If you’ve been keeping up with any of the major news publications or tech blogs these past weeks, you have probably seen ‘Snapchat’ in a number of headlines. The media has been infatuated with Snapchat, a self-destructing photo and video messaging app, because they apparently turned down a $3 billion dollar offer from Facebook.
This piece isn’t going to get into why they were (or weren’t) crazy to turn down the offer, or why Facebook thinks they are so valuable. It is going to tell you why, even with their huge user base, Snapchat is still missing out on some enormous opportunities.
Snapchat Has Impressive Numbers
Snapchat does have some impressive numbers. According to The Atlantic, they have attained 100 million users since 2011, who send 350 million photos per day!
So where does Snapchat go from here? How can they continue to grow and prove they weren’t crazy to turn down $3 billion dollars? Well, here atMobileDevHQ, we obviously think app store optimization (ASO) can play a big role.
Snapchat’s Current ASO Efforts
We took a look at Snapchat’s ASO efforts to see how their user base has influenced their keyword rankings. What we found is that their keyword rankings are... drumroll please... abysmal. They are completely non-existent. Snapchat only ranks well (top 10) for words that include ‘Snapchat’, or some form of the word. They are unranked for any relevant keywords such as picture, photo, video, share, and others.
They have 100 million users, why do they need ASO? Well, if Snapchat really wants to prove that turning down $3 billion dollars wasn’t crazy, they will need to keep expanding their user base, and by ignoring ASO they are missing out on a huge portion of the market.
Searching for Snapchat in the App Store
The Snapchat app can fill a few different roles for users. It could be thought of as a photo/video messaging service, a photo/video sharing service, a regular messaging service, a disposable or self-destructing messaging app, or even a social network.
What would you do if you were a user who did not know about Snapchat and who was looking for an app to fill one of those roles. You would probably search in the app store with queries like: photo app, share videos, photo message, video sharing, messaging app, or photo sharing.
If you were to search for any of these terms, you most likely would never see Snapchat. Unless, however, you entered ‘messaging app’ and scrolled through 84 apps until you found Snapchat taking the 85th spot.
In fact, the highest search query that Snapchat ranks for which does not have some form of the word ‘snapchat’ or ‘snap’ is ‘dissapear’, for which they rank 13. Although this is much better than 85, it is still relatively high. When was the last time you scrolled to the 13th app when searching for something in the app store?
What’s the Big Deal?
So what exactly are they missing out on? More than it may seem. Essentially what the data above shows is that Snapchat is getting almost zero downloads for any non-branded search terms (search queries that don’t have some form of ‘snap’ or ‘chat’). They are losing market share to potential competitors like Instagram and Facebook Messenger.
Check out the market share analysis below. The table shows volume, difficulty, and an estimate of what percentage of downloads each app receives out of all the downloads that specific search term generates. The volumes are not exact search numbers because Apple does not release that data. Instead, they are relative metrics. All terms are based off of the term ‘pic sharing’, which is searched for the least. For example, ‘photo message’ has a volume of 2x, meaning it is searched twice as much as pic sharing.
Editor’s Note: To learn how we estimate these, check out our guest post onAppStoreOptimization.com.
So what does this table show us? On a positive note for Snapchat, it’s branded search terms actually do pretty well. ‘Snapchat’ has a search volume of 100x, meaning it is searched 100 times more than ‘pic sharing’. However, we can also see that they leave a lot on the table by not ranking for other terms such as ‘photo’, with a search volume of 700x.
What Snapchat Should Do
Because an app’s ranking for a search term is determined in part by total downloads, download velocity, and ratings, Snapchat would most likely be able to rank highly for numerous search terms. By simply adding terms to their keyword field, they could increase their exposure in the app store along with downloads.
Every company has aspects they need to work on and improve. Snapchat has done very well for itself in the short time it has been available. They dominate their market, and have garnered the attention of some of the top companies in the world. However, they are leaving a huge number of downloads on the table by ignoring ASO.
Bottom line: Snapchat turned down $3 billion dollars. Although they have done well so far, they still have a lot of improving to do to show the world they made the right decision. Part of that improvement will be to keep expanding their user base. We know ASO can help with this, and we would love to see them start leveraging their popularity to keep dominating the app world.
No comments:
Post a Comment