How to localize your app store listing for every market

Most apps have one store listing, written in English, shown to the whole world. The stores help a little: Google Play can show people an automated translation, with a note saying so, when a listing has no version in their language. It reads like one. The people you most want to reach can tell nobody wrote it for them.

Localizing your listing means people in each market search a phrase in their own language, find your app, and read a page that sounds like it was written there. This guide walks through doing that properly on Google Play and the App Store, one market at a time.

What each store reads

Both stores give you a short name, a line under it and a long description. They differ in where search terms go: the App Store has a hidden keyword field; Google Play doesn't, so on Play the visible copy carries both jobs, ranking and convincing.

Limits from Google's listing specs and Apple's app information and version information references. The graphics carry a listing too: up to 8 screenshots per device type on Google Play and up to 10 per device size on the App Store. They don't rank you, but they decide whether a visitor installs.

Choose markets before languages

A language isn't a market. Spanish in Spain and Spanish across Latin America use different words for the same things, and both stores treat them as separate listing languages: Spanish (Spain) and Spanish (Latin America) on Google Play, Spanish (Spain) and Spanish (Mexico) on the App Store. Brazilian Portuguese isn't European Portuguese.

The stores also map languages to countries differently. Apple publishes, for every storefront, a default language plus additional languages; the United States storefront, for example, lists Spanish (Mexico), Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese among others. Check that table before you decide a market is "English only".

Start with where you already have traction. Both consoles show visitors and downloads by country; markets where people find you without a localized page are the cheapest to win. Then add markets where your category is big and the competition in the local language is thin.

Research each market's words

This is where most localization goes wrong. Translating your English keywords gives you words that are grammatically correct and that nobody types. People in each market describe the problem your app solves in their own phrasing, and that phrasing is what you need in your name, subtitle or short description, and keyword field.

We wrote a whole guide on this: why translated keywords don't rank, and how to find the local ones.

Write each field for that market

With the right words in hand, write each field as a native copywriter would, not as a translator. Keep the brand name, lead with the term people search, and respect each language's conventions. SpeakDiary's French name puts a space before the colon, as French typography does:

[ Store fields ]

enfres

App name · Both stores

26 / 30

SpeakDiary : Journal vocal

Short description · Google Play

54 / 80

Votre journal vocal privé. Un journal qui vous écoute.

A few rules that hold in every language and on both stores:

• Don't stuff keywords. Google Play's metadata policy rules out repetitive or unrelated keywords, and Apple's guidelines rule out packing metadata with trademarked terms, other apps' names or irrelevant phrases.
• Keep claims honest. "Best", "#1" or award claims you can't back up cause rejections and lose trust.
• Write the description for people. Short paragraphs, the main features early, and the longer phrases people search worked in naturally.

Localize the visuals

Most visitors decide from the screenshots before they read a word of the description. An English caption on a French listing undoes the work above. Localize the captions, use screens captured in that language, and check every line still fits. We cover this in detail in how to translate app store screenshots without breaking them.

Keep every language in step

Localization isn't a one-off. Every time you change the English listing (a new feature, a sharper hook), every other language falls behind. Six months later the French page describes an older app.

Treat the source listing as the master, and when it changes, update each market's version of the change rather than retranslating everything. That keeps the local phrasing you worked for.

Measure, then refine

Give each market a few weeks, then compare product page visitors and the conversion from visit to install against the time before. Both stores let you test before you commit: store listing experiments on Google Play, product page optimization on the App Store. The markets that respond deserve the next round of work: more screenshots, a better subtitle or short description, localized graphics.

A checklist for each market

1. Pick the listing language (and regional variant) the market uses on each store.
2. Research the terms people there search; don't translate yours.
3. Write the name, the line under it and the description natively, within each store's limits.
4. On the App Store, fill the keyword field with terms that aren't already in the name.
5. Localize screenshot captions and use screens captured in that language.
6. Check for truncation, line breaks and claims the stores won't accept.
7. Publish, then measure visitors and installs for that market.
8. When the source listing changes, update every market's version.

GetLocalised does this for every market from one source listing: it researches the local terms, writes each field within its limit, localizes your screenshots, publishes once you approve, and flags each language when the source changes. It works with Google Play today, and App Store support is on the way.