How to get to number one in the App Store

by Ben Cusack, revolutionmagazine.com 05-Aug-09, 11:30

LONDON - Barclaycard's Waterslide Extreme continues to hold the number one spot in the App Store rankings, after more than two weeks at the top, thanks to great creative and strategic thinking from Dare. For some apps, however, an extra push is required to help them rise up the rankings. Ben Cusack, group creative director at Mobile Interactive Group, takes a look at what options are available.

The Apple App Store recently celebrated it's first birthday and marked it by passing 50,000 application uploads and over one billion collective downloads. Few could have foreseen that the app space in mobile would have taken such a grip in such a short space of time.

Moreover, brands, agencies, content publishers and independent developers are all fighting it out for the hallowed turf on the top App Store spots. These include 'Featured Apps', 'What's Hot' and 'Top 25'. With the 'Featured Apps' and 'What's Hot' charts under Apple's editorial control the 'Top 25' is the place to be.

Barclaycard's Waterslide Extreme held onto the top spot in The Top 25 for two weeks with a reported three million downloads. An amazing achievement given that the average free app hangs around for two to three days and then disappears down the very long Apple long tail.

So what's the secret sauce? Here are my top four techniques that you need to apply to give your application the best possible chance at achieving top spot in the App Store:

Mobile advertising

Banner advertising for Barclaycard's Waterslide Extreme can be found across a bunch of premium mobile internet sites on the iPhone, including The Guardian, Auto Trader and the ITN News App, thanks to the new collapsible ad-format, iSlide.

There is no doubt that throughout the last two weeks mobile advertising has helped drive downloads, keeping the Waterslide game and Barclaycard's branding up there.

Links

Everywhere your application is featured, provide a call to action. Online and emails can feature a deep link into the download page in iTunes while a simple SMS device such as texting a shortcode to get a demo of the app can work well. Importantly, all of this is trackable and measurable.

The community

The App Store community is vast and once you have worked out where it congregates online, engage with it, take time to read your reviews and fix any bugs. You should also submit decent copy for the application description, include reviews and don't forget screen shots.

Seeding

I have around 60 websites and directories that I regularly seed reviews into such as appvee.com and 148apps.com - add your trackable links and off you go.

The brands and developers that have taken the time to carefully prepare app launches will reap the rewards and once the machine is running and supported by these techniques it will gather its own inertia and press coverage.

Ben Cusack is group creative director at Mobile Interactive Group.