Moses Roth
This may not be an exact quote from Field of Dreams, but it’s true.
There are literally millions of apps out there, so how can you make your app stand out? Especially if (like most of us) you don’t have millions (or even thousands) of dollars to spend on advertising.
Welcome to ASO! ASO stands for App Store Optimization and it means optimizing your app to improve its visibility and ranking in search results.
So let’s get into how you can apply ASO to your app, especially if you develop for Amazon devices.
Part 1: Getting ready to submit your app
Developer name
Before we even get to your app, let’s back up and talk about your company name. It’s not just your app title and keywords that are indexed in search, your developer name is too. So don’t just pick the first thing that comes to mind.
Try to come up with something unique, creative, and appealing. Think Mojang (Minecraft), ConcernedApe (Stardew Valley), or InnerSloth (Among Us). Take a look at list of the biggest indie games of all time. Notice that none of them are from companies called Super Best Free Games, although you’ll find thousands of developers with names just like that. It might seem like using those keywords in your name is a good idea, but it means you and your app will be unmemorable, generic, and you’ll drown in a sea of similar names. Just be sure to avoid breaking policy with IP infringement or other violations.
If you already signed up for an Amazon Developer account and you’re regretting the name you chose, don’t worry! You do not need to open a new account, just follow the guide to update it.
New App Submission
To get started submitting your app, go to the Amazon Developer Console and click “Add a New App”.
App title
Your app’s title is the first impression customers will have. It should be appealing, descriptive, and unique. If it’s a common word or phrase, it will get buried in thousands of search results.
Netflix tells you exactly what it is in a simple word combination. So does Minecraft. So does YouTube. Netflix and YouTube were small startups when they began. Minecraft was the work of an independent developer, and if it had been called something boring like Block Builder, I don’t think it would have gotten very far.
I recommend checking out Google’s guide to influencing your title links in search results.
Category
The importance of choosing the right category for your app can’t be overstated. Customers often find new apps by searching through the categories on their devices. Check out the documentation for more info.
Be sure to choose a sub-category too. This can help customers find your app through manual search when they’re browsing through categories. Some categories even have further refinements. Take advantage of these and let us know what features your app has!
To get some ideas, take a look through this table for categories. The first column has links to default featured sorting and the other two columns are to view category by best sellers and reviews.
| Categories | Best Sellers | Avg. Cust Reviews |
|---|---|---|
| Books & Comics | 🏆 | ⭐️ |
| Business | 🏆 | ⭐️ |
| Communication | 🏆 | ⭐️ |
| Customization | 🏆 | ⭐️ |
| Education | 🏆 | ⭐️ |
| Finance | 🏆 | ⭐️ |
| Food & Drink | 🏆 | ⭐️ |
| Games | 🏆 | ⭐️ |
| Health & Fitness | 🏆 | ⭐️ |
| Kids | 🏆 | ⭐️ |
| Lifestyle | 🏆 | ⭐️ |
| Local | 🏆 | ⭐️ |
| Magazines | 🏆 | ⭐️ |
| Medical | 🏆 | ⭐️ |
| Movies & TV | 🏆 | ⭐️ |
| Music & Audio | 🏆 | ⭐️ |
| News | 🏆 | ⭐️ |
| Novelty | 🏆 | ⭐️ |
| Photo & Video | 🏆 | ⭐️ |
| Productivity | 🏆 | ⭐️ |
| Reference | 🏆 | ⭐️ |
| Shopping | 🏆 | ⭐️ |
| Social | 🏆 | ⭐️ |
| Sports | 🏆 | ⭐️ |
| Transportation | 🏆 | ⭐️ |
| Travel | 🏆 | ⭐️ |
| Utilities | 🏆 | ⭐️ |
| Weather | 🏆 | ⭐️ |
From there, you’ll do Step 2: Target Your App. Review the guides to Supported devices and Availability.
Target audience
If you want your app to be available for all ages, or it’s aimed at children, make sure you read and follow the child-directed app policy, or it may be restricted. If you’ve made an app aimed at kids but haven’t followed policy, it won’t matter how good your ASO is, because it won’t be available for them.
Content rating
Review the Amazon Appstore Content Policy and take an extra look at the Listing and Promotion Policy, which is especially relevant for ASO. That guide will help you make sure your metadata is compliant, so it will be visible to as many people as possible.
