The Challenge
News apps compete for the same small slot on a user's home screen. The category is crowded with large media brands, aggregators and pre-installed apps, and most users only keep one or two news apps at a time. Getting found in the store is hard, and getting kept is harder.
Inshorts had a sharp product idea: the news in 60 words. The challenge was to turn that idea into a steady flow of new users from both organic store search and paid campaigns, and to make sure those users became daily readers rather than one-time installs.
The core insight
"In app growth, a download is not the finish line. A news app wins when people open it every morning, so acquisition and retention have to be planned as one system, not handed to separate teams."
The Approach
Rather than treating store visibility, paid campaigns and retention as separate projects, we ran them as one growth loop. ASO raised the conversion rate of every store visit, paid acquisition fed the store with qualified traffic, and retention work made sure the users we paid for stayed.
Lever 1
App Store Optimisation: win the store search
Built the store listing around how people actually search for news apps, then made every element of the listing work harder to turn a store visit into an install. Because ASO lifts conversion for all traffic, organic and paid, it was the foundation everything else stood on.
Lever 2
Paid user acquisition: scale what converts
Ran paid install campaigns to reach new audiences faster than organic search alone could. Campaigns were judged on the quality of the users they brought in, not just the number of installs, so budget moved towards the audiences and creatives that produced real readers.
Lever 3
Retention: turn installs into a daily habit
Focused on the first days after install, when most app users decide whether to stay. Used notifications and re-engagement to bring readers back to the app, building the daily habit that a news product depends on.
What We Did — Lever by Lever
App Store Optimisation (ASO)
Optimised the app's store presence so it ranked for the right searches and converted more of the people who found it.
- Keyword research around how users search for news, headlines and short news apps
- App title, short description and long description written for both ranking and conversion
- Screenshots and store creatives that showed the 60-word format at a glance
- Ratings and reviews management to build trust and protect store ranking
- Ongoing listing updates based on what improved store conversion
Paid User Acquisition
Ran install campaigns to grow the user base beyond organic store search.
- App install campaigns across Google and Facebook
- Audience targeting built around news readers and heavy mobile users
- Creative testing to find the messages and formats that drove installs
- Budget shifted towards campaigns that brought engaged users, not just cheap installs
Organic Download Growth
Grew downloads that didn't depend on ad spend, so growth continued between campaigns.
- Store visibility gains from ASO compounding into steady organic installs
- Launch and update moments used to drive bursts of new downloads
- Paid and organic activity coordinated so each lifted the other
Retention & Re-engagement
Made sure the users we acquired stayed and came back.
- Focus on the first-week experience, when most uninstalls happen
- Push notifications timed and targeted to bring readers back daily
- Re-engagement of inactive users to recover installs that had gone quiet
- Retention signals fed back into acquisition, so campaigns targeted users likely to stay
The Results
Running ASO, paid acquisition and retention as one system drove more than 300,000 downloads for Inshorts, from both organic store search and paid campaigns, with a strong focus on turning those installs into returning readers.
Key outcomes
300,000+
App downloads driven across organic and paid channels
ASO-led
Store listing built to rank for news searches and convert more visits
Quality UA
Paid campaigns optimised for engaged users, not just install volume
Retention
Notifications and re-engagement built to keep readers coming back
Why this worked
"ASO made every visit more likely to convert, paid campaigns brought in the right people, and retention kept them. Each lever made the other two more valuable, which is why growth compounded instead of stalling after each campaign."
What This Means for Your App
Many apps buy installs and then watch most of those users disappear within a week. The spend shows up as downloads, but not as revenue or active users. The fix isn't more budget; it's connecting store visibility, acquisition and retention so they reinforce each other.
The same approach works for any consumer or B2B app: get found in the store, acquire users who match your best customers, and design the first week so they stay. That's how downloads turn into active users, subscriptions and in-app revenue.
If your app is getting installs but not active users, the question isn't how to get more downloads. It's whether your acquisition and retention are working as one system. See how we approach it on our Mobile App Growth page.