First held in 2015, Amazon’s annual Prime Day has become a staple of the summer shopping season. With other major retailers like Target, Walmart, and Best Buy also hosting their own branded summer sales events around the same time, it’s important for apps to seize opportunities for user acquisition during this concentrated focus on shopping.

We’ve written before about how you can plan ahead for events like Prime Day with Hyper-Contextual Advertising, but let’s take a look at Prime Day 2023 to see which other best practices you should consider for your own app growth strategy.

How Much of an Impact Does Prime Day Have on ASO?

The top shopping apps by visibility score shifted from the week prior to Prime Day.
The top shopping apps by visibility score shifted from the week prior to Prime Day.

There were shifts in relative app store visibility for various apps around Prime Day, with Target noticeably jumping into the top five. But the full impact of the rising tide that lifts the category can be seen more clearly when looking at the longer trend via MobileAction’s ASO Report.

Amazon Shopping and Target are just two examples of shopping apps that showcased a major spike in visibility building up to Prime Day.
Amazon Shopping and Target are just two examples of shopping apps that showcased a major spike in visibility building up to Prime Day.

Even with Prime Day catering to Amazon Prime subscribers, the impact reaches far beyond existing users. Apps throughout the shopping category saw major bumps in visibility scores leading up to this and surrounding events. We also saw a significant boost in the number of keywords that shopping apps ranked for and how highly they ranked for various keywords. When apps see 2x growth in the number of their keyword rankings for a yearly event, that’s a sign of how important it is to make sure your ASO strategy is set up ahead of time to take advantage of these shifts in the market. You need to look for opportunities to rank higher for these keywords or risk missing out on engaged shoppers, both through paid and organic growth strategies.

Boost Your App During Prime Day

In addition to updating your keyword strategy for direct competitors offering deals, another area of focus should be to look at adjacent apps that also see growth during Prime Day. This can be a good way to find UA deals on apps and keywords that might be easier to rank for during the spike.

Affirm saw the number of keywords it ranked for increase by 3x leading up to Prime Day.
Affirm saw the number of keywords it ranked for increase by 3x leading up to Prime Day.

Affirm is a prime example of an adjacent app that gets a boost from Prime Day, as it’s featured as a checkout option for transactions at several retailers for consumers looking to buy now and pay later over time. A rise in app store visibility during the season provides context clues for keywords to target via paid and organic depending on how closely the text aligns with your own app’s positioning. Affirm even jumped into the top 10 for shopping downloads on July 12th. Apps like Affirm can have a higher chance score for keywords than big box retailers, making it a prime example of an app to look into for your own ASO enhancements.

Apps like Affirm can have a higher chance score than big box retailers.
Apps like Affirm can have a higher chance score than big box retailers.

It’s also important to look at all the ways you can position your app for success through other components of the app stores. With so many deals available, it’s important to ensure that people know what’s available through your app.

In-app shopping events run in the first half of July can help spread the word.
In-app shopping events run in the first half of July can help spread the word.

In-app events are a great way to feature special deals within your app and make sure that people coming across your app know what’s available and when. We saw four retailers running in-app event features during the first half of July, but there’s room for growth for shopping apps.

Next Steps for Upleveling Your Own Marketing Strategy

Not only is it essential to make sure you’re optimizing your app for how shopping apps shift in the app stores during Prime Day, the strategies and takeaways from this shopping season can help set you up for success for future shopping events like Black Friday. With so many retailers looking to capitalize on the summer shopping season, it helps to take advantage of the opportunities for apps of all sizes to get in on the game when it comes to ASO. For other mobile marketing tips and tricks, check out some of our other related content:

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