Signeasy has been consistently ranking in top 50 iPad Apps and top 100 iPhone apps in business category, download-wise. Post the launch of our completely redesigned iOS app, we got featured on the App Store homepage and we have shared our experience with tips on the same. Â In this post, we will be discussing the impact of being featured on the App Store.
Immediately after the feature, we saw a dramatic increase in our ranking (2nd rank for iPad,  5th rank for iPhone in US App Store and in top 10 for many more countries). In terms of the impact on downloads, our daily downloads increased by 5x on the day of the feature coverage and it stayed at the same level for the whole week. As it turns out, Apple rotates the list of “Best New Apps” every week, beginning on Thursday. Hence, we went down in the rankings a little bit during the following week and after.
Being featured on the App Store increased our downloads but it did not impact our bottom line. We believe that the increased visibility led to more users trying the app but without the intention to use or purchase the app immediately.
Our revenue chart shows that we pretty much continued to stay in the top 10 to 20 grossing apps in business category without any significant uptake in those rankings during the App Store feature period and the following months even. This indicates that the intended users will find organically the app in app Store and purchase as and when needed, as per the expected user flow of discover, download, use and purchase actions.
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After-effects of being featured in the App Store
After the week of special App Store feature, you can still appear in the other spots called “App Store Collections” which are timely and seasonally focused. In our case, we were featured in “Go Paperless”.
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At the end of April, Apple highlighted the best new apps from the current month and we appeared in the “Amazing New Apps” of April.
We got featured in many categories across different App Store collections in more than 100 countries.
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The App Store mentions increased our app visibility, driving downloads and brand awareness of Signeasy. Considering the fact that we do not spend any money on marketing or acquiring app installs, this was a fruitful exercise. Moreover, the feature led to us landing on a very popular online tech show by Leo "The Tech Guy" Laporte and a local USA TV channel.
Lessons learned
There is no clear path to being featured on the App Store, neither is there a definitive result that you can expect. The parameters that we as developers can control are:
1) Improve customer experience to solve their problems in the simplest manner.
2) Continue building a relationship with Apple’s developer relations team to seek their feedback during major updates of your app or integrate with the new technologies in every new major update of Apple's iOS. This definitely catches the attention of App Store editors.
There are different ways to get to the App Stardom, it could either be from the top (getting featured on App Store home page) or from the bottom (getting featured from “what’s hot” and “new and noteworthy” sections) in the App Store. Eventually your app will bubble up to App Store’s top carousal if you continue to believe in your product and excel towards customer awesomeness while keeping up with Apple’s latest and newest iOS design guidelines and technologies.
