Writing the app store description

The fields and their limits

A structure that works on both stores

1. 1

   Outcome line

   One sentence naming who the app is for and what they get. This is the line most readers will ever see.

2. 2

   Benefit block

   Three to five short lines, each a job the user can do. Lead each with a verb.

3. 3

   Proof

   Awards, notable coverage, user counts or ratings — concrete and checkable, never superlatives.

4. 4

   Feature detail

   The full capability list for the small share of readers who expand. This is where Play keyword coverage is built out.

5. 5

   Plans and pricing

   If you sell a subscription, state it plainly here; unclear pricing produces refunds and one-star reviews.

6. 6

   Support and legal

   Contact route, privacy and terms links, and any regional disclosure your category needs.

Keyword placement on Google Play

Play reads the title, short description and full description as ranking input, weighted roughly in that order. A priority term should appear once in the title if it earns the space, once in the short description, and three to five times across the full description in ordinary sentences.

Do not build a keyword list block at the bottom of the description. It reads badly to humans, does not outperform natural placement, and is the pattern Play's spam policy targets.

Worked example: rewriting a description that reads like a brochure

A photo editor's description opened with three sentences about the company's mission and named the product's features in the fourth paragraph. On Google Play, where the full description is indexed, that structure buries every priority keyword below the fold and past the point most readers stop. On the App Store, where the description is not indexed at all, it wastes the only place a hesitant user goes for detail.

The rewrite inverted the order. The first two lines stated what the app does and for whom, in the words people search with, and the feature list followed in short scannable groups rather than prose. On the Play listing each priority term then appeared three to five times naturally across the body — twice near the top, the rest distributed — which is enough for the index without reading as stuffing to a human.

The App Store version diverged deliberately. With no indexing benefit available, that description was written purely to answer objections: pricing, what the free tier includes, whether files export, and whether it works offline. Those four answers were the ones the review feed showed people asking before they installed.

What to avoid in the body copy

Descriptions fail in predictable ways, most of them inherited from web marketing copy:

• Opening with company mission rather than what the app does.
• Repeating a keyword mechanically until the paragraph stops reading like English — Play's index handles natural repetition and its reviewers flag the rest.
• Long unbroken paragraphs on a surface read almost entirely on a phone.
• Feature names that only make sense to the internal team.
• Competitor brand names, which both stores reject.
• Never updating the description after major releases, so the copy describes a version users no longer download.