For the User Data Privacy, select just the labels your app needs, so you build customer trust.
It may be tempting to rush through these sections and select all or nothing, but that can cause delays, violations, and ultimately hurt searchability and word-of-mouth.
From there, we move on to Step 3: Appstore Details. Choose the right price for your app and then...
Display title
The display title is the title that will appear to customers. By default it’s the same as the app title, but if you want to have a different internal title for your company, you can set the app title as your internal title, and the display title as your external title. So the display title is the one that’s important for ASO.
Descriptions and feature bullets
Keep your descriptions snappy and, of course, descriptive. Even if your app pops up in search results, if the description is confusing or unappealing, the customer won’t download it and it won’t matter. Same thing with the bullets. These can be indexed in search results and LLMs outside of Amazon too.
Keywords
Keywords are optional, but take the option and use them! They are indexed by Amazon’s search algorithm and are super helpful for customers trying to find an app.
Try to imagine the search experience from a customer’s perspective. If you were searching for a great planner app, how would you do that? I’d type “planner app” into the search bar and then pick the one with the best ratings and reviews. I think that’s what most people would do. So if your planner app is called To Do List, make sure you put “planner” in the keywords, so it will be indexed for that search term as well.
| App metadata details | Required? | Max length | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Display title | Required | 200 chars | The title of your app, shown to customers in the Appstore |
| Long description | Required | 4000 chars | A lengthier description of your app, for the Appstore website. |
| Short description | Required | 1200 chars | A brief description of your app, shown on mobile devices. |
| Product feature bullets | Required | 10 lines | Up to 10 key features of your app, one feature per line. These features will appear on the Appstore website, formatted as a bulleted list. |
| Add keywords (optional) | Optional | Search terms used to increase the discoverability of your app, Use a comma or white space to separate your terms. |
Localization
If you're listing your app in multiple locations where they speak other languages, I recommend adding localized descriptions. Portuguese customers are probably not going to be searching for apps using English keywords, they'll use Portuguese. You can even add different display titles for different locations! Check out the guide to Distribute Your App Internationally for more info.
Images and videos
While having good images and videos doesn’t directly influence search results, it of course indirectly influences them. The better your pictures are, the more people will download your app, and the higher your app will rank in search results. Who’s going to download an app with low quality images? They’re going to assume the app is low quality as well.
All apps need to submit tablet assets (including square icons) but only Fire TV apps need to submit Fire TV assets (including 16:9 images). If you have a Fire TV app, you may be tempted to dash off some low quality tablet icons, but these are how customers will see your app on the Amazon website, so make sure these are high quality as well.
From here you can move on to Step 4: Review and Submit. Once you’ve submitted your app, it’s been reviewed, and gone live, you may be tempted to lean back, celebrate, and call it a job well done. And you should! But once you’re done celebrating, there’s a lot more work to be done, so let’s get to it.
Part 2: Your app is live, now what?
What else can you do to make your app the hit it deserves to be?
The customer search experience
What’s it like for a customer searching for an app?
On Fire tablets, customers might search for your app in the universal search bar at the top of the screen or they might search directly in the Amazon Appstore. Check out this video with examples of both kinds of search.
On Fire TV, they might search by typing in the title or they might use Alexa Voice Search.
They’re not always going to take the recommended approach. Customers who aren’t technically savvy are just as valuable as ones who are.
Try searching for your app with as many different approaches as you can. Does your app rank higher on one list than the other? Think about why that might be and work on making your app more searchable on all platforms.
Don’t assume that your app will maintain its ranking. Algorithms change and customers’ tastes change. You should always be working on improving your app and the same goes for the images, keywords, etc.
Ratings & reviews
Monitor the ratings & reviews your app receives. A lot of people want to argue with any negative reviews they receive. But the reviewer is just giving their honest feedback; it doesn’t matter if it’s not fair or not your fault. Think about what you can do to improve their experience! Everyone gets bad reviews now and then, the important thing is how you learn from them.
Ads & promotion
If you have a Fire TV app, you might consider promoting your app with the Fire TV Self-Service Advertising console. It’s easy for a new app to get lost in the mix. Giving it a little promotional push might be all it takes for your app to start being shared organically, via word-of-mouth and high placement in search.
Good luck! There are millions of apps out there and customers are not starved for choice, but if you make something good, people will want it. You just have put in the work to let them know about it.
