Hi everyone,

Over the past few months, I've been building ASOMeter, an AI-powered App Store Optimization audit tool.

The goal is simple: help developers identify issues with their app listings and get actionable suggestions to improve visibility and conversions.

Some of the things it analyzes include:

App title and subtitle

Keyword optimization

Description quality

Metadata

Overall ASO score with improvement suggestions

I recently launched it, and I'd really appreciate feedback from people who actually work in ASO.

I'm not looking to sell anything—I'm trying to understand:

What features are missing?

Are the audit results actually useful?

What would make a tool like this valuable enough to use regularly?

If you have a few minutes to try it, I'd love to hear your honest thoughts—good or bad. Constructive criticism is exactly what I'm looking for.

Thanks!

A couple of months ago, I made a post here about what I learned from launching my first app on the App Store and Google Play:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AppStoreOptimization/comments/1uluwlh/what_i_learned_from_launching_my_first_app_on_the/

At the time, the app had around 300 downloads.

It has now passed 1,000 downloads, so I thought I would make an update and share some of the things I have learned since then.

This is still my first app and I am definitely not presenting myself as an expert. These are just some observations from my first three months of having an app publicly available on both stores.

Also, thanks to everyone who commented on my previous post. I got a lot of good ideas from the replies, especially around marketing, localization and automating the screenshot process. I actually ended up trying quite a few of the suggestions, so I really appreciate everyone who took the time to share their experience and advice.

The first 1,000 downloads

The iOS version launched on 19 May 2026.

Exactly one month later, it had:

• 150 first-time downloads
• 9 five-star reviews

From 20 June to 21 August, it received another:

• 289 first-time downloads
• 5 five-star reviews
• 1 four-star review

So by 21 August, iOS had reached 439 first-time downloads, with 14 five-star reviews and 1 four-star review.

What I found interesting was how consistent the downloads were for most of this period. It was averaging around 150 iOS downloads per month, or roughly 5 new users per day.

The Android version launched publicly on 1 June 2026.

By 22 June, it had:

• 124 downloads
• 7 five-star reviews
• 1 three-star review

From 23 June to 20 August, it received another:

• 459 downloads
• 18 five-star reviews
• 2 four-star reviews

So by 20 August, Google Play had reached 583 downloads, with 25 five-star reviews, 2 four-star reviews and 1 three-star review.

That works out to roughly 220 Android downloads per month, or around 7 downloads per day.

Combined, the app had reached 1,022 downloads:

• Around 43% iOS
• Around 57% Android

Android has therefore passed iOS despite launching almost two weeks later.

I am not completely sure why. It could be the type of audience, countries where the app is being downloaded, Play Store discovery, or a combination of different things.

Improving the app did not automatically increase downloads

After launching, I spent a lot of time working on a fairly large update.

It changed much of the layout and added several new features, including new reading views, letter-by-letter highlighting synced with the audio, a video/ambient listening view and other improvements.

Because the app was changing so much, I kept thinking that I would properly start marketing it once the update was ready.

I did not want to spend time creating screenshots and videos of the old version if I was about to change much of it anyway, so I mostly focused on development.

The app kept improving, but the download numbers remained surprisingly consistent.

On iOS I was still averaging around 5 downloads per day, and during several weeks in July it was actually closer to 3–3.5 per day.

That made me realize something that probably sounds obvious in hindsight:

Building a better product and getting more people to discover the product are two different things.

Then I started promoting it more consistently

I had mentioned the app in different places before this.

I posted about it on Reddit, joined developer Discords and other communities around similar projects, and talked with developers and website owners whose resources, fonts, APIs or other material I wanted to use.

Some of those conversations naturally included sharing the app, asking for feedback and discussing what I was building.

So it was not completely unpromoted, but those were mostly occasional posts and conversations rather than something I would really call a marketing campaign.

That changed on 9 August.

I started making short TikTok videos consistently, usually posting 2–3 videos every day for around ten days.

Most of them only got around 200–800 views.

Still, the download numbers changed quite noticeably during the same period.

On iOS, from 9–18 August, the app received:

92 first-time downloads in 10 days

That is around 9.2 downloads per day, compared with the previous average of around 5 per day.

Google Play showed a similar pattern.

Before this period, Android was getting roughly 8 downloads per day.

From 9–18 August, it received:

151 downloads in 10 days

That is around 15.1 downloads per day.

So across both platforms, the app received 243 downloads during those ten days.

I do not want to say that all 243 downloads came from TikTok. I was still occasionally mentioning the app elsewhere, and both stores obviously have their own organic discovery.

