WWDC is one of our favorite times of the year.  We wish we could be with all of you in person, but we are also excited to participate with everyone virtually this year. Check out our full list of WWDC events below.

The Nami Vintage Industry Swag Photo Contest

Normally during WWDC, the Co-Founders of Nami ML, Dan and Joe, host a wild and crazy party (some of which from years past are still legendary like the one with the marching band at Mezzanine or the one atop Union Square at Harry Denton's Starlight Room in SF, or of course that first one where we ruined the Tempest), but this year it has to be something different…

So to celebrate our favorite tech conference of the year, we’ve decided to run a little contest!

Find your best vintage industry swag that’s lying around at home and share it with us on Twitter!  

Read More and Join the Contest

StoreKit Labs with Nami Engineers

Adding in-app purchases to your app for the very first time?

Have areas of improvement to your existing StoreKit integration you’ve been wanting to tackle?

We are here to help.  Nami’s platform is tightly integrated with StoreKit and our engineers are here to help you with your StoreKit questions.

Sign-up for a 1:1 session with one of our engineers on Zoom.  Feel free to bring your code.

We’ll be at the (virtual) Fairmont all week

Curious about Nami?  Need help with how to make in-app purchases and subscriptions work for your business?  

Drop by and ask us a question or hit us up for some conference swag.

Chat with Nami at hello@namiml.com.

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This post is part of a series related to what every app developer should know. Part 1: What Every iOS Developer Should Know About Submitting Their App. Part 2: What Every iOS Developer Should Know About App Store Optimization.

There are billions of smartphone in use worldwide and that number isn’t going to stop any time soon. Year after year, this growth continues to generate a massive market for creating and purchasing apps. There are about 4 million apps ranking on Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store. This means you’re going to need to get strategic when thinking about marketing your app if you wish to see it generate engagement and downloads.

What is App Store Optimization (ASO)?

App Store Optimization is a set of improvements you make to your app download page to raise your ranking on the visibility ladder to secure more downloads. ASO for the most part, is focused on the world’s two major app store platforms: Apple App Store (iOS) and Google Play Store (Android). Wether you are new or experienced, you need to know that ASO is never a ‘one and done’ task. Continuous attention and consistent updates are critical to your app success. Let’s take a look at a few tips to get you started on your path to success.

Use Real Keywords

Research is critical and it’s good to see what keywords your competitors are using. Match your keywords with the needs of your customer to help them find your app easily and much faster. You’ll need to target the keywords your users use and not the ones you think they would.

For example, you may be building a law firm’s app where they would like keywords reflecting their main source of income – car accident victims. They may be insistent that you use Auto Accident Attorney as a keyword because it is the correct legal term used by attorneys in the United States. That’s simply not going to fly as most people are ranking high searches using the keywords: car crash lawyer. The lesson is to use simple natural language that customers use.

Title and Description Optimization

The most important metadata used to get the most downloads possible is in your title. Keep it under 25 characters. This way the whole title is visible on the app store when browsing. Once you’ve picked the right title, do a search for it. If you get identically-named results back, you’re not being creative enough.

When making your description, include as many relevant keywords as you can (don’t stuff words just to stuff) and keep it within 250 characters. Anything beyond that will be truncated with a “read more” link.

Screenshots and Icons

Your screenshots and icons must be compelling as they will give you a visual edge. Choose an icon for your app that is very easy to recognize and is memorable to the brand. Try to use different colors than your competition to avoid confusion. Use design to stand out from the crowd of related apps.

Keep in mind that the majority of people do look at screenshots before downloading or purchasing. Make sure you’re using colorful templates. The screenshots must look professional and pleasing aesthetically. For this space, text is not as critical as displaying the visual features that are a better value than the competitors app.

Include Video

Videos included in an apps page stand to get up to 23% more downloads than a competitor who does not use any. Upload a video showcasing the best features that show your app presenting the greatest value.

Research the Competition

Since this has been mentioned above, you should be catching on that this is vital to your app’s success. Studying your competition will ensure you become successful. Learn from their mistakes and look for opportunities to stand out in other ways.

Before you include your app into your preferred marketplace platform, you do need to nail down the right category for the app. When choosing the right category, think about things like; how many competitors do you have? How many apps are consistently updated? How popular (in downloads) does the category rank? Once you’ve chosen and uploaded, keep an eye on your category. You’ll want to monitor top performers and their keywords or metadata.

Bonus Tips

Build Backlinks: To get the best backlinks, make sure your app is linked on relevant websites. There are quite a few app directories that allow anyone to submit their app to as long as it meets relevancy requirements.

Drive Traffic Other Ways: You also have the option to use paid app advertising, with Google Universal App Campaigns (UAC) and Apple Search Ads (ASA) as the primary drivers.

Last Words

Implementing ASO best practices and subsequently driving up app downloads will not happen overnight. By spending a bit of time daily working on a ASO checklist, you will get results and make progress over time. Once you begin to see some traction, you can then take a shot at paid promotions to further take advantage of ASO.

ASO is fundamental to growing your app business. Focusing now on the benefits of making you app easier to stand out of a crowded app space will provide that extra boost in revenue down the road. Nami is there every step of the way by your side as you grow your audience and increase app revenue along the way.

Marketers are always on the lookout for new ways to make the customer experience (CX) one with the fewest barriers between the pitch and the purchase.

