--- title: How do I localise my App Store listing for different countries? description: Learn how to localise your app store listing for different countries, covering metadata, screenshots, reviews, platform rules and testing. image: https://weareaffective.com/hubfs/learning-centre-images/how-do-i-localise-my-app-store-listing-for-different-countries.webp --- [Skip to content](https://weareaffective.com/learning-centre/how-do-i-localise-my-app-store-listing-for-different-countries#main-content) [![we\_are\_affective\_logo\_200](https://weareaffective.com/hs-fs/hubfs/we_are_affective_logo_200.png?width=175&height=48&name=we_are_affective_logo_200.png "we_are_affective_logo_200")](https://weareaffective.com) - [Home](https://weareaffective.com) - About Us - [Our Story](https://weareaffective.com/about) - [How We Work](https://weareaffective.com/how-we-work) - Our Services - [App Planning & Strategy](https://weareaffective.com/app-planning-strategy) - [App Design](https://weareaffective.com/app-design-agency) - [App UX Design](https://weareaffective.com/app-ux-design) - [App UI Design](https://weareaffective.com/app-ui-design) - [App Technical Architecture](https://weareaffective.com/app-architecture) - [Existing App Audits](https://weareaffective.com/app-audit) - [Case Studies](https://weareaffective.com/case-studies) - [Pricing](https://weareaffective.com/pricing) - [Learning Centre](https://weareaffective.com/learning-centre) - [Get Started](https://weareaffective.com/get-started) Expert Guide Series # How do I localise my App Store listing for different countries? Table of Contents Launching an app in Germany is a different task from launching it in Japan, and not because of language alone. The search behaviour is different, the visual conventions are different, and in some categories the dominant platform shifts too. A listing that performs well in the UK might sit five pages deep in Tokyo's App Store simply because the keyword strategy was built for one market and ported across unchanged. > A listing that communicates the product clearly is a listing that filters for the right audience before the first tap. We worked on a gifting and wishlist platform where the client was reluctant to invest any effort in App Store Optimisation at all. Their logic was that the product's social, group-based nature would drive word-of-mouth and referral would carry the bulk of the growth. Our view was that regardless of how a user arrives at a listing, [the listing still has to work](https://weareaffective.com/app-planning-strategy). The icon, copy, category, and screenshots all need to communicate the product immediately, so the right users self-select in and the wrong ones self-select out before downloading. Users who download with accurate expectations are users who stay. Localisation takes that logic and applies it across every market separately. Done properly, it means the listing in each country is built for that country: the words people actually search, the visual style that reads as trustworthy locally, and the category that gives the product its best chance of being discovered. This article covers how to approach that practically, including where the process gets complicated and what to watch for before things go wrong. ## What app store localisation actually involves Localisation is not translation. Running your English description through a translation service and uploading it to fifteen storefronts is closer to a liability than a strategy. Word-for-word translations regularly produce copy that is grammatically correct but culturally flat, and in some markets that flatness reads as untrustworthy. Genuine localisation covers metadata, the title, subtitle, keywords, and description, as well as the visual assets: screenshots, preview videos, and the icon itself. It also covers category selection, pricing, age ratings, and in some cases whether the product is available in that storefront at all. Each of those decisions interacts with the others. A keyword strategy built on literal translation ignores how people in that market actually describe what they are searching for, which may be structurally different even when the language is technically the same. The benefit is measurable. According to [Iconikai](https://www.iconikai.com/blog/app-store-description-guide), localising an app store listing fully, description, screenshots, and keywords, can increase downloads by 20 to 30% in non-English markets. That figure sits behind a weak methodology caveat, but the direction is consistent with what we observe: a listing in the user's language that uses the right search terms and the right visual register converts at a meaningfully higher rate than one that does not. Treat each market as a separate brief. Start with user research in that market rather than assumptions carried over from your primary territory. ## Metadata: title, subtitle, and keywords by market The title and subtitle carry more search weight than any other text field, which makes them the first place to invest localisation effort. Apple indexes the title, subtitle, and keyword field. Google Play indexes the full description. Those are different constraints, and your metadata strategy needs to account for both. #### Keyword research per territory Search terms rarely translate directly. A wellness app might rank for "mood tracker" in the UK and for a phrase that more closely translates as "emotional diary" in Germany, because that is how users in that market describe what they want. Native speaker research matters here: keyword tools give you volume, but they cannot tell you which term carries the right connotation. #### Character limits and language density Some languages are significantly more compact than English. Japanese and Chinese can carry more meaning per character, which changes how much fits in a title field. German, by contrast, can produce compound words that work grammatically but overflow fields and read strangely when cut off. Plan for this before you write. A subtitle that works at 27 characters in English may need restructuring entirely in another language, not just replacement word for word. The description matters more on Google Play than on Apple, where character limits constrain how much of it users see anyway. On both platforms, [the first few lines carry the most