Recently the creators of the Twindr app posted an article about the conundrum that app developers face with the rating system in the App Store.
It is difficult to get app reviews because of the disjointed review user experience and at the same time app reviews are key to app discovery. To write a review users need to leave your app, go to the App Store, login, and then write their review.
App Review Process (Twindr example)
Many developers have probably not written an app review because of this process. Sometimes the password challenge appears and you cancel the review process with intention to come back later but you may not ever become a ‘conversion’ and write a review.
As an app developer if you’ve accumulated a 5 star rating for your app you are faced with the choice of updating your app and providing functionality that your users want and losing your 5 star rating or keeping your 5 star rating and not providing the best app that your customers want.
We’ve seen many apps where you click on a button or link to write a review and you are taken directly to the app overview page and you have to take an extra step to click the Review page. This is an extra step that your users need to take which further decreases your chance for a review.
While not readily apparent, app developers can improve their chance of receiving app reviews by linking directly to the Reviews page in iTunes. This format is not highly publicized but here is a link style that you can use in your apps to take the app user directly to the Reviews page:
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewContentsUserReviews?type=Purple+Software&id=YOURAPPIDHERE
Just replace YOURAPPIDHERE above with your app’s ID that you get from iTunes and include this link in your app when you ask users for reviews. This will help smooth the transition to iTunes and provide a better user experience for your app’s users.
When asking for reviews make sure to read this recent post by Aaron Wojnowski on how to provide a user experience in your app to increase your chances for positive reviews.
Even though the full app review process is disjointed, it is very important to the success of our apps and we need to make sure we do all we can to improve our odds of getting the positive reviews that our iOS apps need.
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