With more than 5 million apps in the app stores, both Apple and Google are continuously trying to optimize their interface to make it easier for users to discover new apps to download.
To help publishers better understand how people find their app, the stores break down their metrics by source and make a difference between Search traffic and Browse / Explore traffic. However, that's it. Mobile Marketers do not get further information into where these downloads come from, etc.
Luckily, AppTweak is here to help you understand and attribute peaks in Browse Traffic to more specific sources.
In the Trends & History section of the Browse Tab, you can find out exactly when and where the selected apps were featured in the Apple Store.
⚠️ The Browse tab is the name of this tab specifically for iOS apps. For Android apps, this tab is called Explore.
Number of Featurings, Views and Downloads
By default, the Trends & History section shows metrics about your Featurings. If you view stories that appear only in the Today tab, you can also take a look at your Views or Downloads.
By default, the number of stories is aggregated for all the tabs in the Apple App Store. Additional available filters include:
Today
Apps
Games
Total number of featurings by app
In this bar chart, you can see all of the featurings of the app we follow and all of its respective competitors as well. This chart splits the featurings by the Today, Apps, and Games tabs on the App Store.
TikTok (United States, App Store) and its competitors received most of their featurings in the Apps Tab, some in the Today Tab, and none in the Games Tab from November 2020 to May 2021.
Daily number of featurings by app
In this time series, you can see the evolution of daily featurings each app receives and how volatile they can be.
TikTok and YouTube (United States, App Store), compared to competitors, receive the most daily featurings.
💡 You can click on the competitor's name in the legend to remove them from the graph.
Total vs. Distinct featurings (vs. Unique featurings)
Below, we also show more insights into your apps' distinct featurings (instead of total).
Total featurings: As your app may be featured multiple times in the same story, we count the total number of stories over the date range, even if some appear over multiple days.
⚠️ The number of times an app was featured ("total featurings") can exceed the "number of unique days of featuring" because an app can be featured in more than one story each day.
Distinct featurings: The number of individual & different stories over the date range.
⚠️ "Distinct featurings" are not the same as "Unique featurings" (in the Browse > "All Stories" tab). In the "All Stories" tab, unique featurings are those in which your app is featured, but your competitors are not.
In the table below, AppTweak provides some KPI metrics to help you better understand the total number of featurings and growth over your desired date range.
Total featurings: The number of times the app was featured on the App Store over the selected date range.
Growth: The difference between total featurings over the selected date range vs. the equivalent date range immediately prior (e.g. total featurings this month vs. last month).
Unique days of featuring: The number of distinct days over the selected date range where the app was featured in at least one story.
Growth: The difference between the unique days of featuring over the selected date range vs. the equivalent date range immediately prior (e.g. unique days featured this month vs. last month).
Average featurings/week: The average number of featurings per week, calculated over the selected date range.
Growth: The difference between the average number of featurings per week over the selected date range vs. the equivalent date range immediately prior (e.g. average featurings per week this month vs. last month).
Stories & Opportunities
While the Trends & History page shows insights about all the stories in an aggregated way, the Stories & Opportunities page will show you a lot of information for featuring individually. For all the stories in which your app or your competitors appeared, you'll be able to find out where you were featured, for how long, on which keywords and how many downloads you received.
Stories appear in Today, Search, Today and Search, Apps or Games. You can navigate through these sections by using the filters on the top of the page.
You can also review your unique featurings, your shared featurings and the missed opportunities:
Unique featurings include stories in which you appeared but your competitors didn’t.
Shared featurings include stories in which both you and your competitors appeared.
Missed featurings include stories in which your competitors appeared but you didn’t.
How to display all the insights for each story?
The filters on top will show you how many stories are included in each category. For example, in the screenshot below, "Missed Opportunities" and "Today" are selected, and 3 stories are shown.
After selecting a story type and a breakdown, you can sort the stories by the metric you want. For example, stories in Search can be sorted by their most recent date, total days or the total number of keywords they appear on, while stories in Today can be sorted by Downloads, most recent date or total days.
To see the content and all the metrics associated with one story, you just have to click on it. A blue border will highlight the selection.
Stories in Today
AppTweak estimates the views and downloads received by each app featured in Today. You'll also see how many days (in the selected date range) was the story featured, both in the scorecard and in the calendar. Finally, the table on the right will show you all the apps included in the story, their position, their app power and the downloads they received from Browse.
Some of those stories featured in Today will also appear on keywords results in the Search tab, while the others will only appear in the Today tab.
Stories in Search
All those stories have the same format as those in Today, but most importantly, they all appeared on keywords in the Search tab.
Thanks to the keyword table at the bottom of the page, you'll be able to see all the keywords the story ranked on over the selected date range, but also their volume, the number of days the story appeared on a given keyword, in which position the story ranked, etc.
Stories in Apps or Games
Finally, stories found under the Apps or Games tabs can also be filtered. They usually look like a list of apps with a title on top. AppTweak doesn't provide estimated views or downloads for that type of stories, and they don't rank on keyword searches. Besides that, you can see when they appeared in their tab on the calendar and analyse which apps were included by looking at the table below, as for the other stories.
What's next?