The Developer Strikes Back: Fighting One Star Reviewers

[lftrghtparadigm]

i think developers need to spend less time complaining and bemoaning those who have given them 1 star reviews, and SERIOUSLY address the reasons behind such a review. Yes OP mentioned vague reasons such as "app crashes", however, how much work have you honestly done in debugging or ruling out any possible app crashes within your app? Also, i've read others mention that app crashes could be due to OS issues, and not the app itself, and I would just like to say that's possible but it's like asking whether the chicken or the egg came first. With the same OS baseline, there are far more apps that don't crash then apps that do crash, so the question is why is it that YOUR app is in the category of crashing more often? of course the OS might not be helping your situation, but perhaps you could have coded your app better, optimized it more efficiently so that the issues with the OS won't affect your app as much.

Also, developers need to not only stop complaining when it comes to users who PAID for their app, but need to do more to reach out and interact with their users. I'm always shocked at how few developers have forums or blogs where they can interact with their users on a regular basis and keep them abreast of future developments as well as to take in feedback and help develop a "two way" conversation with their user base.

I have to agree with decksnap in that every app runs the full gamult of reviews from 1 star to 5 star reviews, whether warranted or not. However, as i mentioned earlier, it would behoove you as the developer to give users what they EXPECT from your app and users will respond with the 5 star reviews that you would want. Beejive is a perfect example, with nearly 800 reviews, it has retained it's 4.5 star average, so to say that only dissatisfied people are likely to leave a review is probably true, but it's not to say extremely satisfied people won't respond in kind.

good luck with your app, and remember, LISTEN TO YOUR USERS. you might be smarter then them, but they're the ones paying your bills.

lotta smoke here, but some fire

I agree, more developers need after-sales connection to the users. A blog, a site, a freakin email address, something! How else can you get the correct feedback needed to help you fine tune and update the app? After the initial release all that matters is if users are HAPPY or not. If NOT, then fix or adjust the app until they are.

WAY TOO many developers who think their simple app that took 6 months to build is their own personal artistic creation and adding user requested features would be an insult to their genius.

 

[lftrghtparadigm]

I am a developer and I agree with all of your points. My app is suffering similarly especially from the rate on delete reviews. However, you have to realize that if you want thousands of people to buy your app, you are going to have to deal with thousands of different opinions. You cant possibly make an app that will satisfy every single user but you CAN filter out who buys your app! You do that by charging a fair price and not underselling your self.
If you want impulsive buyers to purchase your app at $.99 you will get all sorts of opinions. If you want people to seriously think before buying your app then sell it at $5 or higher. Sure you are going to turn down lots of potential buyers but thats ok, at the end of the day you will make more and have less users to support.

I have first hand experience with this because I have tried every price between free and $5. All was fine and dandy with about 30 5 star reviews on my app until I gave it away for free 1 day only. Thats when my rating went down the drain. In fact I knew this would happen from day one, that is why I chose to charge $5. My mistake for going against my intuition.

Pick a target audience, make your app, charge a fair price and stick to it! What do you think the rating of tampons would be if you gave them out to a bunch of guys and asked them to rate it?

Amazing post, thank you and good luck with your apps!

 

[skubish]

I understand your pain and frustration but I don't agree with your methods.
I feel if you buy an app, you are entitled to review it however you like. I also believe should feel free to click YES/NO on how helpful the review is at their pleasure.

I do glance at the star rating but I always look at the reviews to see what's up. If an app is 3+ star I look at what people like about it and see if I feel like it. If an app is 2 star or less I look at what people don't like and decide whether that matters to me.

The main issue is that the review system in the AppStore is garbage. Apple needs to adopt a model similar to Digg. "Digg" an App to move it up the scale and have it sortable by day, week, month, year, etc. Also it should include a feedback system for reviewers then people with low or negative feedback could be filtered out of reviews (Digg does this). Also it would be helpful if Apple would allow developers to contact reviewers. Apple already knows the reviewers email address they just need to forward the developers' email without giving out email addresses.

In the end great apps don't have these problems so I think a lot is left up to developers. Look at Fieldrunners, 4.5 star since release and 1.0 didn't even have sound. It is a great game and people like it.

 

[MacToddB]

Amen.

I have rave reviews, via iTunes and email (posted on my website, http://www.100sounds.com), but quite a few 1-stars from people who thought they were getting a ringtone app, without reading our very specific iTunes page.

1) Apple doesn't allow an app to duplicate the functionality of iTunes. After all, Apple makes a lot of money charging people to turn songs they already bought into ringtones. Fine, that's Apple's choice. So we are VERY specific that 100sounds is NOT a ringtone app, and that indeed there is no such thing.

