ASO Study: Optionality

Optionality grew as a passion project between two friends/cofounders Adam Castelbaum & Alec Baum. They shared a passion for stocks and options trading and wanted to find a way to make the process easier to execute for the everyday trader.

Breaking into the brokerage space is no easy feat. You’re going up against multi-billion dollar corporations like E*Trade, TD Ameritrade, and newer rivals like Robinhood and Webull. To make your trading app visible and reach thousands of customers would typically take a substantial investment into the paid ads side of things.

With Optionality, we decided to focus on something else instead: App Store Optimization (ASO). We wanted to not only reach as many people searching for similar apps as possible, but rank top 5 on all of those keywords. Achieving this would unlock organic users who are not only of higher quality but are free to acquire and will continue to strengthen your app’s ASO position in the respective app stores.

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Product Overview

Options trading without the hassle! Optionality is a modern brokerage app focused on streamlining the options trading experience.

Options trading can be an intimidating thing to learn. This difficulty bar typically blocks this investment class to the majority of stock traders who don’t understand how to use them. Additionally, options can come in a variety of forms, from single calls/puts to multi-legged spreads.

Trading options in Optionality takes all the confusion out of the process and gives the user a sports-betting like UI/UX where “bets” on the market can be placed based on how an underlying stock performs. Where trading an option in a traditional broker could take 15+ confusing steps, Optionality has found a way to consolidate this down to just 5.

Key Value Propositions

• Single calls & puts
• Multi-legged debit put/call spreads
• Advanced stock analytics to help execute trades
• Tools to help users see trending trades & positions

Pricing Structure: Commission per option trade

Case Study Goals

• Identify the highest-volume relevant keywords and implement them into the available ASO slots

• Beat out Robinhood’s rank in our highest-LTV search term “options trading”

• Scale organic growth by at least 10% after ASO changes are put into effect

Target Actions

Primary Event: Search “options trading” and install app

Secondary Event: Search “trade options” and install app

Tertiary Event: Search “trading app” and install app

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ASO Implementation

Metadata

• Use a simplistic icon to make an impact

• A/B test the order, design, and layouts of the screenshots

• A/B test different App Preview videos

• Encouraged app store reviews from best existing users

Creative

• Choose a unique name and maximize all 30 characters in title

• Maximize all 30 characters in the app’s subtitles

• Maximize all characters in app’s metadata field (iOS). Separate keywords using commas, not spaces

• Don’t reuse any keywords and avoid plurals unless necessary

Results

• Optionality crossed and beat Robinhood in “Options Trading” for the first time 1 month after ASO changes

• Optionality continues to hold this rank and has cracked top 10 in the category since

• Optionality’s daily organic installs jumped 14% on average 1 month after changes. That percentage is now at 21% over the past 6 months

• Optionality now owns the top 10 ownership of over 20 high-volume keywords in the stock & options trading space, netting an average of 1200 free monthly users

Growth Philosophy & Implementation

We believe in a holistic approach to Growth, which we helped implement at Truebill. Every good idea needs to be produced into an ad. Winning ads need to be launched and the appropriate budgets need to be allocated each week. Partnerships with brands and influencers need to be done in parallel. And lastly, data analytics needs to be pristine so that media buyers and designers can understand what’s working and what’s not.

Read our blog on how to approach App Store Optimization in 2023.

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