Get found vs. get chosen.
ASO gets people to your door. Conversion structure gets them through it. Here's the difference — and why you need both.
App growth has two halves. The first is discovery — being found in a crowded store. That’s what App Store Optimization (ASO) is for: the keywords, title, icon and screenshots that win the tap. There are good tools for it, and you should use one.
The second half is conversion — what happens after the tap. Whether the structure of your onboarding, paywalls and pages actually turns a curious visitor into a user who sticks around. This is the half almost nobody measures, because the data that shows what works is buried inside competitors you can’t see into.
ASO wins the click. Conversion wins the customer. Here’s how they differ, and where each one fits.
| App Store Optimization | Conversion structure | |
|---|---|---|
| The question it answers | Will people find and tap my app? | Will they stay once they do? |
| Where it acts | The store listing — before the install | Inside the product — after the install |
| What it optimises | Keywords, title, icon, screenshots, ratings | Onboarding order, sign-up timing, paywall placement, trust signals |
| How you improve it | Rank for the right terms, win the tap | Arrange the flow so value lands before you ask for anything |
| What it can't tell you | Why people churn after installing | Whether anyone is discovering you at all |
They aren’t rivals — they’re the two halves of the same funnel. Strong ASO with weak structure is a leaky bucket: lots of visitors, few who stay. Strong structure with weak ASO is a bucket that holds water but rarely gets filled. You want both.
ScreenKraft is the tool for the second half. It reads the structure-and-conversion layer — never keywords — by studying how the apps that already won your niche are built: the order of their screens, where they place the paywall, how and when they earn trust.
Every element carries two numbers. Impact is how well that element tends to perform, drawn from public research and review mining. Trust is how much you should believe that Impact — it scales with the volume and agreement of the evidence. Thin evidence is marked directional, never dressed up as proof, and every score opens to the sources behind it.
It never replicates competitors: it links out to apps and their official store assets, and the transformative analysis is the part we own. No invented analytics — public evidence only.
What's the difference between ASO and conversion?
ASO (App Store Optimization) is about getting found — the keywords, title, icon and screenshots that decide whether your app shows up and gets tapped in the store. Conversion is what happens next: whether the structure of your onboarding, paywalls and pages actually turns those visitors into users who stay. ASO wins the click; conversion wins the customer.
What is "conversion structure"?
It's the order and design of the elements a user moves through — which screen comes first, when you ask for a sign-up, where the paywall sits, which trust signals appear and when. Two apps with identical features can convert very differently based purely on how that structure is arranged. It's the layer most tools ignore.
Do I need ASO if my conversion is good, or vice versa?
You need both, and they compound. Great ASO with weak structure means lots of visitors who leave — a leaky bucket. Great structure with weak ASO means a bucket that holds water but rarely gets filled. Fix discovery and conversion together, not one at a time.
How can I see how competitors structure their onboarding?
You study the flows of the apps that already won your niche — the order of their screens, where they gate, how they build trust. ScreenKraft does this from public evidence: it maps a competitor's structure and scores each element for Impact (how well it tends to perform) and Trust (how strong the evidence is), so you model what works instead of guessing.
Is ScreenKraft an ASO tool?
No — it's complementary. ASO tools help you get found; ScreenKraft helps you get chosen once you are. It reads the structure-and-conversion layer, never keywords. Use an ASO tool for discovery and ScreenKraft for what happens after the tap.