Study: Apple’s App Store overhaul has improved app discovery

It was in fall of last year when Apple had decided to significantly revamp its App Store. The main idea behind the project was to improve or facilitate better app discovery, with added focus on editorial content. Thus, features like app of the day selections, lists, how to guides, and interviews that featured developers (just to name a few new features) were incorporated into the tech giant’s online store for mobile apps. And according to the results of a recent study conducted by Sensor Tower, it appears that those newly introduced functionalities are paying off.

In its latest report, Sensor Tower offers some evidence that more mobile apps are being discovered now that the App Store experience has been radically overhauled. In the previous set up, the volume of downloads generated from browsing had made up about a tenth of the total downloads quantity. But with the redesign, the share of browse driven downloads has increased to over 15 percent. On top of that, the 15 percent improvement has continued from 2017 (after the App Store enhancements were rolled out) to this year, even as the excitement around the App Store interface reboot has died down a bit. By the way, for its newest report, Sensor Tower had collected and collated information based on mobile app downloads from May of last year until April of 2018.

While it is true that app discovery through browsing has registered some growth, today’s mobile users still primarily search for new mobile apps to try (and maybe download and install) by entering keywords into the App Store’s search box. According to Sensor Tower’s new study, searching for apps accounted for 65 percent of the total downloads -- a vastly superior share compared to other app discovery methods, like browsing and referrals (from family, friends, and even colleagues).

Sensor Tower’s newest report also sheds some light into the various ways in which mobile users discover different types of mobile apps. Take games, for instance -- the firm found that app discovery via browsing tends to be more prevalent among game apps, as compared to non-game titles. Indeed, just 56 percent of game downloads came from app discovery via search versus 69 percent for non-game apps. App discovery through browsing had a 24 percent share among game downloads, compared to only 9 percent among non-game downloads.

To read more about Sensor Tower’s latest findings, it would be wise to head directly to the firm’s official blog.