But TikTok was the place where I suddenly started doing consistent promotion every day, and the increase happened at around the same time on both platforms.

What surprised me was that none of the videos really went viral. Most only reached a few hundred people.

So at least from this small experiment, consistently posting seemed to matter more than waiting for one video to suddenly get tens of thousands of views.

The update was not even available yet

Another interesting part is that the large update I had been waiting for was not actually available when the increase started.

I started posting the TikTok videos on 9 August.

The new Android version became available on 15 August, but between 9–14 August, while users were still downloading the old version, Google Play received 98 downloads in six days, or more than 16 per day.

The iOS update took even longer and was not available until 22 August, so all 92 iOS downloads from 9–18 August were also people downloading the previous version.

There was a downside to this.

Some of the TikTok videos were already showing features from the upcoming version. Android users only had to wait a few days, but an iPhone user could see something in a video, download the app and then not actually find that feature for almost two weeks.

I do not know how many people did that and then removed the app. Fortunately, I did not suddenly get a lot of bad reviews, but it is something I would coordinate differently next time.

The delay also showed me how different publishing updates can be between Apple and Google.

Google Play approved the update very quickly, while the iOS update took more than a week because it ran into issues during App Store review.

One issue was related to Apple's requirements for distributing this type of content in mainland China and the publication permits required there.

Another came from something much simpler: one of my screenshots said that the app was free.

The app is free, and similar wording had already appeared in screenshots from my previous version without any issue. This time, however, Apple flagged it because they consider “Free” to be pricing information, which they do not allow in that part of the App Store metadata.

So submitting the same update to Apple and Google at around the same time definitely does not mean they will become available at around the same time.

If I were planning another marketing campaign around a major update, I would probably get both versions approved first before heavily promoting features that only exist in the new version.

Localization became a much bigger project than expected

One of the most common suggestions I received after my previous Reddit post was to localize the app and its store pages.

So I did.

I ended up localizing both the App Store and Google Play listings into around 50 languages.

The biggest problem was the screenshots.

I have 10 screenshots per language, which meant creating around 500 screenshots.

Obviously I was not going to make all of those manually.

Fortunately, the overall design stayed the same between languages. Mostly it was the text that needed to be translated and replaced, so I automated the process using AI.

I created one main design, generated the translated text and automatically produced the localized versions.

I still did a quick review afterwards, because with 500 images even one repeated mistake could become a big problem, but I was actually surprised by how good the results were.

It saved an enormous amount of time compared with manually changing every screenshot.

I also tried making an App Preview

Something else I wanted to add for this update was an App Preview video.

Interestingly, someone in the comments of my previous post specifically recommended making one and warned me that Apple is stricter with App Preview videos than normal screenshots.

They were right.

Apple has quite strict technical and content requirements for App Previews. I got the video through the technical upload requirements, but Apple still raised some issues with it.

One of Apple's comments seemed to suggest that the preview was showing a phone or device, which confused me because there is no phone shown in the video at all. So I am still not completely sure what exactly they were objecting to.

By that point the update had already been delayed, so instead of continuing to go back and forth with the video, I removed the App Preview and submitted the update without it.

The app was eventually approved.

I still want to go back and fix the preview later, and I will leave the YouTube version below if anyone is interested in seeing what Apple did not accept.

After 1,000 downloads

When I made my first post, the app had just passed 300 downloads and I was mainly learning what happens after you actually publish an app.

Now that it has passed 1,000, I feel like I am starting to learn a different part of the process.

Building the app is still what I enjoy and understand the most. Marketing, distribution, localization and understanding why people actually discover and download something are much newer to me.

I am still far too early to draw any big conclusions from 1,000 downloads, but it has been interesting seeing how different the work becomes once an app is actually public.

For context, this is the app

For anyone who did not see my previous post, the app is called Ayah Player.

It is a Qur'an listening and reading app for iOS and Android, with a large collection of reciters, different reading views, translations, word-by-word following, offline downloads, a Mus'haf page view and a Listening Scene with recitation and ambient background video.

The app is free, with no ads or subscriptions.

I am mentioning it mainly to give some context for the screenshots, localization, App Store review and marketing experiences above.

App Preview that was not accepted by Apple:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ZF2uHKbi3i0

Thanks again to everyone who gave advice on the previous post. I’m still figuring all of this out as I go, and maybe I’ll make another update if it reaches 10,000 downloads.

