Asia App Excellence: Discover 9 Online Services for App Store Optimization and Localization

App Store Optimization in Asian regions is made complicated by strong language barriers, but we at RadASO are well versed with handling various complexities that Asian locales bring to the table.  To help ease and speed up the optimization processes involved, we will be discussing the key online services that will streamline localization in Far Eastern countries.  We’ll start by describing their main functions ASO specialists will be interested in. Let's go! 

Complications with Localization in Asia

AppTweak, DataAI, Appfollow and other standard industry tools do not always help when Asian regions are involved. There are three key issues that can be distinguished when working with this region.

1. A lack of clarity regarding the realistic search volume figures in China.

This occurs due to the difference in algorithms that services use to calculate the level of search term popularity

*Search index in China provided by Qimai and based on multidimensional calculations such as search results, downloads and relatable keywords.

2. Specifics of hieroglyphic input.

The biggest obstacle in visual perception of a person who doesn't understand  hieroglyphic language is the absence of any punctuation. A notable example is the difficulty of visual perception that’s related to the three variants of written  Japanese language - hiragana, katakana and kanji. They are interchangeable and can mix with each other. So you can see different types of hieroglyphs at the same time in one sentence that won't be divided in any way by spaces or punctuation. 

3. Inaccurate translation using popular online translation tools. 

You are not always receiving accurate keywords translations. You need to search for synonyms that are spelled correctly and have bigger popularity among locals.  

Further recomendations that can address these questions.

Multifunctional service for China — Qimai

Qimai is the Chinese counterpart of widely familiar ASO services like AppTweak, DataAI, Appfollow, etc.

It covers data originating from the main app stores (App Store and Google Play) and 9 others serving Android users in 155 countries/regions all over the world. Qimai supports numerous multidimensional data functionality, including rankings for the apps you’re interested in, comparison of competing products, gives you profit estimates, etc. The semantic core gathering process in Chinese language with Qimai will take 15-20 minutes max. This core consists of relevant keyword queries that have an accurate translation and the greatest search volume relevance at the same time.  The service is relatively free to use, but it also comes with a paid subscription. Making the switch may be necessary If you’re going to analyze more than 10 apps and 1000 words. Pricing is quite affordable and starts from 4600 CNY (approx $350).

Qimai’s main quirks

It's  fully in Chinese, so for comfortable work, you’re almost certainly going to need some form of automated translation to translate the pages. If you work in Chrome, you will automatically be given an option to translate foreign languages. In other cases, you can use browser extensions such as Select to Translate, ImTranslator, and others.

Let's take a look at the interface. 

Home page:

Expanded information about the application:

Additional useful instruments:

Advantages: 

1. It simplifies the translation of keywords and synonym selection. 
2. It displays available information about the app, ranging from keywords and all the way to its position within the category.
3. You can obtain installation analytics of yours and your competitors’ apps.  
4. The service also holds information pertaining to all alternative Android stores  — Poco, Vivo, Huawei, Oppo, Meizu, Yingyingbao, Baidu, 360 Mobiles.
5. The process of monitoring reviews and ratings in all alternative stores is also simplified.
6. It has the capability to configure and optimize ASA campaigns directly from the dashboard in your personal account. Intelligent bid adjustment. 
7. Data is accessed through an API key.

Downsides:

1. The service is exclusively geared towards China.
2. It's designed for an audience from a specific region and therefore its interface is not always clear. Translation services do not always give a correct translation. 
3. Free version has limitations: 

• you can login from 2 devices only;
• subscription service is limited to 10 apps and 1000 keywords;
• you can only add 10 competitors’ products;
• data exports are allowed only 10 times/day;
• checking iOS download statistics/profit evaluation is available only 3 times per day.

Services for morphological text analysis 

These services let us split phrases into individual words. 

