How to create eye catching app screenshots
I've been a long time fan of finance trackers, with one of my favorites being Personal Capital on iOS. An intuitive UI, support for all my investment accounts, and lack of ads (I'm looking at you, Mint) made my decision to move easy.
At Launchmatic we design app screenshots for a living and are always hungry to try new things. We took Personal Capital on as a design challenge to see if we could create something that would stand out in the ever growing crowd of personal finance apps.
Personal Capital's iOS screenshots are straight shooters; simple and to the point. But there's always room for improvement. Being a fan, Marko and I created an unsolicited redesign of their screenshots to better emphasize their most valuable money management features and help convert more people into installing.
Your first 3 screenshots are by far the most important in your screenshot set as they show up directly in Apple Search results. With 70% of App Store visitors using Search to find apps, you can't argue with the importance of this first organic impression.
While these first 3 screenshots are concise, as soon as you downsize the screens to fit within Apple Search's small constraints you'll see that both the captions and app screenshots are no longer as legible 👀.
We wanted potential users to have a clear takeaway of what the product offering was. This meant we'd need to create a visual approach that better emphasized both the captions and visuals.
Standing out against your competitors is incredible important, especially when there are so many redundant value propositions. We used AppTweak's app icon color tool to identify the icon color schemes of Personal Capital's competitors before verifying the color pallet in their screenshots. For the most part the results ring true for both according to what we found below:
We saw an opportunity to draw attention using Personal Capital's brand color, blue. Blue is a great choice for financial institutions as it is perceived as trustworthy, dependable, fiscally responsible and secure.
We also chose to create the design as a panoramic, with backgrounds and assets moving cleanly from one screenshot to another. Not only does this have a smooth visual flow, but can also have a positive impact on an app's conversion rate as it draws the eye and interest of more users.
We took the first screenshot to emphasize Personal Capital's high-level value prop: Manage Your Money. We added logos of credible publications that had written about PC to gain trust among potential users who were unfamiliar with the brand.
For the second screenshot we wanted to showcase the financial institution's logos front and center as they are familiar and would help compound the feeling of trust. The panoramic elements were designed in a way to catch the eye and bring your attention from left to right.
The third screenshot is the culmination of the other value propositions, and is the first showcase of the app within a device. While your total net worth might be more of a vanity metric (maybe not to some), it's a fun and enticing feature for those who have yet to calculate it. We popped out the graph to emphasize what the user could expect. The fading logos of institutions help tie these two features together.
Our goal was to create screenshots that explained the core value propositions clearly and legibly from Apple Search, while also setting the app apart from their flashy competitors. The ability to clearly understand the offering even at a distance feels like it rings true in this new set.
As part of the design process we also went for the full monty and completed the screenshot set. We wanted to break up the stale rhythm of showing device after device by visualizing key value propositions:
Typically the next step of the process is to A/B test your screenshots to make sure the new ones perform. Sadly, being a simple unsolicited design, there will be no A/B test for these creatives.
A little bit about LaunchMatic:
App screenshots have always been a pain in the ass. While screenshot optimizations can have the biggest return on investment for an app, many devs and app marketers refuse to touch them due to the fact of how expensive & time consuming they can become.
That's where Launchmatic steps in. We want to automate beautiful app screenshot mockups by focusing on 6 core features:
🎨 Pre-made screenshot templates
📱 Support for all platforms & devices
🌐 Automatic caption translations
📈 App Store Optimized
🔧 100% customizable
⬆️ Screenshot upload to App/Play Store
Sign up for early access!
Have questions or just want to chat about ASO? Email me: tim@launchmatic.app
