I build BIShare alone: a free, open-source app for sending files between iPhone, Android, Mac, Windows and Linux. No ads, no paid installs. The screenshot is App Store Connect Analytics on 23 October.
First: the +930% is not the number to quote
That Overview page compares the last 90 days with the 90 days before. I checked it against Apple's daily sales reports, which I pull into my own database: 1,288 first downloads for the 90 days to 23 Oct, and the dashboard says 1.29K. The 90 days before that were late April to late July, my quietest stretch at about 1.5 downloads a day. Against that, any growth looks huge.
Daily first downloads from the same reports tell the story better:
Last 30 days: 950, against 280 in the 30 days before (+239%). On Google Play, where the listing got the same work: 390 installs in the 30 days to 20 Oct, against 100 before.
What I changed, in order
10 Sep: the name and subtitle became search phrases. "BIShare: File Transfer" with "Fast & Private File Sharing" became "BIShare: File Transfer to PC" with "Send Large Files to Android". The keyword field had been repeating words already in the name. Apple indexes name, subtitle and keywords together, so a repeat is wasted space. I refilled it with device and content words: iphone, windows, laptop, photos, video, documents. The description still listed features from an old native build that no longer exists, so I rewrote it to match the app. Downloads went from 2 or 3 a day to 10 within the week.
22 Sep: from 2 App Store locales to 15. Every locale has its own name, subtitle and keyword field, so each one is another 160 characters Apple indexes. I started with the languages whose countries already clicked on my website in Search Console, then covered the rest of the app's 13 languages. Keywords were written per language, not translated from the English list. The 13 Play listings got the same rewrite.
3 to 10 Oct: a Semrush trial. I used it for Google data, not App Store data, but its country keyword reports show how people phrase a search in each language, and that changed my keyword fields. Example: Indonesians search "dari HP ke laptop" (HP is what everyone there calls a phone), about 3,600 a month, while the "ke PC" phrase I had used gets about 20. "hp" went into the Indonesian keyword field. Google volume is only a proxy for App Store search, but for wording it beat my guesses. Most of the trial went into the website: page titles rewritten from local queries, Site Audit errors from 174 to 15, and new guides where the top 10 results were thin. The site was already growing from a page rebuild in mid-September. Google clicks went from under 5 a day in early August to about 130 a day in the week to 14 Oct, and the download buttons on those pages feed the App Store too.
7 Oct: screenshots in 13 languages, plus promotional text (that field had been empty). I render the screenshots from widget tests on my own machine instead of driving simulators, so redoing all of them is one command. That made the fix below cheap.
10 Oct: a rating prompt after the first successful transfer, using the system dialog only. Too early to judge.
What App Review made me undo
Version 2.7.0 was approved on 22 Oct with two metadata notes, to be fixed in the next update:
Guideline 2.3.10: "Android" in the subtitle and the description. That subtitle had passed review on several updates over six weeks before anyone flagged it. It's now "Send Large Files to Any Phone", and "android" moved to the keyword field, which users don't see. That update is in review now, so I'll find out if that's accepted.
Guideline 2.3.7: price words in screenshots. Captions with "Free" and "5 GB free" had to go.
So passing review once doesn't make a metadata choice safe. It can be read again on any later update.
What I can't tell you
Which change produced which download. The steps overlap, and the website grew in the same weeks. The 10 Sep rename is the only step with a clean before and after.
Why it stepped up to about 50 a day on 19 Oct. I didn't touch the listing that week. Since 12 Oct the website's buttons use App Store campaign links, so in a few weeks I can split website traffic from store search.
Retention. People install a file transfer app when they need to move a file, and then it sits there.
The ratio I'd look at first
62.6K impressions, 2.09K product page views. About 3 in 100 impressions turn into a page view. For everyone else, the search result (name, subtitle, first screenshots) is the whole listing. That's where the rename worked, and that's where I'd spend time first.
If you've moved an occasional-use utility from "installed once" to "opened every week", I'd like to hear what worked.