The ASO checklist

Metadata checks

• App name leads with the single strongest keyword, not the brand, unless the brand is the demand.
• Subtitle carries secondary terms rather than a slogan.
• Apple keyword field is comma-separated with no spaces, no plurals, no repeats of name or subtitle words.
• Google Play full description repeats each priority term three to five times, naturally, in the first two paragraphs and again later.
• Short description reads as a benefit sentence and contains the primary term.
• No competitor brand names anywhere — both stores reject them.
• Localized metadata written per locale, not machine-translated from English.

Creative and conversion checks

• Icon is legible and distinct at 60 pixels against both light and dark backgrounds.
• First two screenshots carry a caption that states a benefit and is readable at thumbnail size.
• Screenshot set tells one coherent story rather than showing six unrelated features.
• Preview video opens on the product in use within the first three seconds and works without sound.
• Portrait and landscape variants supplied where the app supports both.
• Screenshots refreshed after any significant UI change — stale screenshots suppress conversion and invite refund complaints.

Ratings and technical hygiene

• In-app rating prompt fires after a success moment, never on launch or mid-task.
• Negative reviews receive a reply — both stores surface developer responses, and replies lift average rating over time.
• Crash rate and ANR rate are within store thresholds; Android Vitals warnings suppress Play visibility directly.
• App size is trimmed where possible — download friction is conversion loss on cellular.
• Release cadence is regular; long gaps between updates read as abandonment to both stores and users.

Measurement checks

1. 1

   Take a baseline

   Record impressions, product page views and conversion rate for the 30 days before the change.

2. 2

   Change one layer at a time

   Metadata or creative, not both. Changing both in one release makes attribution impossible.

3. 3

   Wait two weeks

   Store indexing and ranking movement settle within roughly fourteen days for most listings.

4. 4

   Read the right metric

   Impressions test the metadata; conversion rate tests the creative. Installs alone tell you neither.

Worked example: the checklist applied to a live listing

Running this list against a mid-size travel app took under two hours and produced eleven findings, of which three mattered. The value of a checklist is not that it finds everything; it is that it finds the expensive things quickly and in a fixed order, so the pass does not become an open-ended investigation.

The metadata pass found the largest issue immediately: the app name was brand plus a tagline, and the tagline repeated two words that were also in the keyword field. Freeing those characters and leading with the strongest search term was a fifteen-minute change that no amount of creative work could substitute for.

The creative pass found the second issue — the first screenshot was a map view with no caption, which is visually attractive and semantically empty. The ratings pass found the third: the rating prompt fired on the third app launch, before most users had completed a booking, which is why the average rating sat below the category norm despite good sentiment in the review text. Everything else on the list passed, which is the normal outcome and the reason the ordering matters.

How often each block needs running

The checklist is not one job on one schedule — each block has its own natural cadence:

• Metadata: every release, and a full rebuild whenever the keyword set is refreshed.
• Creative: quarterly, plus immediately after any significant UI change.
• Ratings: weekly, since the reply queue compounds if left.
• Technical hygiene: continuously through your crash and vitals monitoring, not as a manual check.
• Measurement: before and after every change, without exception, because a missing baseline makes the result unreadable.
• Competitor review: quarterly, since the set moves slowly but does move.