As a young up and coming developer in the macosx and iphone community, I am very excited about bringing my first efforts to the app store in the future. Not a big deal in the grand scheme, but every developer starts as I am, with a few ideas, a few skills, and nothing but time standing in the way of making a profit off the new "App Store".
I've been closely studying this new distribution method and its characteristics, and have assembled a basic understanding of psychology of the app store and its marketing power. Its amazing how powerful a simple title, an icon, # of stars, and # of reviews, can really be. This info can be compared to Google Adwords, in the sense that it is the seller-input data that serves to attract a downloader (and eventually close the sale).
Users (downloaders) have very few means of impacting these marketing data, but the little they have can go a long way toward the success or failure of app. The number one way to impact an app is (obviously) to rate and review it after purchase. For the most part, there appears to be two kinds of reviews that dominate 90% of all reviews:#1. The "4 or 5 star review" which is essentially praise with one or two criticisms which are usually requests for enhancements, #2. the "1 star, this app crashes and it shouldn't because I spent money" review.
The latter is a huge problem for developers with high quality apps. The #of stars compared to the # of reviews, whether you realize it or not, is what stops you scrolling down the page and ultimately makes you click further to see the screenshots, read the descrip and buy. Conversely, an app you may otherwise have picked up without question may be glossed over due to an intimidating "3 stars" rating, despite thousands of reviews.
Some of you may be thinking, there are FIVE stars for a reason, not everything is perfect or near perfect. And I agree, which is why I urge people to think back to school days when you were handed a survey or a teacher evaluation, and you had to "rate" something on a scale from 1 to 5. Remember that EACH number 1,2,3,4, and 5 have their own unique measure of quality, and should be chosen from appropriately.
As the thread title states, there needs to be, IMHO, an effort to correct the stain being left by immature and non-savvy users, who believe any issue is someone else's issue, and there could be no reason why their experience is different because of them or their device. Without getting deeply into it, depending on which of the 4 current devices that can run these apps, how you use it, what condition the battery is in, and how many other items you have installed; there are several reasons why a user can have a "crashy" experience with an app, where others would not.
Unfortunately there is no way to mentally adjust the people who are unhappy with their buying choices and lash out in the only way possible, to the maximum extreme possible (giving one star with no explanation besides "it crashed on me")......... However, Apple HAS included one simple way to devalue the the reviews and ratings given by the barely conscious...Was This Review Helpful? Yes/No
If you see a one star review on any app, especially one you know to be of high quality, and the associated comment is "It crashes" with no other legitimate explanation, PLEASE, click the NO option, even if you don't have time to write a counter review. If you have downloaded an app and you like it, do your developers a favor and write positive reviews for them. Something between 3 and 5 stars with helpful criticism. And likewise, if an App is junk, give the developer legit feedback. 1 or 2 star reviews may be acceptable with an explanation, if the app deserves such dejection (there are some).
If more people keep it in mind to positively review apps they like, and recognize that good ratings for good apps will ONLY lead to developers putting MORE effort into MORE quality apps, for YOU, then things will get better."Click No" for reviews that are indeed NOT helpful; we can only hope that Apple will eventually recognize the epidemic of one star reviewers with no interest in anything besides whining, and adjust the criteria for a published review to better combat illegitimate "app flaming".
Cheers to all and hope you do the right thing for the Apps you love. I also hope you 10 year olds stop crying about the $10 you spent on app that you finished in 10 minutes.
I've been closely studying this new distribution method and its characteristics, and have assembled a basic understanding of psychology of the app store and its marketing power. Its amazing how powerful a simple title, an icon, # of stars, and # of reviews, can really be. This info can be compared to Google Adwords, in the sense that it is the seller-input data that serves to attract a downloader (and eventually close the sale).
Users (downloaders) have very few means of impacting these marketing data, but the little they have can go a long way toward the success or failure of app. The number one way to impact an app is (obviously) to rate and review it after purchase. For the most part, there appears to be two kinds of reviews that dominate 90% of all reviews:#1. The "4 or 5 star review" which is essentially praise with one or two criticisms which are usually requests for enhancements, #2. the "1 star, this app crashes and it shouldn't because I spent money" review.
The latter is a huge problem for developers with high quality apps. The #of stars compared to the # of reviews, whether you realize it or not, is what stops you scrolling down the page and ultimately makes you click further to see the screenshots, read the descrip and buy. Conversely, an app you may otherwise have picked up without question may be glossed over due to an intimidating "3 stars" rating, despite thousands of reviews.
Some of you may be thinking, there are FIVE stars for a reason, not everything is perfect or near perfect. And I agree, which is why I urge people to think back to school days when you were handed a survey or a teacher evaluation, and you had to "rate" something on a scale from 1 to 5. Remember that EACH number 1,2,3,4, and 5 have their own unique measure of quality, and should be chosen from appropriately.
As the thread title states, there needs to be, IMHO, an effort to correct the stain being left by immature and non-savvy users, who believe any issue is someone else's issue, and there could be no reason why their experience is different because of them or their device. Without getting deeply into it, depending on which of the 4 current devices that can run these apps, how you use it, what condition the battery is in, and how many other items you have installed; there are several reasons why a user can have a "crashy" experience with an app, where others would not.
Unfortunately there is no way to mentally adjust the people who are unhappy with their buying choices and lash out in the only way possible, to the maximum extreme possible (giving one star with no explanation besides "it crashed on me")......... However, Apple HAS included one simple way to devalue the the reviews and ratings given by the barely conscious...Was This Review Helpful? Yes/No
If you see a one star review on any app, especially one you know to be of high quality, and the associated comment is "It crashes" with no other legitimate explanation, PLEASE, click the NO option, even if you don't have time to write a counter review. If you have downloaded an app and you like it, do your developers a favor and write positive reviews for them. Something between 3 and 5 stars with helpful criticism. And likewise, if an App is junk, give the developer legit feedback. 1 or 2 star reviews may be acceptable with an explanation, if the app deserves such dejection (there are some).
If more people keep it in mind to positively review apps they like, and recognize that good ratings for good apps will ONLY lead to developers putting MORE effort into MORE quality apps, for YOU, then things will get better."Click No" for reviews that are indeed NOT helpful; we can only hope that Apple will eventually recognize the epidemic of one star reviewers with no interest in anything besides whining, and adjust the criteria for a published review to better combat illegitimate "app flaming".
Cheers to all and hope you do the right thing for the Apps you love. I also hope you 10 year olds stop crying about the $10 you spent on app that you finished in 10 minutes.