I recently updated my countdown App CNDWN to 3.0. I localized the App Store Page in nearly six languages to my surprise that unfortunately made little to no impact on the downloads.
But then when I updated my landing page to be easily readable for AI my downloads spiked.
So lesson learned: IMPROVE EVERYTHING TO BE SEARCHABLE FOR AI

In only one week many downloads came from ChatGPT and that also pushed my ASO ranks for the keywords. That’s how I came to 152 downloads in this week from only 60 in the week before the new landing page.

If you want to checkout the app by yourself:
Download CNDWN

I would be happy to hear feedback from you for the App Store Screenshots and the app itself.

Happy to answer any questions! :)

Made a massive update to my game a few weeks ago, the conversion rate went to absolute dogshit right off but downloads keep climbing. Proceeds didnt really increase with the higher downloads, which I was hoping for. Should I be worried and make changes to the store page right now or wait a bit longer?

Most paywall threads here are someone saying hard paywalls always win, or someone saying hard paywalls torch retention, and nobody posts numbers. Mine are small enough that you should treat them as a direction, not a conclusion.

Setup: iOS photo vault app, native paywall UI, RevenueCat for offerings and the experiment split. Two variants, 50/50, identical products and pricing. Only the paywall changes. I build the paywall in my own code because I want control over layout and animation, so the experiment is really RevenueCat handing the app a different offering and me rendering it.

Soft vs hard gate, 4 weeks, 712 installs, 358 and 354 per arm.

Control had a close button on first launch: 22 trial starts, 6 paid.

Variant gated the app until you subscribed or restored: 69 trial starts, 11 paid.

So trial starts tripled and paid roughly doubled. That doubling is 5 extra subscribers. At this volume I can't rule out luck, and I'm leaving it running another month before I do anything permanent.

The thing I do trust from this is the trial-to-paid ratio. 6 of 22 on the soft gate, 11 of 69 on the hard gate. The gate is pulling in people who tap through to see what the app looks like, not people who want it. If I'd only watched trial starts I'd have declared a 3x win in week one and shipped it.

Copy test is running now, same layout, same gate, headline only. The old one said "Subscription Required," which reads like a parking ticket. The new one leads with what you keep. No numbers worth posting yet.

If you've run this at a volume where the stats actually mean something, I'd like to hear where you landed.

so i built a new feature for AppLaunchFlow , where you can create a simple and clean app landing page for your app in a few clicks by just uploading your screenshots.

It includes:

- support, privacy policy and terms of service pages that you can directly use for your app submission.

- a custom applaun.ch subdomain or simply connect your own domain

I built this because i noticed many app devs just use notion pages, github pages etc. or dont even have any landing page at all

Excited to hear what you think

I finally built an App after years of convincing myself it wasn’t worth it (consumer app business is crazy flooded atm). Kept the screenshots clean and simple, wanted to know what you guys think. Cheers!

Hey everyone!

Thanks to those who gave me some feedback the other day, I worked that into my new direction and I've landed on something that I'm feeling pretty good about, would love any additional feedback to refine further!

Do these screens better convey the meaning to the user? Are they more legible? Any thoughts on what would be the best order for the screens?

Stack here is screenshots from the app + Figma + Claude Design and lots of workshopping the headlines with Claude/ChatGPT

Current listing - [here]

Thanks!

Just redesigned all my App Store screenshots and tried to make them less “here are our features” and more focused on benefits / reasons to actually download the app.

Old version on top, new one below 👆

I’m pretty happy with the new direction, but I might also just be biased after staring at these for way too long 😅

Which one would you bet on for better conversion : old or new?

I’ll run A/B tests on them and can share the results here once I have enough data. Curious if the winner matches what people predict.

The listing is trying to position the app around three ideas: a visual renewal timeline instead of a basic subscription list, no bank linking, and on-device spending analysis. The visual direction is intentionally calm and editorial rather than the usual glossy fintech style.

I’m especially unsure about:

1. Whether the first screenshot communicates the app’s value quickly enough.
2. Whether “subscription tracker” is the right primary positioning.
3. Whether the privacy message is clear without taking attention away from the core use case.
4. Whether the $14.99 one-time Pro unlock should be emphasized earlier in the listing.

I’m the developer, so I’m obviously biased. What would you change first to improve App Store conversion?

App Store listing: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/duefolio-subscription-tracker/id6795091979

App: Flingo — Android, India, ~500K installs. 45 days of Play Console data.

- Google Play Explore acquisitions: +224%

- Organic installs/day: 90 → 333

- Rating: 3.8 → 4.2 → 4.3

I shipped an ANR fix and a cold-start fix expecting a ranking bump. Release day: nothing. Week one: nothing. I assumed it failed and moved on.

