A short description has two main purposes:
- Help you rank
- Present information in a favorable way
Help you rank
A short description is one of the best places to add relevant keywords.
Keywords are words and phrases people use to find companies/apps.
Present information in a favorable way
- Make it easy to understand
- Show benefits of using your app
1.0 Make it easy to understand
People prefer information presented in an easy-to-understand way.
We trust things we understand.
This is called cognitive ease.
2.0 Show benefits of using your app
It all starts with understanding better your users:
- Who they are
- What do they know
- What do they want to achieve
- What words do they use
- What are concerns do they have
You can find this information by talking to users and/or reading reviews.
Why do you need to use words they use?
People prefer familiar words.
By showing you an understanding of them and their problems they will think:
This person really gets me and what I need.
(More applicable for screenshots)
Learning more about customers/users always precedes writing.
Features and Benefits
Features explain what your app does/is and the benefits are outcomes users can achieve by using your app.
They explain how your app can make their life better.
Example:
Users might not understand how some features can help them. Using benefits makes it obvious.
How do I come up with benefits?
Waze tells you about traffic, police, crashes
Now ask yourself: So what?
- It will save you time
- Help you organize better
- Less stress
Or you can just read reviews.
- Put most important words at beginning and end.
What others do with their short descriptions.
Some apps keyword stuff their short description. This is either a smart thing or an extremely dumb thing.
Because Google doesn’t like the practice of keyword stuffing.
Short description examples (Best Practices)
Calm starts with social proof. (Join the millions)
What are the life-changing benefits of meditation? It sounds like clickbait. But it made me read screenshots for more information.
They start with the benefit of using Waze. What Waze does and how it helps you save time. I like it.
Straightforward, simple, easy to understand. They also tell you for whom is the app.
Writing advice
Set a 10-minute timer and just write,
- Don’t stop
- Don’t edit
- Write as fast as you can
- Focus on getting ideas down
It should look terrible. That is fine.
Now give it time.
A couple of hours. Go do something else.
Something that doesn’t require you to think much.
Now you can edit.
Final Thoughts
When it comes to ASO, short description impacts both visibility(with keywords) and conversion.
Today we focused more on conversion.
- By making it easier for people to understand what your app does/is (Features)
- Showing how your app can make users' lives better (Benefits)
