Apple App Store Diary Part 1

I thought I would share some of my experiences with publishing our DPart IPhone app to the Apple App Store.

• It took about 9 days for Apple to approve the initial release of the app
• I've updated the app twice and both times it has taken 7 days before it was approved

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• I wasn't sure how apple would index the app so it could be found in searches.  Modern SEO strategies pack keywords into the body of a web page to rank higher in search results as the meta "keyword" doesn't get used anymore.  Thinking that apple would work like that I put more focus on my description that would be shown in the App Store than the keywords.  Come to find out, Apple doesn't use what you put in your app description to match searches.  Form what I can tell search results are completely driven from the 100 character keywords you supply when submitting your app.
• More on keywords.  The initial keywords that I used were all one work keywords like "disney, bus, and transportation."  Thinking that if someone searched for "disney bus" the app would be returned in the search results.  I was wrong.  Searching for "disney bus" on the app store did not return DPart. For last month the app was downloaded about 15 times and 10 of them were from friends and family.
• Even more on keywords.  In the last release of DPart I took a different strategy with keywords and I used 2 word keywords.  And what do you know.  Searching for "disney bus" now returns DPart in the search results.  The app is getting download 25+ times a day with 95% coming from the US.
• One more note on keywords.  It took about 6-12 hours for my new keywords to go into effect on the App Store after my last update.
• I made one other change with the latest release.  I change the app name from "DPart" to "Disney World Park Bus Wait Times and Schedule - DPart".  I don't know if this has any effect on search results, but after looking how a lot of apps are named it seemed like adding more information in your app title was the thing to do.  Apple gives you more character in the title than they do for keywords so why let those characters go to waste!  One thing it does help is give people a quick blurb about your app as they scroll through the search results and this can help increase downloads.

Getting found and adoption is really hard.  Going from 0 downloads to 25 a day practically overnight was a good start.  There are many other ways of getting your app found, but there is no silver bullet.  I believe that it will be lots of little things that get your app found and you can't do too much at once.  Because if you do too much at once it becomes impossible to measure what works and what doesn't.  

For example, bickster.com is not getting any traffic, and the apple store landing page for the app is not coming up on the first page of google, so I know all of my downloads are coming from the App Store.

I do wish apple would provide some more statistics about the App Store.  Here is my wish list.

1. Keyword Tool - It would be very help if Apple would provide a Keyword tool like Google AdWords.  I used Google's Keyword Tool to come up with the keywords for the App Store, but I have no clue what people are really searching for.
2. Landing Page Stats - I would love to know how people are visiting the DPart App Store landing web page and what they do once they get to the page.  How many click "Download"? How many don't?
3. Search Rank - How do apps get ranked in App Store search results?  Do the number of reviews effect your rank?  Does the amount of stars/rating effect rank?  The age of your app effect rank?  Many these conditions are posted somewhere, but I can't find them.
4. Update Keywords - You can't update your app's keywords unless you update your app.  Would be nice to tweak your keywords to see what works and what doesn't without having to release a new binary.

My next objective is to increase the number of downloads from 25 a day to 50. To do this,  I would like to find a sustainable way to generate more interest in the app.  I can make some facebook posts and get another 25 people to download the app, but that will be a one time event as I don't think this app will go viral over night.  I guess I'm looking for suggestions. Anyone?

-cb