How multi-country ASO delivered over £1m in value for Deliveroo

Deliveroo is a category leader, but like most high-scale apps, its app store performance was still leaving money on the table. The brief was simple: improve conversion and organic growth across multiple territories, without compromising brand consistency.

This is the story of how a structured, multi-country ASO program delivered a minimum of £960k in added value, with the Android ratings work alone representing ~£1.2m annualised value.

The challenge

Deliveroo’s growth team needed to improve three things at once:

• Conversion rate (turning store visitors into installers)
• Ratings and social proof (removing conversion friction, especially on Google Play)
• Visibility for high-intent searches, including competitor brand terms, across multiple markets

Just as importantly, the work had to scale across key territories, not just deliver a one-country win.

The approach: treat ASO like a multi-market growth system

Rather than only rewriting keywords, the program was run as a set of storefront projects, prioritised by impact and then rolled out across managed territories.

The work spanned iOS and Google Play, with a heavy focus on:

• ratings strategy and prompt timing
• localisation and brand consistency fixes
• creative iteration and storefront testing
• visibility and ranking improvements for high-value searches

What we shipped (the projects)

1) Ratings prompt project (Google Play)

The single biggest lever was improving ratings through better prompt timing. Prompting users to review after a successful first order increased the app’s star rating by roughly 0.5 and improved download conversion.

• Play Store rating improved: 3.8★ to 4.3★
• Conversion rate uplift attributed to ratings: ~8% (reported as 8.4% in project summary)

2) Localisation plus brand fixes

Storefront creative localisation is one of those “sounds obvious, rarely done well” levers. Localising French and Spanish screenshots and aligning branding delivered a measurable uplift.

• Uplift from localisation and brand fixes: +5.2%

3) Ranking improvements (including competitor brand terms)

Improving visibility is not just about generic keywords. For Deliveroo, a chunk of high-intent search volume sat in competitor terms. The program improved rankings for competitor brand searches including Just Eat, McDonalds and Uber Eats.

• Reported return from ranking improvements: £181k

4) Storefront creative refresh and layout improvements

Creative changes focused on clearer value communication and better screenshot sequencing. A rebrand and moving to an 8-screenshot layout delivered incremental conversion lift.

• Return from rebranded screenshots project: £147k

5) Smart banner updates

Small UX improvements outside the store can still compound. Updating Smart Banners on Deliveroo’s site to show ratings (instead of review text) produced a further uplift.

• Return from Smart Banners update: £11k

6) Featured stories

When featured placements were active, they materially lifted downloads.

• Featured stories impact: +26.7% downloads while active

The results (what it was worth)

If you only take the conservative, project-by-project accounting, the program delivered:

• Total minimum added value: £960k

But the scale of impact is clearer when you look at the rating improvement work in isolation:

• A post-ratings conversion uplift represented ~£102k per month, or ~£1.2m annualised value (based on an estimated £3.54 cost per download benchmark).

Across managed territories, Deliveroo also saw stronger organic performance:

• 77% improvement in organic traffic in CMA-managed territories vs non-managed territories (Q4 2019 YoY)
• In the UK, France, and Spain, Q4 organic installs increased 37.16% YoY (reported across iOS and Android)

Why it worked (the non-obvious bit)

Most ASO programs focus on one lever and call it a strategy. This one stacked several conversion and visibility levers that reinforce each other:

• Ratings reduce risk. Higher stars make every impression work harder.
• Localisation removes “this isn’t for me” doubt in the first 3 seconds.
• Better rankings increase the volume of qualified store visitors.
• Creative sequencing turns intent into installs.

The compounding effect is why multi-country ASO can generate seven figures of value even when individual uplifts look “small”.

What to steal for your own ASO program

If you want to copy the playbook, start here:

1. Treat ratings as a conversion project, not a vanity metric. Align prompts to successful moments.
2. Localise what actually sells, not just the text fields. Screenshots are often the biggest gap.
3. Defend and conquest high-intent searches, including competitor brand terms where relevant.
4. Refresh creatives in measured iterations, then roll out wins across markets.
5. Track value in money terms, not only in rank charts. It changes prioritisation fast.