weight](https://weareaffective.com/learning-centre/what-makes-app-tutorial-content-that-people-actually-want-to-watch), so front-load the clearest statement of what the product does before any supporting copy. ## Design built to *grow* your product We give your app the strategic and design foundations it needs to launch well and keep growing. Research, UX/UI design and technical specs ready for your development team. [See how we work](https://weareaffective.com/how-we-work) [Get started](https://weareaffective.com/get-started) No commitment ## Screenshots and preview videos Screenshots are the most viewed asset in any app store listing. A significant portion of users make their download decision from screenshots alone, without reading the description at all. That makes them the visual argument for your product, and that argument needs to hold in every market you are entering. Visual conventions differ more than teams typically expect. A screenshot layout that reads as clean and premium in the UK might read as sparse in markets that expect denser information, or as low-effort in markets where production values in listing assets are considerably higher. Japan is a well-documented example: app store listings there often carry detailed illustrated assets with much higher information density than their Western equivalents, because that is the local visual register. > Screenshots are the visual argument for your product, and that argument must hold in every market separately. Overlay text on screenshots needs localisation too, and this is frequently missed. Teams translate the app description and then leave the screenshot captions in English, which breaks the experience for users who cannot read them and wastes the most valuable real estate in the listing. Create market-specific screenshot sets for your top three territories rather than translating one set. The layout decisions, not just the words, often need to change. Preview videos carry the same logic. An autoplay video that works as a product narrative in English may need re-editing for markets where the pacing convention is different, or where the voiceover language is the primary source of information for users who do not read the overlay text. ## Category selection by market Category selection is a strategic decision, and it is one that teams routinely treat as administrative. The category determines which charts the app appears in, which browse sections surface it, and which competitors it sits alongside. In highly competitive categories, a new product from a standing start can struggle to generate enough organic impressions to build any meaningful momentum. Where a product could plausibly sit in more than one category, we recommend a two-stage approach. Launch in the less competitive category first. That generates higher rankings more readily, which means more organic impressions, more downloads, and more usage. Once there is traction and the product has an established audience, consider moving into the more competitive primary category that may be a better long-term fit but is much harder to rank in from zero. The reason this matters for localisation is that category competitiveness varies by market. A category that is saturated in the US may be relatively open in South Korea, or vice versa. Running the same category across all storefronts without checking local competitive density means missing opportunities that a market-by-market review would find. Some categories also carry different cultural weight in different markets. A product that sits most naturally in a Lifestyle category in Western storefronts may fit better in a Health or Social category in markets where those are more actively browsed. Check browse behaviour in each market, not just search volume. ## When your brand promise and your listing tell different stories [A localised listing that contradicts your brand](https://weareaffective.com/learning-centre/why-does-our-competitor-feel-more-trusted-even-when-our-product-is-better) is worse than a generic one. If the brand presents as restrained and premium and the localised listing leans into category conventions that are louder or more promotional, the mismatch creates distrust before the user has downloaded anything. We see this most often when teams hand localisation to translators without briefing on brand voice. The translator produces accurate, idiomatic copy in the target language, but the tone shifts because nothing in the brief told them what tone to hold. The result is a listing that reads locally but feels like a different product. The brand promise has to travel. That means briefing localisation partners on [the emotional register of the brand](https://weareaffective.com/learning-centre/what-makes-users-trust-a-product-enough-to-enter-their-card-details), not just the words to translate. It means reviewing translated copy against the brand rather than only against the English source. And it means being honest about which parts of the brand expression are genuinely transferable and which are rooted in one cultural context and need adapting rather than translating. On the genetics product we worked on, we found that the right information density sat in a narrow band. Too simple and users did not trust the science. Too technical and users disengaged entirely. The balance, plain language for flow with medical depth available to explore, had to hold in every market the product entered. That balance is a calibration, and it needs to be re-calibrated for each market rather than assumed constant. ## Front-loading your product story when users cannot explore first Some products require registration or setup before the user can experience any value. When that is true, the app store listing carries a heavier burden than usual, because the user cannot try before they commit. Everything that would normally unfold through use has to be communicated before the first tap. We built an anonymous messaging app that required upfront registration before a user could do anything in the product. Because we could not drip-feed value inside the app, [all the messaging that would normally emerge through experience](https://weareaffective.com/learning-centre/why-product-owners-should-write-the-users-second-session-before-the-first-one) had to be front-loaded into the App Store