To maximize conversions on subscriptions and in-app purchases, apps must deliver quality and specifically targeted content as well as specifically targeted offers. To do that, marketers often need to make quick changes based on consumer demand using the most up-to-date information possible.

Subscriptions and in-app purchases using Nami’s CX-focused paywall design are a perfect example of where marketers can effect change and increase revenue directly, without the need for developers to make code the adjustments. Nami has introduced a no-code solution for paywalls and offer screens that can be iteratively changed by marketers, without needing to publish app updates. Using Nami’s full range of metrics available, digital marketing teams can review and analyze CX data, and immediately make changes on the fly in response to new data analysis.

In the early days of the internet, marketers needed to know HTML to be able to make changes to a company website. Eventually, Content Management Systems (CMSs) became available that allowed marketers to edit their websites without needing a developer. We currently live in a world where most apps subscription or in-app purchases offer screens require a developer to update. Nami has solved this problem.  

Digital marketing teams can now drive sales without releases. What does that mean? As marketers, you will be in control of UX customization, copy changes, and in-app behavioral adjustments. Even better, these changes you make can go live immediately. No more waiting for your changes to be approved, then released with a software update.

Nami’s industry-leading no-code paywall platform was specifically created with digital marketing teams in mind. It was built to enable digital marketers to continuously improve in-app offers iteratively and quickly. Speaking as a company of app developers, we know that the faster marketers can test conversion screens, the faster they can grow their revenue.

It looks like 2020 is shaping up to be quite different than most of us thought. With public health experts predicting that social distancing protocols could be in effect for a year or more, we at Nami have felt the need to do something to help people affected by the pandemic. I would like to take this time to share with you two things that we are working on currently to support our community.

Volunteer-Driven Coronavirus Relief Projects

After speaking with our colleagues in several developer communities, we have compiled a list of volunteer-driven projects related to solving problems caused by this crisis. Currently, there are many groups of people working tirelessly to manufacture masks and ventilators for those in need. However, we are a software company with no manufacturing capabilities. Therefore we have come together to find seven community software projects helping problems like vaccine research data mining, elder outreach, and healthcare system capacity. We encourage all software engineers and app developers to take a look at the list of projects and contribute if they can.

Supporting Independent App Developers

Born in 2008, the App Economy has become very large. Just one of the ecosystems— the Apple App Store— has paid out more than $155 billion dollars to developers.

Unfortunately, during this challenging time many developers are seeing a drop in revenue. Just as we are all trying to help support our favorite local cafes or restaurants during this challenging time, let’s all try to support independent app developers who depend on a robust App Economy.

To do our part, we want to celebrate independent app developers that we admire. Some of these are Nami customers, but many of them aren’t. Either way, we want to use our audience to give them exposure during this challenging time.

Follow us on Twitter at @HelloNamiML for our daily #SupportIndieDevs shoutout. We’re tweeting by way of a list of indie apps from our public GitHub repository. If you would like to be on the list, please submit a pull request or let us know.

We are all in this pandemic together, let’s do everything we can to help each other out.

With the global mobile application market size to reach $407.31 billion by 2026, it is no surprise at how the enormity of this technology touches all facets of our lives. There is no better time to be an app publisher, whether it is in mobile, desktop or streaming services.

Streaming Services

2020 is an opportune time for independent publishers to be a part of the streaming service economy. The driving forces behind this development have been the convergence of new technologies with internet penetration and a major increase in mobile users outside the United States. As the statistics for streaming services shows below, there is a continued upward march of worldwide revenue growth in the steaming services industry.

It isn’t just movies that are breaking ground, audio services (e.g. music streaming, podcasts, audio books) are on the rise as well. In a recent study, mobile devices drove 79% of total global internet usage. That said, new streaming apps that provide in-demand content and ease of use are most likely to be adopted.

Immersive Technologies Becoming an Increasing Share of App Development

Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR) all continue to command consumer attention for 2020. These technologies not only represent a large market, but that market continues to grow quickly.

VR has been the standout, extending far beyond gaming and entertainment. Both VR, AR and to a certain extent, AR technology are finding niches in disparate applications from large companies like Walmart to military applications with the US Army.

AR seems to have found solid footing lately with respect to enhancing the shopping experience, creating a more immersive and interactive adventure. Many large eCommerce’s companies use AR to enable customers to try products before purchase, such as displaying furniture in the home to check “fit” before purchase.

Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence

Demand is on the rise for smarter, more intuitive applications using ML or AI within their platforms. Sectors like, Education, Healthcare and Manufacturing are providing a lots of opportunities for app developers. In the enterprise sector, there is growing demand for apps with machine learning that can run analytics alongside CRM platforms to reveal more information on how better to serve repeat clients and customers. Chatbots in retail is one early example of widespread ML usage that continues to grow.

Final Thoughts

There is no end in sight for the demand for app development and no better time than now to be an app publisher. This space continues to expand at a rapid pace. During the first generation of mobile apps, every product was either free or had a price. At Nami, we believe that there is increasing demand for apps with freemium offerings, subscriptions and in-app purchases.

Nami helps developers focus on profitability and recurring revenue streams. We want to empower developers to to create engaging experiences that users will happily pay for. Start your free trial today.

Nami co-founders Dan Burcaw & Joe Pezzillo will be at CES 2020 talking about how to build a smarter subscription business in the App Economy. If you’re like to meet with them, use the scheduling widget below.

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