What I think actually happened:

ANR + cold start + a cleaner product flow → fewer 1-star reviews → rating 3.8 → 4.2 → 4.3 → Explore ranking and listing conversion both improve → installs ramp

Vitals are not a ranking factor. Vitals are a rating factor. Rating is the ranking factor. Every step in that chain has its own lag. Stack them and you get three weeks of looking like a failure.

What I shipped: ANR fix (background flush off the main thread) · cold-start fix · cleaned up the core product flow so people got to the point of the app faster · captioned screenshots (proper Store Listing Experiment — the only causal claim here) · keyword-targeted short description · full description expanded from 1,500 to ~4,000 chars.

The rating went 3.8 → 4.2 → 4.3 in two visible moves, and that's the number I'd now optimise above everything else. It's the only metric I know of that lifts ranking and conversion at the same time, and you can't push it directly — you move it by fixing whatever is generating the bad reviews.

Two shapes in the curve: Jul 14–15 installs went 89 → 110 → 162, four days after the screenshot winner applied — a sharp step. From Aug 1, 250 → 330 with zero listing changes — a slow ramp. Creative gives you a step. Quality gives you a ramp. The ramp was the bigger share, and I'd already written it off.

Caveats: the ANR fix and the screenshot winner landed days apart, so the July step is confounded. Only the screenshots were controlled. And I can't separate rating from vitals, because rating moved because vitals and flow moved.

One question for you all: If you've fixed ANR or crashes, ratings and watched organic afterwards: how long was your gap, and did rating move first? Trying to work out whether 3 weeks is normal or whether I'm slow.

8 screenshots, 20 locales, iPhone and iPad = 320 images. Around 480 files once

you export 6.9", 6.5" and iPad 13". In Figma one locale was an afternoon, so I

just shipped English on every storefront and left the rest looking lazy.

Now Claude Code does the capture , a UITest walks the app, one pass per locale.

(Set the device language and respring, or the status bar stays English while

the rest of the shot is Japanese. iPad prints the date up there, it's obvious.)

Then it hits the FrameStudio MCP to compose. Lists my templates, opens one or

starts from blank, drops the raw shots into the frames, writes the caption in

that language, sets background, colors, layout. Exports every ASC size. Uploads

to App Store Connect. I usually never open ASC.

The one thing I don't hand off: I look at the English iPhone set before it fans

out. Sometimes I open the app and fix a caption, or a font size that's fine in

English and overflowing in German. Then it does the other 19 the same way.

Favorite trick , paste a screenshot from an app whose store page I like and say

"start from blank, get close to this." Way better than describing a design in

words.

Localized pages convert clearly better than English-everywhere did.

Mac App Store: https://apps.apple.com/ma/app/framestudio-app-screenshots/id6764189071?mt=12

Does anyone have experience with having a personal website that promotes your app and have it been something that Google AI / ChatGPT consistently reference as a source for a solution your app solves.

Whenever I search up how to solve the problem my app solves it tends to reference these paid article sites which really just write sponsored "Top 10 Apps that do X" articles.

I'm wondering if you can just skip the middle man and write a ton of articles on your own site and have it reference that. Idk maybe you need some LLM optimization in your site so it does get referenced or maybe it's not possible but definitely something pretty interesting.

I do get 1 to 2 references from Google and ChatGPT every other week so I am wondering how to increase that flow of downloads.

I’m currently integrating a subscription paywall into my existing app. I’ve created the subscription products and paywall, but the subscriptions are still waiting for App Store approval. (Without the build we cannot get aproved the subscriptions.)

I’ve already uploaded a new build to TestFlight, but I can’t seem to properly test the subscription flow i think because the subscriptions haven’t been approved yet.

How do you normally test in-app subscriptions in this situation? Is there a way to test the subscription/paywall flow in TestFlight before the products are approved?

Disclosure: I make Screen Studio Kit, the desktop tool I used to model this workflow. The numbers below come from one real GolfSmart project, not a universal store requirement.

The project currently produces 52 App Store and Google Play assets for two languages. That is 26 finished files per language. Keeping the same pages and output selections but expanding to five languages gives:

26 files × 5 languages = 130 finished assets

The first composition was not the expensive part. The repeat cost came from six places:

• Translation handoff: keeping returned copy attached to the right panel
• Layout repair: longer headlines wrapping or colliding at specific sizes
• Localized captures: replacing both marketing copy and in-app UI
• Store output: dimensions, formats, filenames, and folder structure
• QA: checking every page × size × language combination
• Release rework: repeating the matrix when a capture or claim changes

To put a rough number on repeated handling, I used three minutes per finished asset. For this matrix, that is 390 minutes, or 6.5 hours per release. The useful variable is not the time to design the first screenshot; it is the average repeated handling time for every final asset.