presence instead. The screenshots, the description, and the preview video all had to do work that the product itself would normally do in the first session. That created a significantly higher bar for the listing than it would have been for a product with a lightweight or no-login onboarding. In localised markets, this constraint compounds. A user in a market where your brand has no existing awareness is making their download decision entirely on the listing, with no prior context. The listing is the first and only impression. That means the listing in each new market needs to communicate the full product story, not just the core value proposition, in a way that lands without any surrounding brand familiarity to lean on. For products with mandatory registration flows, audit your listing copy against the question a new user in each market would actually be asking, not the question a familiar user would ask. ## Ratings, reviews, and social proof across markets Ratings and reviews are a form of social proof, and social proof works differently across cultures. Markets that sit towards the collectivist end of cultural research, broadly much of East Asia and parts of South America, tend to weight peer opinion more heavily in purchase decisions. In those markets, a strong review profile can be a more significant conversion factor than in markets where individual assessment is the dominant mode. The practical consequence is that the rating displayed for your app varies by storefront. Apple and Google both show country-specific ratings where there is sufficient review volume, and a 4.6 average in the UK does not carry over to a freshly launched Japanese storefront. A product launching in a new market may show no rating at all, which in high-trust-weight markets reads as a meaningful negative signal. One approach to this is to [actively request reviews at the right moment](https://weareaffective.com/learning-centre/how-to-read-a-user-session-recording-for-emotional-signal-rather-than-task-compl) in the product experience, not as a default prompt on third launch but at a moment of demonstrated value, and to localise that request. On a travel app we worked on, we reframed the review prompt from "rate this experience" to "what would you tell other travellers about this?" The shift moved the user from feeling they were doing something for the company to feeling they were helping other people. Engagement with the prompt improved as a result. That same reframe, adapted into the local language and idiom, works across markets. ## Platform rules that vary by country Platform rules are not uniform globally. Apple and Google both apply country-specific content policies, and a listing or product that passes review in one market may face restrictions or outright rejection in another. Some categories are subject to localised regulatory requirements that the platform enforces at the app review level. We ran into this directly on a currency exchange app. The product met every stated compliance requirement, and Apple rejected it anyway, then raised new objections each time we addressed the previous ones. Eventually Apple cited potential use for money laundering, and we capped transactions at €150 in response, which should have removed that concern entirely. Apple rejected the app again. The client ran out of budget. It later became clear that Apple Pay was building toward launch around the same period, and the rejections appeared to be strategically motivated rather than compliance-based. The project ended without a product. That experience made one thing clear: [platform rules are commercial as well as technical](https://weareaffective.com/learning-centre/how-to-structure-a-pre-build-budget-that-accounts-for-the-cost-of-being-wrong), and they are applied with discretion that varies by market and by moment. A financial product launching in multiple territories needs legal review in each market, not just a single compliance pass at origin. - Age ratings are set by market and can affect discoverability in filtered storefronts - Content that is permissible in one territory may require removal or age-gating in another - Some categories require localised legal certifications before the app can go live - In-app purchase rules and payment mechanisms vary by region on both platforms ## Who controls the account, and why it matters App Store Connect and Google Play Console accounts have a defined ownership structure, and who holds the Account Holder role determines who has final authority over every build, every submission, and every piece of content in every storefront. This is a practical consideration that has a direct effect on how localisation is managed across markets. On the social football platform we worked on, the client held the Account Holder role since the account was registered in their name. We were given admin access to the majority of the account and set up three internal testing groups: one for our team, one for the client, and one external QA beta group for the client's testers. As the project approached launch, the client began bypassing that structure and manually sending uploaded builds to whichever group they wanted. Because everything sat on their account, they had full access and we had limited ability to prevent it. It caused problems during the deployment process. For localisation specifically, account structure matters because storefront metadata, screenshots, and pricing are all managed at the account level. If multiple parties have high-level access without clear ownership of each element, you can end up with one market's listing updated and another's sitting on outdated copy from an earlier version. Agree on ownership and access at the start of the project, not when something goes wrong mid-launch. Document which team member owns each storefront's metadata and who signs off on changes before any localisation work begins. Ambiguity at the account level costs time at exactly the wrong moment. ## How to test and iterate your listing by market Both Apple and Google offer native tools for testing listing variations, and they are underused. Apple's Product Page Optimisation lets you test up to three alternate versions of your icon, screenshots, and preview video against the default, with traffic split automatically and results reported at the storefront