When you are researching your competition, every piece of information helps. Sometimes even the smallest details can tip you off as to what your successful competitors are doing and how you can do something similar. That’s why it’s quite important to know the changes they have made to their app by checking the App Version History.
So in this post, we will show you how our new App Update Timeline helps you get these details and how to interpret the changes that you see.
How to Access the App Update Timeline
To get started with the App Update Timeline, simply login to your Mobile Action account and click on the the ASO Intelligence module, and select App Update Timeline.
You can see this module, even in free accounts. So give it a try right now.
If you don’t have a Mobile Action account yet, you can sign up for one here.
Once you are logged in, here is what you will see…
App Version History Details
The Timeline will show you the following:
- Date of updates
- Average rating for version
- Rating count for version
- Version number
- File size
- Comparison between old and new versions
- Icon
- Screenshots
- Description
Let’s take a look at each of these data points and how you can use them to improve your app.
Update Frequency
When you first open the Timeline, you will see a list of dates, showing exactly when the app was updated. This will give you an overview of how often the publisher updates the app.
One key to success for mobile apps is a sustainable update cycle. If a publisher does a good job of doing regular updates to: fix bugs, test ASO elements and add requested features, then there is a much higher chance that people will use the app and recommend it to their friends.
So researching the update frequency of your competitors will show you how often they update and give you clues as to how often you should be updating your apps.
Average Rating and Rating Count for Version
If you are actually using your competitors’ apps (like you should be), then you will probably wonder how much people like that new feature they just added. How does the new version compare to the previous version of the app?
By using a combination of Review Mining and Timeline analysis, you can exactly how well received the new version of the app was. Our Timeline shows you the average rating and rating count, by version, so you can see what the response was.
Seeing the number of ratings also gives you clues as to how well an app publisher is soliciting app reviews. If you see a big jump, dig deeper into the app to see how they are doing it.
Icon, Description and Screenshots
When you track the icon, screenshots and description updates of an app, you can get some great ideas for what they are testing. If they stick with one for awhile, you know which one performs best 😉
This can help you improve your ASO quickly, without doing a lot of testing yourself.
File Size
The file size of an app will give you clues as to how a publisher structures their app. If one version of the app is 1GB and the next version is 400 MB, it’s certainly worth looking into how they are doing it and how it affects the UX of the app.
When the file size of an app gets significantly smaller, it usually means that the app is downloading assets on the fly. But with Apple’s new crackdown on dynamic app changes, we will probably see app file sizes increase.
As you probably know, smaller file sizes are easier to download and can improve engagement with your apps. The size limits for cellular download of apps are currently 100 MB for iOS and 100 MB for Google Play.
Conclusion
So that is how our new App Update Timeline can help you do deeper market research into competing apps. This module is currently in beta, so we welcome any input that you have on it.
Feel free to be brutally honest! We want this to be something that is extremely useful to you.
Leave a comment below and let us know what you think…