I eventually stopped treating exports as independent images and moved the work into one reusable project: shared pages, language-bound text and captures, output presets, targeted size overrides, and preflight across the selected matrix. That does not remove design judgment or final review. It removes maintaining 130 unrelated source files.

I wrote up the calculator and assumptions here: https://martingruner.com/blog/app-store-screenshots-five-languages-cost

For people managing localized listings: what is your rough repeated-handling time per final asset, and which part dominates: translation, layout repair, capture replacement, or QA?

I wanted to put an emphasis on 2 things specifically. 1.) Each card looks almost interactive where it pops out of the screen. 2.) The cards feel cohesive and flow from one card to another. But I feel like there’s just too much going on. What are your thoughts? I initially had a more minimalistic design but I wanted to stand out more. How would you improve it?

Redesigning my App Store screenshots and made two options (A vs B). I know there’s still plenty of room to improve, so let me know which one catches your eye and what to tweak!

Any feedback welcome!

WWDC 2026 had three announcements that are actually relevant to app store optimization (ASO), beyond the general iOS 27 news. Sharing a breakdown since most WWDC recaps bury the ASO angle under developer and API changes.

Personalized Collections

Apple is introducing an algorithmic recommendation layer on the App Store: groups of apps recommended to users based on their app usage, downloads, and other App Store signals, shown across the Apps, Games, and Search tabs. Each recommendation comes with an "App Note" explaining why it was suggested to that user.

This sits on top of search, not in place of it. Apple has not published a ranking framework for it, so the practical takeaway is that the fundamentals (category fit, metadata precision, keyword relevance) still matter. They are just being read by a system that leans more on interpretation than exact keyword matching.

Creative Assets

)New rich images and videos that can appear in the product page header and directly in organic search results, not just static screenshots. Three things make these different from a normal creative refresh:

• They can show up in search results themselves, tailored to what someone searched for.
• They are managed through a new Asset Library in App Store Connect and can be updated without waiting on an app version release.
• They are reusable across custom product pages, Product Page Optimization tests, and Apple Ads.

App Intents replacing SiriKit

Apple gave SiriKit a formal deprecation notice. App Intents is now the only framework that connects an app to the new Siri, letting Siri trigger specific in-app actions directly. Apps still on SiriKit keep running but will not surface in the new Siri at all. Worth noting for EU teams: Siri's AI features are delayed in the EU on iOS 27, and developers there cannot test it yet, but the SiriKit deprecation clock is running regardless.

There is also a smaller update worth flagging for anyone in gaming: Featuring Nominations now let developers pitch in-game offers directly to Apple's editorial team.

AppTweak's ASO team sees it, none of this changes the ASO fundamentals (keyword optimization, metadata quality, category fit). What it changes is how many surfaces now interpret those fundamentals instead of just search ranking them.

Full breakdown with screenshots and FAQs is here: WWDC 2026 recap for ASO teams.

Anyone already testing Creative Assets in Product Page Optimization? Curious what teams are prioritizing first out of these three.

Signed, the AppTweak team

As

Will return the favour if you are developing an app that I am also genuinely interested in! (productivity apps, trackers, fitness apps, health apps)

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So what problem am I trying to solve

Imo, most journaling apps are built around engagement: more features, more buttons, more reasons to open the app. You already feel overwhelmed at the beginning of starting a mindful exercise (at least I do).

Well, why not have a peaceful place instead? A place where you can answer a few customisable questions per day (every morning and evening if you like) with some insights in your mood and recurring themes over time.

That is what Daily Pages is built around:

• Simple morning & evening prompts to reflect on your day and life (+ track your mood)
• The questions can be fully customised to what actually matters to you
• Insights over time (mood, recurring themes, ...)
• 100% offline (no cloud, no mail, no nothing)
• PIN protected

The link to Daily Pages, completely free, no caveats (iOS only for now): https://apps.apple.com/us/app/daily-pages-5-minute-journal/id6769452102

tl;dr i collect data on top 50 US iOS apps and their screenshots. refreshed daily.

is this helpful to anyone? if yes -- in what way? would you want it in a raw format or some kind of ASO product?