An Ultimate Guide to Writing App Descriptions That Sell

From idea to launching, the app creation process requires you to use your creativity, business insight, and marketing skills. You may feel that the hardest part is to come up with an idea that hasn’t been already seen and create a unique app for a group of target customers. But, reaching those customers and making your app visible on the market can be even more challenging and demanding. One of the factors that influence the success of your app is the app description you use in different app stores and your website.

So, whether you’re writing an app description for Google Play or App Store, you have to make sure you’re using the right App Store Optimization (ASO) techniques to make your app more appealing and interesting than your competitors’ similar apps.

But, what is the best way to write a winning app description for your new app? If you’re not sure, don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. We’ve put together the ultimate guide for writing app descriptions that sell. Just keep reading to get all the most important insights about making your app stand out from the rest. Let’s take a closer look.

What is an App Description?

Let’s start by defining what an app description is, and what different elements comprise a winning app store description. 

So, the app description we’ll be talking about in this article is basically everything you write and publish on different app stores and your website, regarding your new app. Every fact, information, useful tip, and app detail that you share is a part of your overall app description. 

Typically, a great app description will have:

• a catchy app title
• description of the app’s functions and intended use
• description of the benefits
• keywords
• subtitles
• app screenshots

Also, people reading about your app will be able to see the total number of app downloads and the average grade the previous users have left. While this isn’t something you can write directly, you should read the reviews, use them as guidance, and make the necessary improvements.

All of the above-listed elements need to be written cleverly, and we’ve got practical tips you can apply to your app description immediately. But, before we dig into the writing part, let’s consider the importance of optimizing your app descriptions.

Why Do You Need to Optimize Your App Descriptions?

If you think that your app idea is so brilliant and unique that all you have to do is launch it and it’ll find its way to your target users- you’re wrong. The truth is, your competition is strong and you need to make a serious effort to reach your target customers and sell your app successfully. 

In fact, there are more than 3.14 million apps available on Google Play and more than 2 million available for iOS on AppStore according to Statista. 

Writing optimized app descriptions is one of the essential steps of your overall app marketing strategy. Without an optimized description, you won’t be able to make any serious progress. Here’s why you need to optimize your app description:

• rank higher in app search results
• reach your target audience
• become more visible to all potential customers
• stand out from your competitors

As a result, you’ll have more people visiting your app page and eventually downloading your app. That means that the app description is the opportunity to grab your customers’ attention that you have to seize. If you fail to do so, you’ll lose numerous potential customers.

Ultimate Tips to Write Powerful App Descriptions

Now that we understand the power and importance of effective app descriptions, it’s time to take a look at the best and most practical tips for writing a killer app description. We’ll break it into different segments and help you gradually build your perfect app description that will boost your app downloads and sales.

Let’s take it one step at a time.

1. Create A Solid App Name

First things first, you need to come up with a solid name for your app. This app title needs to have all the right elements combined:

• a catchy, interesting name
• a keyword
• explanation or a hint of what the app is about

You want your potential customers to take one look at the app title and instantly know what the app is for. But, you don’t want to make it too long since it may confuse some people and make them move on to your competitors. 

Here’s a couple of real-app name examples that show exactly what we have in mind:

• Women Workout at Home – Female Fitness

• Pregnancy Tracker: What to Expect When Expecting

• Grocery Shopping List – Listonic

• Duolingo: Learn Languages Free

• Fruit Ninja 2 – Fun Action Games

These app titles are simple, self-explanatory, and thus rather appealing to the target user. It gives all the right reasons to keep reading the app description and see what the app has to offer.

2. Choose The Right Keywords

Throughout your app description, you should naturally insert the most important keywords that your target customers might search the app by. It’s important that you don’t do keyword stuffing but add those keywords seamlessly in the description.

For example, for the pregnancy tracker app, the keywords could be:

• baby weekly progress
• contractions countdown
• pregnancy updates
• expecting mothers
• baby growth
• etc.

Distribute them carefully across the app description and make sure you use them naturally.

3. Open Strongly

The very first couple of lines of your app description are the most important ones. Why? Because that’s the only part of the app description that will be automatically displayed to the users. To read the rest, they’ll have to click “Read More”.

And, you need to open strongly to have them wanting to read more.

