6 Best Practices for Writing Great App Store Descriptions

You've got your app name and mobile app icon sorted. Your potential user was interested enough to open your app's page, now it's time to convince and convert that opportunity in a download. That's what your app store description is for (along with icon and screenshots).

When it comes to app store optimization, your description is a big part. It's the part that's going to seal the deal, after your hard work to get potential users on the hook.

Read on and we'll share some tips on how to write an app store description that produces more app downloads.

App Store Description Writing Tips

Want to write better app store descriptions? It's not rocket science - you don't need a degree in marketing or copywriting to figure it out.

Anyone can write an app store description that captures the reader's attention, clearly and concisely explaining why they should download your app.

Here are some tips.

Start your description with something that really grabs the attention.

Go take a look at the App Store and have a look at how much of the app store description is shown by default (before you click ‘More’). Not much, is it? On Apple's App Store you have about three lines of text. That’s how long you have to convince a user that your app might be worth their attention.

Unless that first sentence makes you want to read more or take a look at the screenshots, you’re going to be losing potential customers at the first hurdle. Be concise and make it interesting.

So make it the best pitch you can come up explaining what your app does, who it does it for and why it's unique or better than others.

Here's some great advice for what to include, courtesy of Joanna Wiebe of CopyHackers.

• Lead with the most powerful, crisply stated message that your visitor wants to see
• Cut the nonsense or filler – like “Our product is designed in Florida to…” – and just get straight to what the damn thing does and why that’s awesome
• Make the user want to click to learn more (so, in many cases, TEASE!)

Be clear about the category of app that you’re selling

Clarity is key here. If it’s a game, don’t leave them guessing. Tell them.

Explain exactly what makes your app unique – why should people choose you over the competition? Make sure it isn’t just a long list of features.

Include social proof and validation

You can tell someone that your app is the best. But anyone can say that about their app, whether it's true or not. You need to include something in your app store description to convince the target user that it's worth downloading.

Add any press mentions, blog reviews or customer testimonials. Anything that can back up your claims on how good your app is.

Talk about benefits and features

The meat of your app store description is the features and benefits.

What does the app do - and how does it benefit the user?

The best technique to list features and make sure they're relevant and help you "close the sale" is to always ask yourself why each is important for your user/customer. Answer the "why it's important" question for each of your features, and mention it just before or after the feature itself.

By following this simple technique, you take the perspective of your user or customer and explain your features together with the benefit they offer. If you come across a neat technical feature but you can't come up with a reason why it matters, then just skip it, it's not about quantity.

Remember, this is a sales and marketing document not a tech spec

This is especially important if you’re using bullet points. Make it about them, your users, not your app or its technical superiority.

This is sales, you need to convince and overcome objections. Some of these might be about whether the app is completely free or not, whether an iPad or tablet version is available or how frequently content in the app is updated. Make sure to mention these points, perhaps using a bullet point list, to overcome common objections (you'll learn from user reviews what people are concerned with).

How about keywords?

While on Apple's App Store descriptions are not considered in the ranking algorithm, they do count on Google Play, so you should be quite careful about how and what words you use. Our recommendation to improve the discoverability of your app is inserting your main keyword once in the title, and 5 times in the description.

A great app store description will increase your app's relevance to potential users, and increase your chance of getting featured in the app store.