Japanese morphological analyzer Atilika.org

Atilika.org (Kuromoji) — is an open source Java based Japanese morphological analyzer. It has been transferred to Apache software fund and provides Japanese language support through:

• Apache Lucene — free open source software library for search engines
• Apache Solr 3.6 / 4.0 — another open source enterprise search platform

Interface:

Key features of Kuromoji:

1. Column 1: word segmentation — breaking the text structure into words.
2. Column 2: part of speech marking  — assigning categories to words (nouns, verbs, particles, adjectives, etc.).
3. Column 3: lemmatization — obtaining dictionary forms for conjugatable verbs and adjectives.
4. Column 4/5: reading kanji.

Upsides:

• Free demo version,
• Intuitively understandable main features with an English translation,
• Easy distribution of the whole text into separate components,
  when adding phrases, you get separate words and their original word forms which can be used to build meta-data afterwards,
• An open source tool written in Java that can be integrated into your own resource or website if desired.

Drawbacks:

• The service only works with the Japanese language.
• All output is in Japanese and you will need to rely on translation tools for full comprehension.
• A rather outdated design and primitive translation interface capabilities compared to other services. Although, perhaps, for someone, a minimalistic interface can be seen as a plus.

Japanese online dictionary RomajiDesu 

RomajiDesu — is a free online Japanese-English dictionary with a bunch of features. 

Interface:

Key features of RomajiDesu:

1. Its key features for ASO are translation from Japanese to Romaji (writing Japanese words with Latin characters) and English, as well as analysis of sentence structure to identify word types and parts of speech. 
2. This site offers a two-way English-Japanese dictionary where you just need to input a word in the corresponding field. The dictionary will find the definition with audio pronunciation and examples of sentences using that word in context.
3. It also has a kanji dictionary that comes with a search function using ideographs and radicals. The kanji dictionary has a properly drawn stroke order and examples of words.
4. There's also a converter that can convert romaji to hiragana and katakana. It can also translate a word or paragraph in English using the Microsoft translation mechanism.

The site has a RomajiDesu Bookmarklet that allows you to quickly go to the dictionary and grab its output without having to visit the site separately. You can find this feature and the instructions for it in the RomajiDesu section of the site.

Pros:

• The service is completely free.
• The main functionality is intuitive and user-friendly with a full corresponding English translation.
• It comes with a simple translation tool that breaks down the entire text into separate components.
• RomajiDesu has a Bookmarklet that allows you to work with the dictionary without leaving the platform to visit another site.
• It’s optimized for mobile, so most phones and tablets should work fine.
• It's an effective resource for learning Japanese.

Cons:

• No localization (only English is supported at the moment).

Thai online dictionary Thai2english.com

Thai2english.com — a Thai to English online translation tool with a word separation feature.

Interface:

Key features of Thai2english:

• Automatically inserts spaces so you can see separate Thai words.
• Generates a transliterated version that you can easily read.
• Shows context-dependent meanings for each word, making understanding and translation easier.

Pros:

• The service is completely free.
• The main functionality is intuitive and translated into English.
• A convenient Thai to English translation tool the divides the whole text into separate components.
• Can serve as an effective resource for learning the Thai language.

Cons:

• The service is exclusively focused on the Thai language
• The translation is exclusively in English
• Lackluster design and features compared to similar tools. But once again, depending on one’s perspective, sometimes minimalism can be considered a plus.

mdbg.net - an online service for working with Chinese languages

The service mdbg.net is focused on helping students learn Chinese.

Interface:

Key features of mdbg.net:

• A dictionary with the capacity to search in Chinese (simplified or traditional), pinyin (the standard Latinization of Chinese) or English.
• Searching by words - dividing the text into Chinese language parts.
• A dictionary of characters.
• Translation into English.

Pros:

• The service is completely free.
• There are annotations and information in English.
• There is a desktop version for Windows and Mac.

Cons:

• The service is exclusively directed towards Chinese languages (simplified, traditional, pinyin).
• Translation is exclusively in English.
• The service is primarily geared towards learning Chinese.
• Fairly outdated design. Information in the interface is formatted with different fonts, thus complicating the user experience. Predominant dark colors in the design also make things heavy on the eyes and divert the user’s attention from the parts of the interface they’re supposed to be looking at.