2) Because people have asked (sometimes nicely, sometimes not) we have offered, as a goodwill gesture, to email sound files, in WAV and MP3, of their choice, and our web site lists pointers to third party software, for the Mac and PC, all with free trials, that can turn those sounds into ringtones. THIS IS A GOODWILL GESTURE and with 12,000+ customers, this is not an insignificant commitment. I'm not complaining and I need to automate this, with some safeguards, but for now, customers appreciate the personal touch, as many of my reviews state.

3) Those people still leave a 1 star review. They complain that it's not what they were looking for and they ADMIT they should have read the description. That 1 star drags down someone else's 5 star for a 2.5 star average. Yet all reviewers agree that the app does what it is advertised to do.

Apple only gives us 4,000 characters, with NO formatting, on the iTunes description page. We devote a lot of valuable text space to explaining the ringtone issue and still get burned.

The other issue is folks have their MUTE switch on and can't hear sounds, so they delete the app and rate it badly. At least I can do something about that. In the next update it says to check the MUTE switch!

 

[ayasin]

I used to mark reviews unhelpful in the days of no purchase necessary to review an app, I don't anymore. For the most part now my reviews are extremely good, but when users do complain it's usually something that's legitimate (and I fix it if it's in my power to do so). I do wish some of the people who review would come to the site and take a look at the forums before reviewing, but you can't have everything. If I exclude reviews from people who clearly didn't purchase my app, reviews like "I'm not paying for an app like this", or "make it 0.99 and you'll sell thousands" then my app has about a 4 star rating, although since one star reviews do act like a huge anchor it's currently sitting at 3.45 stars. I wish Apple would scrub the reviews from people who didn't purchase the app, but frankly this isn't high on my wish list...much higher is conversion metrics and click source reporting about your apps itunes page.

 

[Sparky9292]

This issue really bugs me as a customer and not only in the app store. When I'm browsing the music store I've noticed that a lot of people give low ratings to albums when they can't buy individual songs and blame apple for it. That really annoys me because I read reviews to know if an album is good and that has nothing to do with it. Also, that is not even an issue with apple, it's with the music labels.

Sometimes people are just really petty when things aren't just how they want them.
Once I bought a DVD from ebay and it took quite a while longer than it was supposed to for me to get it. Also the seller told me he would send me a tracking number and he never did, and never responded to my emails after that. Still, I got the DVD in the mail and it was in impecable condition. But because it took so long for me to get it and because it was hard to contact the seller I gave him a neutral feedback and explained my reasons. And because of that he gave me a negative feedback. That really annoyed me.

then you'll love the new ebay feedback system. Sellers can NEVER leave negative feedback for buyers now...

 

[Bobioden]

I wish Apple would include the date of the review. It is hard to tell if they were rated when it first came out, after several updates etc....

 

[kas23]

I wish Apple would include the date of the review. It is hard to tell if they were rated when it first came out, after several updates etc....

That's true. If not the date only, I would also like people to explicitly write what version they are reviewing.

Also, the first reviews you look at via the App Store via iPhone are always the oldest. So, the order is from the oldest to the newest reviews. If an app has 400+ reviews, I cannot view the most recent ones without scrolling through them all (or at least I don't know how to), which is a PITA. This is very unfortunate because the oldest reviews are usually poor because they are from the app's first version. I only care mostly about the reviews of the most recent version. This is not a problem viewing reviews from your laptop/desktop though because you can change their order based on dates.

 

[akacaj]

Also, the first reviews you look at via the App Store via iPhone are always the oldest. So, the order is from the oldest to the newest reviews.

That is not true, the newest are always on top. The only reason an old review would go back to the top is if the user previously reviewed your app then changed their rating via the rate on delete feature.

 

[KRAPPS]

That is not true, the newest are always on top. The only reason an old review would go back to the top is if the user previously reviewed your app then changed their rating via the rate on delete feature.

What happens if you update a previous review - do this go back to the top? Thanks in advance.

 

[kas23]

That is not true, the newest are always on top. The only reason an old review would go back to the top is if the user previously reviewed your app then changed their rating via the rate on delete feature.

You're right. I guess I wouldn't have been confused if they actually listed the date the review was written or for what version.

 

[akacaj]

What happens if you update a previous review - do this go back to the top? Thanks in advance.

Yes every time you change the review it goes back to the top.

 

[Shader]

If an app you own updates, I feel that there should be a way to notify reviewers to take a look at the app again/revise their rating.