So, make sure the first two to three sentences are:

• highly informative
• explain the main feature of the app

Here’s what some of the world’s leading apps wrote as the opening line of their app description:

• WhatsApp (AppStore)

“WhatsApp Messenger is a FREE messaging app available for iPhone and other smartphones.”

• Twitter (Play Store)

“Retweet, chime in on a thread, go viral, or just scroll through the Twitter timeline to stay on top of what everyone’s talking about.”

• Netflix (AppStore)

“Looking for the most talked about TV shows and movies from around the world? They’re all on Netflix.

As you can see, the first sentence summarizes the app’s essence and main function. You need to create a clear key message and make it visible in the opening line of the description.  It tells the users exactly what the app does and motivates them to keep reading for more specific information.

4. Use Subtitles

Once you get potential customers to open the entire app description, you need to make it as easy and convenient for them to read the whole thing or just skip to the specific information they need. It would be best for you to divide the description into smaller paragraphs using subtitles.

Each subtitle should:

• introduce a new section of the description
• provide specific information

For example, Canva, a graphic design app, uses subtitles such as:

• Use Canva for Social Media

• Create Designs Quickly

• Collaborate on Canva

Under each subtitle, users can find specific information that they’re interested in and skip the sections they don’t want to read. 

5. Display Features

The average smartphone owner uses 10 apps daily and you need to find a way to make your app one of those 10 apps. That’s why you need to have killer app features. 

App features should be an inevitable part of every app description, so make sure there’s a section dedicated to this specifically. Use bullet points to create well-organized lists that will show your app’s most important features in a transparent and easy-to-understand way.

Make sure that you:

• rank features according to priority
• use concise, short feature descriptions
• show your app’s full potential

Here are some of the main features listed on the Tripadvisor app description:

• Access over 830 million reviews of hotels, flights, things to do, vacation rentals, and restaurants.

• Save and organize your travel ideas for hotels, restaurants, tours, and attractions and see them together on a map.

• Find great deals on hotels by comparing the lowest prices from more than 200 booking sites worldwide.

You must specify and provide examples of what your app can do and how it can benefit the users. 

6. Include a “What’s New” Section

Another thing you should show your potential customers and app users is that you’re constantly trying to make your app better for them. That’s why you should add a What’s New section at the end of the description and use it to write about:

• app updates
• bug fixes
• new features
• additions
• changes

This way, they’ll be able to see that this app has true potential and is something worth their attention.

7. Speak Your Target Audience’s Language

When you’re writing your app description, you need to be aware that it’s not just about what you write. it’s also about how you write it. It’s important that you write your app description with your target audience in mind, to make sure it truly resonates with them.

To put it simply, a pregnancy tracking app and a male fitness app cannot be written in the same style. This is because the target audience is completely different.

So, think about your ideal target customer and define them in terms of:

• age
• sex
• social status
• interests
• goals
• habits
• online behavior

Think of as many characteristics as possible and create the ultimate image of the target customer. Then, make sure that you adjust your writing to them. Imagine you’re talking to one of them, and use the same:

• style
• vocabulary
• sentence structures
• terminology

If it’s an app for teenagers, you can add some humor or slang. If it’s an app for business people, tone it down and write a bit more formally. In the end, try reading your description while imagining you’re this ideal target customer and see what it sounds like to you. Sometimes, you literally have to speak your customer’s language to rank higher in international search engines. You can use an AI-powered language translator for this purpose. 

8. Edit & Proofread

Finally, you have to make sure that every line of your app description is written professionally and is polished to perfection. Mistakes aren’t allowed. They’ll make you seem unprofessional, sloppy, cheap, or simply like a bad choice.

So, before you publish anything, you need to:

• edit several times
• remove typos, grammar mistakes, or punctuation mistakes 
• proofread several times

Once you finish editing and proofreading, ask another person to run the last check and see if you’ve done everything right. 

Final Thoughts

Writing an app description that sells is far from an easy task. There are several aspects of the writing process that you have to consider and numerous strategies you need to combine. 

Hopefully, the ultimate guide we’ve presented above will help you write the ideal app description for your next app or improve an existing one. Use the 8 tips we’ve shared to boost your app and reach the right potential customers.