App Store Optimisation for Indie Apps: What Actually Moves Installs

App Store Optimisation has a reputation for being a bit of a dark art. It is not. It is a small number of fields and assets on your App Store and Google Play listings, most of which indie developers leave on default. Fixing them is one of the cheapest growth levers you have after launch.

This post is what we have learned from shipping and tuning the listings for our own apps, including Starting Lineup, Netball Lineup, and Golf Handicapp. It is opinionated, because most ASO advice on the internet is a long list of things to do and not enough about what actually moves the needle.

The Four Things That Actually Move Installs

In order of how much they matter for an indie app trying to grow from a small base:

1. App name and subtitle (iOS) or short description (Android)

This is where search weight lives. Apple and Google both index these fields heavily, and they are also the first thing a human sees when your app appears in a result.

Your app name should be your brand. Your subtitle, or short description on Android, should be the keywords a real person would type when they have your problem. Not your tagline. Not a slogan. The phrase someone would search.

For Golf Handicapp, the brand goes in the name and "AI Scorecard" goes in the subtitle. People search for the feature. We let the listing say what the app does in the words they would use.

2. The first two screenshots

The first two screenshots, and on Android the feature graphic, are where install decisions happen. Not the long description. Most users will not scroll. They will look at the first two screenshots and decide.

Treat them like a billboard. One feature each, one short line of text each, and that text should be benefits or proof, not descriptions of the UI.

Lead with whichever of these you have:

• A signature feature ("Fast AI Round Entry")
• Social proof ("14k+ users, 5k courses")
• A clear before/after of the user's life with the app

Save the deep feature tour for screenshots three through six. Most people will not get that far, but the ones who do are already most of the way to installing.

3. The icon

The icon is your CTR lever. Two apps with identical listings and different icons can have wildly different install rates from the same search results.

Keep it simple. One concept. Readable at 60 pixels. If you are testing, change the icon on its own and wait, because if you change three things at once you will not know which one mattered.

4. The iOS keyword field

iOS gives you 100 characters of hidden keywords. Use all 100. Comma-separated, no spaces between commas, do not repeat words that are already in your name or subtitle. Pluralise differently from your name so you cover both forms. Include the words a beginner would use, not just the technical ones.

This is the only field on the listing where you can target keywords without affecting how the listing reads to a human. Treat it accordingly.

The Tool We Use For Screenshots

Good screenshots used to mean designing in Figma or Photoshop, lining up device frames by hand, and exporting at every required size for every device. It was a half-day job per app, easily.

We now use AppLaunchpad for ours. It is a browser-based screenshot generator with ready-made layouts, device frames, and text tools, and it handles the export sizes for both the App Store and Google Play automatically. You upload your in-app screenshots, pick a layout, write your one-line text overlay, and it spits out a full set in every device size you need.

For indie apps this is a huge unlock. The first time we used it on a listing, what would have been a half day of fiddly design work was an afternoon, and the output looks better than what we used to ship by hand. If you have not seen it, it is worth a look before you start a new listing or refresh an old one.

We do not have any commercial relationship with them. We just use the tool a lot and most of our recent app screenshots come out of it.

Stuff Most ASO Posts Overstate

A few things you will read elsewhere that we do not think are worth much for an indie app at the early stage:

• Long descriptions on iOS. Apple does not index them for search the way Google does. They are cosmetic on iOS. Write something readable, do not stuff keywords, move on.
• Preview videos. Nice to have once you have a polished app. Not a needle-mover for a small listing. Get the screenshots right first, add a video later if you have the time.
• Switching categories to find a "less competitive" one. Categories matter for browse, not search. If your app is a golf app, put it in golf. Trying to game the category usually backfires.
• Endless keyword tools. They give the illusion of insight. For most indie apps the keywords are obvious if you can describe what your app does in plain English.

What We Test And How Often

The temptation when you read an ASO post is to change everything at once. Do not.

Pick one element. Change it. Wait two weeks. Compare installs and conversion rate against the baseline.

Apple has Product Page Optimisation, which lets you A/B test up to three variants of your icon, screenshots, or preview video on iOS. Google Play has Store Listing Experiments for the same on Android. Both are free, both are built into the consoles, and most indie developers have never opened them.

We aim for one change per app per fortnight. That is slow enough to actually see what worked, and fast enough that you make real progress over a quarter.

Watch-outs

A few ways ASO can go wrong:

• Keyword stuffing in the name. Apple will reject this in review. Do not put "Golf Handicap Tracker WHS GPS Score Card AI" in your app name. Your brand goes in the name. Keywords go in the keyword field.
• Screenshots that do not match the app. Apple will reject these too, and even if they pass, you will get refund-rate problems and bad reviews.
• Reviews are downstream of the actual app. No amount of ASO will rescue an app that crashes or confuses people. ASO drives installs. The product drives retention. Both matter.
• Localising before you have product-market fit. Translating your listing into 12 languages is a way to feel productive without growing. Do it once you have a market that works in English.

When You Should Care About ASO

The honest answer is: when you have a working product and you want more users.

If you are pre-launch or pre-product-market-fit, ASO is not your bottleneck. The bottleneck is the product itself, and you should be talking to users. We have a post on starting with an MVP that goes into how to think about that.

Once you have an app people are sticking with, ASO is one of the highest-leverage things you can do. A few hours of work on the listing, a refreshed icon, a sharper first screenshot, and you can meaningfully move the conversion rate on every install you were already going to get.

How We Can Help

We design, build, and launch iOS and Android apps end to end, and ASO is part of how we hand them over. If you have an app on the stores and feel like the listing is letting it down, or you are launching something new and want to do it properly the first time, we can help.

Try our quote generator for a ballpark, or get in touch to talk it through.