How to Promote an App on AppGallery and Earn From It?
Huawei AppGallery is evolving rapidly even with no Google services on board. No wonder more businesses are starting to pay attention to AppGallery as they look for new users. (Right now it already has over 1M apps!) In this guide, we’ll explain how not to screw up if you intend to do ASO for AppGallery.
How does indexing work on AppGallery?
AppGallery has a significant feature that changes how we approach the semantic core, so let’s start with it.
A decent app title — that’s what AppGallery considers the most important. App title is the most impactful and kind of leads the semantic core. This means that all keywords in the app title will be indexed first along with those from the short and full description, app page, and even developer name. Only then will AppGallery index other keywords from the semantic core. Rumor has it that it usually reads data left to right, regardless of locale, even though the store supports 200 countries with a variety of writing traditions.
On AppGallery, you may want to put all important keywords in the app title for better variability and growth by the most relevant queries.
It’s important to understand that AppGallery largely inherits the way it works from Google Play, so it may be worth trying to use Google Play semantics and metadata as the first step.
AppGallery metadata requirements
| Text ASO | Graphic ASO | Content requirements |
| Title: up to 64 characters. Special characters like “*”, “&”, “—” are not allowed; | Icon: 216×216, PNG image, square, maximum size: 2MB. Screenshots: 320 to 3840 px, 2:1 aspect ratio. | Visuals should display actual app functionality to prevent users from being misled; |
| Short description: up to 80 characters; | Huawei recommends portrait and landscape screenshots with a resolution of 480×800 or 800×480. | Brand mentions in metadata are not allowed; |
| Full description: 100 to 8000 characters; | File format: JPG, JPEG, or PNG, size: up to 5MB, number of screenshots: 3 to 8. | App title must be unique; |
| What’s New: up to 1000 characters. | Provide moderators with a test account in case of compulsory accounting. |
Please note that you can only replace your app icon or description with an update, just like in App Store. Tough to tell if this solution has more pros or cons since the mandatory update in App Store was tied to quite a number of mechanics, which AppGallery is yet to develop. For example, the mandatory update was necessary to get featured; so far, this mechanic only works thanks to App Gallery managers. There’s no mechanic similar to App of the Day yet.
Here’s another point related to text metadata. The store doesn’t support bold and italic text. So, if this is the way your text is formatted, HTML code will be displayed along with it, which is unlikely to help app conversion grow.
Specifics of releasing an app on AppGallery
Unlike Google Play, AppGallery combines all analytics and tools in a single console, AppGallery Connect.
Before you release an app, you can check if the audience is interested in your product. The store offers Quick App, a special tool to do this. Yes, UI can have some issues because of it, but the tool grasps the product essence, so make sure you use this opportunity right.
There are two ways to release an app on AppGallery:
- Manually via AppGallery Connect;
- Via CI/CD using the store’s own API.
Important to know! Use .huawei in the app package name.
Just like in App Store, each AppGallery app must go through human moderation before release, which takes 1 to 5 days. If the moderation takes longer than intended, the control panel will show a special warning button to remind you of your request. In case something bad happens to your build at launch, the store provides Dynamic Ability, a “dynamic loading” service to prevent you from being flooded with bad reviews. A similar tool can be found on Google Play.
The issue here is rather different: the store doesn’t divide release channels so there are no Alpha/Beta/Release versions. This kind of tool is noticeably lacking since it largely serves as a dam against waves of bad reviews or comments. By the way, reviews are displayed by area. Even Google Play came to this model a little later, at the end of 2021.
Huawei commits to supporting young businesses and puts a special emphasis on early access apps. Along with the option to pre-order an app, this is a good opportunity to get some funding before the official release and launch of a quality product. AppGallery has recently been working on updating the dashboard. It now has metrics to compare app performance values with the average and best-on-the-market ones.
How to promote apps on Huawei AppGallery: Checkaso experience
The challenge of AppGallery is that it makes it more difficult to identify patterns. That’s why iterations are key to success. Frequent updates are a must there, just like the neverending hunt for new keywords. Once you’ve done it, you’ll see exactly what works for you and where you stand. We’ve been working with AppGallery since 2020. We can understand the growing interest this app store is experiencing right now because it may serve as a decent extra traffic source.
Here’s one of our NDA-based cases. We can only say that this is a large retail trade project. With this in mind, we’d like to share our general strategy and performance results.
We conducted text ASO with a bunch of iterations and modified all existing text. Changes and additions to text were based on the performance analysis of past updates. We assessed the query ranking dynamics and checked by what keywords if any, the app was indexed. Frequent ASO iterations are absolutely necessary for AppGallery.
In the course of our service, the total number of indexed keywords increased by 33%. The number of queries that fall into the Top 5 search results increased by 50%. Some examples: ‘local food delivery’, ‘grocery delivery’, ‘grocery’, ‘grocery delivery app’, ‘order food’, ‘food delivery’, ‘discounts’. We also used branded queries.
Besides, we offered some new screenshots. Thanks to them, app conversion from impressions to installs grew from 0.5% to 1.5%. The total number of new app installs on AppGallery increased by 40% in the course of our service.
An increase in app page views and new installs. We’ve been working with AppGallery since 2020.
How to benefit from AppGallery as an app developer
The release mechanics are very similar to Google Ads for Android. The difference can probably be traced in a greater nativeness and a preview option to find out what the ad will look like.
App developers can earn from general purchases, subscriptions, in-app purchases, and ads. By default, ads are not targeted but you can use a special dialog box to offer users an option to personalize ads. There are four types of visual ads on AppGallery:
- Banner ads (ad units at the very top of the search results);
- Native ads (ads inserted in the “body” of a required unit);
- Interstitial ads (full-screen banners); and
- Video ads (ads for RowAds and SplashAds with full-screen video preview).
The subscription model is slightly different from App Store and Google Play. AppGallery offers service subscriptions for beginners at special prices. This is a really interesting tool to acquire new users, that looks like it adds to the trial rather than replacing it. On the one hand, this may affect the user lifecycle; on the other hand, winning over an audience is much easier this way.
Conclusion
AppGallery is no longer an underdog. Studies show its full market solvency in terms of both app number and monetization. Feel free to conduct ASO to find your users.
We at Checkaso have been working with AppGallery for more than two years now and we’ll be happy to help you promote your app anytime.
