ASO for the holidays. Spring season

The holidays are a busy time for ASO, and the spring period is no exception. Although there are much fewer holiday occasions during this calendar period than in winter, as part of the series about seasonal updates to our games and applications, we will devote maximum attention to them.

Spring itself is an excellent occasion, since it is the season of renewal of nature, awakening from hibernation and, of course, an excellent reason to remind our users that we have not forgotten about the application and update it according to the calendar, fashion, trends and of course for holiday events.

ASO. What about the spring season?

Spring is so good itself that there are not so many holidays that would be celebrated en masse and on a global scale (like Christmas or Halloween). So now we will direct our efforts to optimizing our app page for certain geos where a particular holiday is popular and relevant. Also, it’s worth focusing on the category of our game or application. For match 3 it is difficult to find a suitable holiday in the spring schedule, but for a shopping application it is just right, take World Consumer Rights Day (March 15).

So, what memorable days and dates do we have?

• March 1, World Compliment Day
• March 8, International Women's Day
• March 15, World Consumer Day and World Sleep Day
• March 17, St. Patrick's Day
• March 31, Easter (Catholic)
• April 1, April Fool's Day
• April 22, Earth Day
• May 1, Labor Day
• May 4, Star Wars Day
• May 5, Easter (Orthodox)
• May 18, International Museum Day

How can we optimize and update our application page according to this schedule? A couple of simple examples:

International Women's Day (March 8th) is the perfect time for fashion, beauty, health, education and social media apps to offer special promotions, themed updates or in-app events.

March 17, St. Patrick's Day is a universal event, participation in which can be expressed by clovers and green flowers, the image of leprechauns and hats on our game characters.

Easter is a holiday that offers opportunities for games, greeting card apps, cooking apps and any application related to family and children's activities.

The start of spring and Earth Day (April 22) are great times for apps related to nature, gardening, outdoor fitness, and environmental education.

Of course, it is difficult to be ahead of the scale of the winter season, but there is still room for improvement. As soon as February 14 has passed, we are already starting to look towards spring updates.

Seasonal ASO - how to update?

Before we frantically scroll through Pinterest for inspiration, we'll focus on the basics. Every season, holiday and event has:

1. Key elements - symbols, objects, images.
2. Color palette and design style.
3. Events and essence of a holiday or date.

The spring season is easy to describe for all three of these points.

Key elements are flowers, green leaves, bouquets, clovers and anything green (for St. Patrick's Day), bunnies and Easter eggs, lightsabers and Darth Vader's helmet for Star Wars styling.

The color palette is dictated by the period itself - bright and fresh tones, symbols of renewal and flowering

App store optimization - what are we updating for the spring season?

ASO of apps for the spring season is a key point in the marketing strategy, especially given the dynamics of the mobile market. In the spring, users experience renewal not only in nature, but also in their apps, looking for new ways to use mobile devices to organize their time, health, study and entertainment. This is a great time to draw attention to our application and update its appearance and functionality.

ASO elements for spring optimization:

1. App Icon - update the icon to include spring elements such as flowers, greenery or bright, cheerful colors to attract users' attention.
2. Screenshots and Videos - updated screenshots and video previews showcasing spring updates, features or events in our app.
3. Metadata and Keywords - include spring themes and keywords related to current events and holidays to improve search visibility.
4. Reviews and ratings - we motivate users to leave reviews and update ratings after the spring app updates.
5. In-app events and special offers - use the spring holidays as an opportunity to launch special events or offers within the application to increase user engagement and retention.

Tips for spring ASO

• Analyzing competitors: we are studying how our competitors are adapting their apps for the spring season to stand out from others.

Using mobile analytics tools, and now we are talking about ASOMobile, we can easily research competitors. The Timeline tool will be especially useful to us - it will help us track when our competitors made updates, what elements they changed, how, and correlate this with seasonal or other planned updates.

Some of the most convenient applications for seasonal optimization are shopping ones. This is where, like no other category, there is a dependence on holidays and the calendar.

Thanks to Timeline, we can see all the changes, but our attention was captured by the Shein app - a popular clothing and accessories store. According to their updates, you don’t even have to look at the calendar - the approach of seasons and memorable dates is indicated by visual elements:

For shopping apps, seasonality is crucial because visual elements usually contain images of products. And what else, if not fashion, dictates changes to us according to the weather, trends and weather seasons.

Temu is an example of an application that optimizes its visuals so often that they manage to change the design for the spring season, and then change it to an Easter theme:

And from the topic of Easter, move on to Earth Day:

• Testing changes: we use A/B testing for various ASO elements to determine which changes are most effective in attracting and retaining users.
• Tracking results: monitoring performance metrics after making changes to ASO to understand which strategies work best for our application.

The best tool for tracking the results of changes is still ASO Dashboard. We can look not only at the current situation, but also evaluate the changes that have occurred (and we know exactly when and what, thanks to Timeline). How much did metadata updates for the season and holidays affect the level of indexing, what keywords were and are being used to install the application.

The amount of work required for a successful holiday campaign may seem quite large, but there is a way to minimize the workload and streamline the entire operation. Analyzing competitors, working with keywords, downloads and income - all this can be conveniently done using analytical platforms. This way we can easily keep track of both our competitors and the results of our own efforts.

By implementing these ASO strategies for the spring season, we can significantly increase our app visibility, attract new users, and increase engagement among existing ones.

Optimize and achieve success💙