Google Chrome Chinese words separator plugin

Chinese words separator automatically separates the Chinese text into individual words by color. When hovering over a word an English translation of each character pops up and there’s an annotation to it.

Interface:

Pros:

• The service is completely free.
• It works on the popup principle without requiring you to navigate to other pages.
• You can use it on any website. It's convenient to use directly in ASO services for keyword selection (data.ai, appfollow, etc.) without leaving the service itself.

We couldn't find any noticeable downsides to this service :)

Google Chrome Plugin: Chinese Tools

Chinese Tools significantly simplifies work with Chinese characters. It converts the text into different versions of Chinese (simplified/traditional, pinyin), splits them into individual words, and pronounces them by going to the corresponding section of the purpleculture.net site.

To use it, you need to highlight the desired text, click with the left mouse button, and select what you need to do with it using the plugin.

Interface:

Pros:

• The service is completely free.
• It has a wider functionality compared to the previous plugin.
• You can use it on any website. It's convenient to use directly in ASO keyword tools (data.ai, appfollow, etc.).

Cons:

• Unlike the previous plugin, starting work requires a transition to a separate page, which can introduce some inconvenience.

Site with useful tools toolnb.com

At toolnb.com  you have access to a large number of tools that can simplify many tasks. Here are some of them:

• Chinese text separation into individual words.
• Page screenshot.
• Whois domain information.
• Xpath selection and many others.

Interface:

Pros:

• The service is completely free.
• The main functionality is intuitively understandable.
• The interface is available in several languages - English, French, German, Chinese.
• There is a desktop version available that you can download on WeChat.
• It has many other functionalities that might come in handy.

Cons:

• The interface translation contains errors and inaccuracies, in many places it's missing completely.
• The service developers’ language of origin is not English, so using it in English might take some effort.

Weblio: An Analysis of the Japanese Synonym Search Service

Weblio — this is a collection of Japanese online dictionaries that allows you to search and receive results from multiple dictionaries and glossaries.

The key feature for ASO specialists is the thesaurus, or synonym search.

Interface: 

Pros:

1. The service is completely free.
2. Easy synonym search. When you add a phrase, you'll get links to other keywords registered on Weblio. You can easily check synonyms for those confusing keywords that come up in the results with just one mouse click.
3. The site has a lot of different dictionaries, such as the thesaurus, antonym dictionaries, and also English-Japanese and Japanese-English dictionaries. Different dictionaries on Weblio are interconnected and linked in each search result.
4. The "Access to Ranking" feature allows you to find out which keywords other users are viewing the most.

Cons:

1. The service is primarily geared towards Japan's internal audience or people who know Japanese, and for the average user, the interface is not completely user-friendly.
2. Embedded translation tools aren't always accurate. 
3. It may appear to have outdated designs and limited capabilities compared to other services. In comparison to other regions, preparing metadata for Asia is a more complicated and laborious process. 

To sum up:

In comparison to other regions, preparing metadata for Asia is a more complicated and laborious process. RadASO’s experience shows that this service will help simplify work with Asian locales.

1. Qimai can help verify the actual search volume in China and find popular synonyms among the local population. The service should come in handy for getting an overall assessment of the Chinese market and working with alternative stores.
2. The morphological analyzer atilika.org and the online dictionary  RomajiDesu will be useful for breaking down Japanese text into individual words. The words obtained can then be used for composing metadata.
3. The Thai online dictionary Thai2english will help with translation and breaking down the Thai text into individual words.
4. The online dictionaries mdbg.net and toolnb.com will streamline the process of breaking down the Chinese text into individual words.
5. Google Chrome Plugins Chinese words separator and Chinese Tools will help you understand the Chinese text better and break it down into individual words without the need to switch to other browser tabs.
6. Japanese service weblio will help expand the semantic core in Japan with the help of synonyms.

It's only a small selection of services that are available, but we tested them all and these will certainly help you get more acquainted with the ASO specifics of the Asian region.

For the best results, it’s recommended to alternate between these resources and their features. It’s the process we use at RadASO ourselves, so we highly recommend you work it into your very own workflow.