All right. 1
So we all know that ratings and reviews are really important. 2
If I haven't stressed that enough up to now then I'll stress it again. 3
Your ratings and reviews matter a huge deal not only to the users who see it i.e. they see that you've 4
got lots of five star reviews and are probably assured of the quality of the app, 5
but the other part is that the more ratings you get and the more reviews you get, the more visible you 6
are on the App Store. 7
So the more that you will rank for more competitive keywords for example. 8
But one of the things that a lot of app developers do wrong with ratings is their rating prompt. 9
Now if you've been on the app stores for more than a day then you would have seen a rating prompt like 10
one of these. 11
It says "Please rate my app, rate it 12
now, remind me later, or no thanks. And I want to say that this is a really really poor way of implementing 13
a rating prompt. 14
So it is a good idea to have a rating prompt. 15
People have shown again and again that if you don't remind your users, nobody is- 16
very few people will voluntarily go and rate your app unless they really hate it or they really really 17
love it. 18
And the skew is more towards the hating i.e. if they i.e. if they sort of hate your app they will go 19
and rant about it on the App Store. 20
But if they sort of like your app then that's not enough momentum to get them to take action. 21
So basically what I'm saying is that the user has to be infatuated with your app to rate it or they 22
just have to dislike it slightly. 23
But what you want as the app developer is you want more control over this process. 24
You do want to remind them and it's important remember that please don't implement one of these reminders 25
as soon as they download the app. 26
I've seen it time and time again that I download an app and the first thing I see when I open up the 27
app is one of these prompts. If I have not even interacted with your app then it is a) impossible for me 28
to rate it 29
and b) it will probably send me to delete your app straight away because this is really poor user experience. 30
Now instead the way that you should be doing it is very similar to the way that Ember does it. The question 31
that you should be asking your users is "how do you feel about this app?" and from there you'll channel 32
them down a number of paths. If they feel really happy about your app then you should ask them to rave 33
about you rant about you anywhere they like. So tweet about it, Facebook about it, write a review, 34
contact us, do anything you like. But if they are unhappy then the only person that they should be contacting 35
is you, the developer. 36
Because very often when users are upset or when they really don't like an app, the reason is usually 37
technical. 38
It's usually because something crashed or something broke or something didn't work for their particular 39
phone. 40
And this is a conversation I believe that should take place between the user and the developer in order 41
to resolve what the issues are, in order to make their experience better. 42
So personally I always take these emails really seriously. When I use a tells me that there's an issue 43
that they've encountered with their app, 44
I will tell them that I'm on it straight away and I will try and fix it as soon as I can. 45
And once I have and uploaded the updated version, I will email them to let them know 46
again. This is just a basic way of keeping in touch with your users. 47
Very often you can actually convert an angry mob into diehard fans by doing this. 48
So it's really worth giving users that ability to contact you and to resolve these situations. 49
It's only when that channel doesn't exist do people feel the need to go into the app store and rant 50
about how bad or terrible your app is. Now having that in a public forum, it does nobody any good. 51
It doesn't help you as the app developer, it doesn't motivate you but instead brings you a lot of grief 52
and also reduce credibility on the App Store. 53
So when you're implementing your ratings prompt, consider asking the user about how they feel. 54
And the third option is of course to target the confused users, the ones who didn't really get how the 55
app works in which case you can take them back to the onboarding or getting started guide. Or they can 56
just contact you with their particular queries. 57
So always be available for your users and try to differentiate the happy users from the unhappy users.