results – something that will further increase the importance of editorial and App Store optimisation (ASO) efforts.
A new tactical channel
There are also some seemingly small updates arriving with iOS 11, which could have fairly significant consequences on how marketers treat the App Store as a channel.
One of the key limiting factors of the app user journey versus the web/browser user journey has been customisation of time-based or campaign-specific messaging.
Where a brand can easily create customised landing pages on its website, they’ve typically been tied to a monthly update cycle for their apps, and making campaign-based changes to their app listing has been problematic from an ASO perspective.
Brands will be able to alter their campaigns outside of Apple’s rigid update schedule
With iOS 11 comes a new promotional text field within the app product page, which for the first time can be very easily changed to reflect campaign-based messaging without the requirement of an app update submission.
A small, but meaningful development which should greatly improve the conversion that marketers are seeing within the App Store if properly leveraged.
Australia is a notoriously strong iOS market. It’s time for mobile marketers to get their ducks in a row ahead of this update, and shake up their App Store strategies.
Bobbie Gersbach is M&C Saatchi’s mobile ANZ director
