Welcome to ASO Teardowns, a series where we dissect the strategies apps use to gain visibility on the App Store and Google Play for you to learn from.
Shopify has the most popular package tracker in the App Store—Shop. Even before lockdowns pushed shopping online, Shop, which was called Arrive up until May, was one of the top shopping apps on the App Store.
In this ASO teardown, we'll analyze how Shop gets top ranks and lots of downloads.
Overall, Shop gets an A.
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Here's how Shop is doing in the U.S. App Store:
Package tracking is a fairly popular search term on the App Store, and popularity breeds competition. However, Shop is in a class of its own when it comes to downloads. Here's how they all stack up, in the U.S. App Store based on our app intelligence:
Notice we didn't include shippers such as UPS or Fedex here. That's because they don't compete with Shop directly in any way on the App Store.
Shopify is a popular brand that's been in the news a lot lately, but Shop's success isn't just a result of good branding. Its attention to ASO and carefully tailored keyword strategy ensures Shop is what App Store users see when they search for a package tracker.
Let's begin by analyzing the keywords Shop uses in the app's name and subtitle. Those send the strongest signals to the App Store's algorithm.
Strictly based on these, Shop is targeting the following:
And here's how they're performing, along with keyword insights:
That's a lot of first place ranks! A great first sign. You can tell a good amount of time was spent crafting these. Both the name and subtitle use all 30 characters (29 for the subtitle, but that's pretty much the same). The subtitle also reads like a sentence and isn't just a list of keywords.
Analyzing Shop's keywords, a few important ones are missing. Namely, "package," which combines with other keywords and forms terms that are more popular than those created by "order." As you'll see below, however, Shop uses those in its keyword list.
In addition to these keywords, the app ranks in a few other popular keywords:
Shop ranks in the top 10 results for more than 20 high popularity terms.
Takeaways:
Suggestions:
Discover new keywords, monitor ranks, and snoop on competitors.
Now, let's reverse-engineer Shop's 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:
package,tracking,track,shipping,ups,fedex,dropship,deliver,payment,local,deal
Shop covers most of the different ways to refer to package tracking, but not all. It's also mentioning some competitors, but not all. Enough to hit the important search terms.
Takeaways:
Elegant, actionable, and pretty easy to read. But why are there only four? While Shop's main set of features is pretty straight forward, their latest expansion into shopping should be highlighted in more than just one screenshot. The other obvious issue with these is the contrast. There isn't enough contrast between the light-gray background and white app UI. Together, they blur and are pretty hard to look at.
Attention spans are pretty limited. If your screenshots, which take up most of the user's screen, can't capture a user's attention quickly, you risk losing the download.
Takeaways:
Suggestions:
Shop doesn't use a video, which feels like a missed opportunity. With such a beautiful design overall, they could put together a half-marketing-half-walkthrough showing the app in action.
Although... they're already leading the by a mile, and a (good) video does take effort.
Takeaways:
On-point keyword strategy, actionable screenshots, and a strong brand give Shop a serious competitive edge. More than a million downloads confirm that. A reminder that regardless of how big (or small) your company is, App Store Optimization is critical to your app's success.
Are you optimizing for the best keywords? Is it working? Should you be doing something else? Our ASO tools will help you understand your performance, how you stack up against the competition, and what you can do to beat them. Get started →
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Ariel analyzes apps submitted by the audience using his checkup process + answers questions about App Store Optimization (ASO).
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