App Store Optimization
App Intents and Siri discovery
Let the system see what your app actually does, so it can suggest you before anybody searches. Scoped as its own piece because that is how it is usually bought.
What does app Intents and Siri discovery actually involve?
Let the system see what your app actually does, so it can suggest you before anybody searches. In practice that means app Intents implemented for the three to five actions somebody might ask for by name, and then the harder half: spotlight surfacing of in-app content, so a single item inside your app can be a search result.
Why this work exists
Put bluntly: the alternative is making decisions on numbers nobody has checked.
Part of App Store Optimization, and the part where the diagnosis is usually most useful on its own.
The nearest piece of work to it is deciding whether a rating prompt is helping or annoying. Where that is already handled, this moves faster than the estimate; where it is not, the two get done together or neither of them holds.
What good looks like
The useful version ends with a decision somebody can act on this month, not a report somebody files.
The gap between that and where most accounts start is why this is scoped as app Intents and Siri discovery rather than as a line inside something larger. Finding out what the store search looks like on the device buyers actually use is the usual second step once it is in place.
When this is the right work
The tells:
- Your app has clear core actions and none of them are exposed to the system
- Competitors appear in Spotlight with specific content and you appear as an icon
- Discovery is flat despite good retention
If none of those is true, something else is probably the constraint, and the App Store Optimization overview maps the alternatives. The usual neighbours are making the category choice deliberate rather than inherited and tracking the terms where the app is invisible rather than merely low.
What the work covers
What gets done:
- App Intents implemented for the three to five actions somebody might ask for by name. The effort here scales with the size of the estate, not with the size of the brief.
- Spotlight surfacing of in-app content, so a single item inside your app can be a search result. Where the documentation and the actual behaviour part company.
- Siri Suggestions readiness, which surfaces apps on the lock screen based on learned usage. Where the documentation and the actual behaviour part company.
- Shortcut and widget coverage for the habits worth reinforcing, revisited rather than finished, because the inputs keep moving.
How it runs
Three stages, in this order, for the reason each one gives.
Handing it over
Whatever is left running ends up with a named owner and a schedule, or it stops happening within two months.
Agreeing the measure
The number this will be judged on is fixed before the work starts. Agreeing it afterwards is how both sides end up disappointed.
Finding the constraint
Most of the available gain sits in one or two places. The first job is working out which, rather than improving everything by a little.
What each part runs into
Taken one at a time, against real markets:
- App Intents implemented for the three to five actions somebody might ask for by name, harder in Manchester because of a sector mix that pulls the brief in several directions
- Spotlight surfacing of in-app content, so a single item inside your app can be a search result – in Chicago, complicated by the fact that a seasonal peak that arrives before the content is indexed
- Siri Suggestions readiness, which surfaces apps on the lock screen based on learned usage, which in Vancouver runs into a reporting line that averages away the market in question
- Shortcut and widget coverage for the habits worth reinforcing: the Udaipur version of this has to deal with a market where buyers qualify by area rather than by city
The version that does not work
Implementing intents for everything. Three to five actions people genuinely ask for beats twenty nobody uses.
It is worth stating because it is the version of this work that gets sold most often, and it fails in a way that looks like the discipline not working rather than the execution being wrong.
How it is measured
Siri and Spotlight sourced opens, and share of sessions started outside the app icon. Reported monthly against a baseline taken before anything changed.
Two people should be able to calculate it independently and get the same answer. If they cannot, it is the wrong measure.
What you end up with
What gets handed over: an intent specification for your engineering team, and the metadata needed for the system to surface those actions.
Written once, for the person who has to do something about it.
How it differs by sector
Where it is done matters as much as what is done:
- B2B services, constrained by the fact that a buying committee, a long cycle, and attribution that has to survive both.
- Ecommerce and retail: Margin per order decides everything, and the product feed is usually the weakest asset. so this work has to account for that before anything else.
- Home and trade services, where emergency intent, service-area geography, and a phone that has to be answered. which moves this work earlier in the plan.
The industry pages carry the rest of that detail. B2B services and Ecommerce and retail are the two where this piece of work most often decides the outcome.
Common questions
Is this engineering work or marketing work?
Both, which is why it falls between the two and does not get done. The specification is marketing work; the implementation is engineering.
What does it actually gain us?
Placement on surfaces that reach people before they search, which is the part of discovery keywords cannot touch. What this leaves out is in Brand and Creative, and some of it in Content and Editorial.
How do we know this is the right piece of work?
The signals above are the test. If none of them describes your situation, something else is the constraint, and saying so is more useful than selling this. In-house team or Agency if the constraint is budget, Last-click attribution or Data-driven attribution if the constraint is time.
What happens if it does not work?
We report that it did not, with the reason. Siri and Spotlight sourced opens, and share of sessions started outside the app icon agreed before the work starts makes that an honest conversation rather than an argument. The order most people need is Should we block AI crawlers? first, Should we use a website builder or WordPress? once the first one is running.
Who does the work on app Intents and Siri discovery?
A practitioner rather than an account manager, and the same person throughout. Siri and Spotlight sourced opens, and share of sessions started outside the app icon is their number, which is the only arrangement under which the reporting stays honest. If budget allows only one of these, Content gap analysis first, then Content refresh next quarter.
Ask about app intents and siri discovery
Say what the current setup looks like. We will say what we would change first and what we would leave alone.
Let us look at where you actually stand
Thirty minutes, the data you already hold, and a straight answer about where the constraint actually is.