If you've had to move in this decade, odds are you searched for your new home using an app. They know your location, make searching very simple, and even send you alerts.
That's the good... The bad is that moving is one of those things nearly everyone has to do, so it's a pretty competitive field to be in.
Homesnap, a platform for finding houses, is an excellent example of an app that isn't the leader in its category (yet) that's using ASO to get more downloads, and in this teardown, we'll be looking at how it managed to maintain its downloads while direct competitors lost as much as 40% of theirs.
Overall, Homesnap gets an A+ 🎉
FYI - we advised Homesnap on its keyword strategy. Our suggestions were based on our analysis of competitors and research of more than 5,000 keywords using our ASO tools. Our advice isn't what earned it the A+. The results did.
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COVID did a number on real estate apps, but it also pushed home searching even more to apps. Here's how it's performing in the U.S. App Store, based on our Competitor Intelligence:
Homesnap, which comes from the B2B side to the consumer side, is facing stiff competition from household (ha. ha.) names that have been advertising for years. On the App Store, however, the right ASO strategy can help you get ahead by learning from them and then applying it better.
The highlights:
Affordable tools for ASO, Competitive Intelligence, and Analytics.
Let's kick off the analysis with the keywords Homesnap is using in its name and subtitle. Those send the strongest signals to the App Store's algorithm.
Strictly based on these, here are the popular keywords the algorithm sees:
Let's take a look at where Homesnap is ranked for these keywords:
While there are many keywords relevant to real estate and home buying, Homesnap picked a set that's fairly focused. it might seem limiting, but that's actually a great strategy to use when competing against apps that have more downloads.
The "trick" to this strategy is to experiment with different sets and then pick the keywords that worked best from each and stitch them into a single set that spans the name, subtitle, and keyword list.
Takeaways:
Now, let's reverse-engineer the keyword list. The list isn't public, but we can attempt to uncover it by looking at all other keywords the app is ranked in. We believe it looks something like the following:
rental,apartment,finder,find,house,home,buy,sell,realtor,condo,broker,property,open,renting
The real estate market is very competitive. To get broader visibility, Homesnap uses its keyword list to expand on the main keywords with terms that are relevant to its industry.
You'll notice competitors aren't being mentioned. That's good! You'll also notice keywords from the name/subtitle are used in the keyword list but in modified form. For example, the keyword "rent" appears in the app's subtitle, and is then modified into "rental" and "renting" in the keyword list, to capture more searches.
This is a clean and targeted keyword list. Does your keyword list contain competitor names?
Takeaways:
This combo of name, subtitle, and keyword list gives Homesnap a bit more than just the name and subtitle alone. Here are some of the highlights:
When ASO is done right, the name, subtitle, and keyword list come together and give the algorithm a lot of potential keyword combinations to rank the app in. And it's working. Based on our keyword discovery, Homesnap is in the top 10 of 100 keywords in the U.S. App Store.
Colors, captions, highlights. This is a great set of screenshots to learn from.
What's great about these screenshots:
I only have two nitpicks here, and only because there's not much else to optimize:
Homesnap has an App Preview, so we have something to analyze!
It's worth noting that all of its direct competitors also have one, so it's no longer about just having a video but also about squeezing out the most potential out of it.
Homesnap does that very well by showing the app's UI and captions to describe what's going on. The video takes you through searching for a house, all the insight Homesnap offers so you can make a more informed decision, all the way down to how the app uses AR to show you the property lines and that you can search by commute time (which is pretty nice).
Crafting the "perfect" video is a challenge because, just like keywords, you have to figure out what the users care about most. In this sense, the keywords you choose should align well with what your video is highlighting.
Takeaways:
Homesnap is doing pretty well and is on the right track t do even better. All done! Right?
Not at all. App Store Optimization is an iterative process that relies on momentum as much as it relies on intelligence.
To really succeed, Homesnap must build on top of this success, and there are two ways to do that:
Each has its potential but also its pitfalls. The key, however, is to continue iterating. The only wrong answer to "what to do next" is "nothing".
I did this entire analysis with our App Store Optimization and Competitor Intelligence tools, the same ones hundreds of thousands of app makers rely on to monitor and optimize their apps. Appfigures gives you the tools to get ahead + outsmart your competitors. Get started →
Download and revenue figures used in this teardown are estimates created by our Competitor Intelligence tools.
Ariel analyzes apps submitted by the audience using his checkup process + answers questions about App Store Optimization (ASO).
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