App store localization, in the order that pays
Localisation is usually attempted all at once and abandoned halfway. Doing five markets properly beats twenty half-done, and the order you translate things in decides whether it was worth the effort at all.
Reading time: about 9 minutes
Translate in this order
Each step costs more than the one before it and returns less. Stop wherever the budget runs out — the sequence is designed so that a partial job is still a coherent one.
- 1
App name and subtitle
Indexed for search in every storefront. On the App Store the subtitle is prime keyword real estate; on Play the short description does the same job.
- 2
Screenshot headlines
The highest-leverage non-indexed asset. A browser who sees English marketing copy on their local storefront reads it as "not for me" before reading a word of your description.
- 3
Keyword field / short description
Apple's 100-character keyword field is per-locale and must be researched per language — a direct translation of your English keywords is almost always wrong.
- 4
Full description
Matters more on Play, where the long description is indexed. On the App Store it is not indexed but still converts the readers who scroll.
- 5
In-app content
The expensive one, and the one that decides retention rather than installs. Worth doing after you have evidence a market responds.
Choosing markets
Start from your own analytics, not a top-ten list
Look at installs by country in App Store Connect or Play Console, then at which countries already convert badly relative to their impressions. A market with high impressions and low conversion is a localisation opportunity; a market with no impressions is a marketing problem instead.
Five markets, properly, beats twenty half-done
A listing with translated screenshots, a researched keyword field and a native subtitle outperforms twenty listings with machine-translated titles. Expansion is cheap; maintenance is not.
Storefront language is not country
Spanish covers Spain and Latin America with meaningfully different vocabulary; Portuguese splits between Brazil and Portugal; Chinese splits by script. Picking the wrong variant reads as carelessness to the people you are trying to reach.
Watch for markets where English is fine
The Nordics, the Netherlands and Singapore have very high English fluency and often show little lift from a translated listing. Spend the effort on Japan, Korea, Germany, Brazil and China, where it moves the number.
How the two stores handle languages differently
| Apple App Store | Google Play | |
|---|---|---|
| Language model | One localisation per language, with an optional per-territory override | Per-language listings, plus custom store listings targeted by country |
| Screenshots | Separate set per localisation, per device family | Separate set per language listing |
| Indexed metadata | Title, subtitle, keyword field | Title, short description, full description |
| Fallback | Falls back to your primary language | Falls back to the default listing language |
| Testing per market | Product Page Optimization, per localisation | Store Listing Experiments, per listing |
Seven ways a localisation goes wrong
Translating the app but leaving the screenshots in English — the most common half-finished localisation there is.
Machine-translating the keyword field. Keywords must be researched in the target language, because what people search for is not what your English keywords mean.
Ignoring text expansion. A German headline runs 20–35% longer and silently wraps to two lines, halving your type size.
Leaving currency, dates and units in the source format inside the framed screen.
Using one Spanish or one Portuguese for both variants.
Right-aligning a left-to-right layout and calling it Arabic support, instead of mirroring the composition.
Localising the listing but shipping an English onboarding, which converts installs into immediate uninstalls.
The mechanics of producing localised artwork — supported languages, expansion factors and RTL handling — are on localised screenshots.
Localisation questions
Which languages should I localise my app store listing into first?+
Take your top five install markets from your own store analytics. For most apps that lands on some combination of German, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish and Korean — but your data beats that list, and a market with high impressions and poor conversion is the strongest signal of all.
Do localised screenshots affect App Store ranking?+
Not directly — screenshots are not indexed. They affect conversion from impression to install, and install velocity is a ranking input. So the effect is real but indirect, and it compounds with the metadata that is indexed.
Is machine translation good enough for a store listing?+
For the long description, often. For the title, subtitle, keyword field and screenshot headlines, no — those are the parts doing the persuading and the ranking, and a word-for-word rendering reads as foreign to a native speaker in exactly the places it matters.
How do App Store and Google Play differ on languages?+
Apple has one localisation per language with optional per-territory overrides, and indexes the title, subtitle and keyword field. Play has per-language listings plus custom store listings targeted by country, and indexes the title, short description and full description.
How do I produce localised screenshots without a designer per market?+
Generate them. Up to five storefront languages per batch, with headline copy written natively per locale rather than translated word for word, and right-to-left layouts mirrored properly.