Engineering

A Tale of Two App Store Spotlights

Getting featured increased our downloads by over 9,000% 🤯

Some good news for Lickability’s products! A few weeks ago, both of our iOS apps (Pinpoint and Accelerator) were simultaneously featured on the App Store after recent updates we’ve made.

Two screenshots of the App Store showing Pinpoint and Accelerator featured by Apple.

We saw significant spikes in downloads and sales, and because they were featured at the same time, we saw a small but noticeable halo effect from customers who mentioned that they picked up both apps at once.

🎉 The Features

The App Store editorial team featured Pinpoint in a roundup of 5 Apps We Love Right Now on the Today tab, and Accelerator under a similar heading on the Apps tab. It seems like the folks over in editorial have a lot of ❤️ for Lickability these days.

📈 The Results

So, what’d these features do for our apps? Let’s hop on over to AppFigures, the service we use to monitor sales and downloads, and look at some graphs.

Here’s what the features did for Accelerator’s sales:

Accelerator sales graph Aug 9–Aug 22 showing a large increase in sales. Accelerator sales graph Aug 9–Aug 22

And for Pinpoint’s downloads:

Pinpoint downloads graph Aug 9–Aug 22 showing a large increase in downloads. Pinpoint downloads graph Aug 9–Aug 22

As the graphs show, for both free and paid apps, getting featured on the App Store can have a pretty massive impact. In our case, we saw a 9,000% increase in average daily downloads of our free (with IAP) app and a 900% increase in downloads per day for our paid up-front app.

⏳ More to Come?

Apple also requested artwork to feature both applications a few weeks ago, but hasn’t used it just yet. Here’s a sneak peek of some art you might see soon on an App Store near you…

Accelerator App Store feature artwork. Pinpoint App Store feature artwork.

If you’re looking to get your app featured by Apple, start by making something great (we can help with that part 😉) and getting it in the hands of customers. Once you’ve worked out the kinks and are ready for some more attention, check out Apple’s Marketing Resources and the Release Notes podcast for tips on getting the attention of App Store editors. We hope to share the limelight with you soon!