level. Google Play's Store Listing Experiments runs similar tests on the description and visual assets. Testing by market is different from testing globally. A screenshot variant that wins in the US may not win in France, because the visual argument it makes resonates differently in each context. Running market-specific tests means you are learning what works for each audience rather than averaging across them and applying a global winner that is optimal for none of them. The table below shows how the two platforms compare on listing test capability: | Feature | Apple (Product Page Optimisation) | Google Play (Store Listing Experiments) | | --- | --- | --- | | Elements testable | Icon, screenshots, preview video | Description, screenshots, icon, feature graphic | | Variants allowed | Up to 3 alternates | Up to 3 variants | | Market-level reporting | Yes, by storefront | Yes, by country | | Traffic split control | Yes | Yes | [Iteration should be built into the roadmap](https://weareaffective.com/app-planning-strategy), not treated as a post-launch task if performance disappoints. Set a review cycle for each priority market, check conversion rates against benchmarks, and treat the listing as a product that needs ongoing attention rather than a launch deliverable that gets filed. ## Conclusion App store localisation is not a translation task handed to a vendor at the end of a project. It is a set of decisions, about metadata, visual assets, categories, account structure, and market-specific platform rules, each of which interacts with the others and each of which has a real effect on whether the product gets discovered, downloaded, and kept. The gifting platform we worked on had a product worth talking about. But no referral mechanic works if the listing it sends people to cannot communicate what the product is in the seconds before they decide. That principle scales across markets: a listing that works in your home territory, translated word for word and uploaded elsewhere, remains a copy of something built for a different audience. What we have described across these chapters is the full scope of that work: keyword research per territory, visual assets built for local conventions, category strategy that accounts for local competitive density, social proof that reads differently across cultures, and platform rules that are applied differently by market and by moment. None of it is optional if you want the product to perform outside the territory it was built in. According to [CSA Research](https://csa-research.com/Featured-Content/For-Global-Enterprises/Global-Growth/CRWB-Series/CRWB-B2C#10Facts), 40% of users will not buy a product if the content is in a foreign language. That figure is the floor. A localised listing removes that barrier. A well-localised listing, built for each market rather than translated from one, gives you a real chance of ranking, converting, and retaining users who would not otherwise have found you at all. [Let's talk about your app store strategy](https://weareaffective.com/get-started) ## Frequently Asked Questions What is the difference between app store localisation and translation? Localisation goes far beyond converting text from one language to another. It covers metadata, visual assets, category selection, pricing, and keyword strategy, all built around how users in a specific market actually behave and search. A word-for-word translation can be grammatically correct but culturally flat, which in many markets reads as untrustworthy. Which parts of an app store listing need to be localised? A fully localised listing covers the title, subtitle, keywords, and description, as well as screenshots, preview videos, and the icon. It also includes decisions around category selection, pricing, and age ratings, since each of these elements affects how the listing is discovered and how it converts in that specific market. Does localising an app store listing actually improve downloads? The evidence suggests it does, particularly in non-English markets. Fully localising a listing, including the description, screenshots, and keywords, has been associated with download increases of 20 to 30% in those markets. The direction of that result is consistent with what practitioners observe in the field. How does keyword research differ between the App Store and Google Play? Apple indexes the title, subtitle, and a dedicated keyword field, so metadata strategy for the App Store is focused on those specific areas. Google Play indexes the full description, which means keyword placement throughout the copy matters more on that platform. A localisation approach that ignores these structural differences will underperform on at least one of the two storefronts. Why can a listing that performs well in one country rank poorly in another? Search behaviour, visual conventions, and even dominant platforms vary significantly between markets. A keyword strategy built for the UK and ported unchanged to Japan, for example, will likely miss the terms people in that market actually use. The listing needs to be built for each country separately, not adapted from a primary territory. Do visual assets like screenshots need to be changed for different markets? Yes, visual conventions vary between markets and what reads as trustworthy or appealing in one country may not land the same way in another. Screenshots and preview videos should reflect the visual register that works locally, not simply carry translated text overlaid on assets designed for a different audience. What is the best starting point when localising for a new market? Treat each market as a separate brief and begin with user research specific to that territory. Carrying assumptions over from your primary market is one of the most common reasons localisation efforts underdeliver, particularly around search behaviour and the language people use to describe what they are looking for. Does a good app store listing matter if most users arrive through word of mouth or referral? Yes, because the listing still has to convert once a user lands on it, regardless of how they got there. The icon, copy, category, and screenshots all need to communicate the product clearly so the right users choose to download and the wrong ones do not. 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