. 15 secret strategies to improve app ratings and reviews
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15 secret strategies to improve app ratings and reviews

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30 April 2024
15 secret strategies to improve app ratings and reviews

If you are the owner of an app, you are already aware of how important reviews and ratings are to the app’s success. They are representations of the user experience your app offers, not just app analytics.

However, what happens if you can’t seem to get enough reviews? Users are known to be reluctant to download apps with few reviews and ratings, particularly if those reviews and ratings are one or two stars.


But don’t worry. We are aware that increasing the number of reviews you receive while also raising the app’s rating can be difficult for you.

This post will discuss tried-and-true methods for getting lots of reviews and getting high app store ratings on Google Play and Apple’s App Store. In the end, this will raise app visibility and boost downloads.

Let’s first examine what app reviews and ratings are and how they vary from one another. 👇

What are app ratings and reviews?

App visibility and conversion rates are strongly impacted by both app reviews and ratings, which are important measures of an app’s quality and user satisfaction. Both are distinct measurements, though. Let’s examine each in turn.

What are app ratings?

App ratings are summaries of the overall quality of an app expressed in numbers. The star system, which assigns ratings between 1 and 5, is used by both the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store. Users may quickly assess an app’s functionality and suitability for their needs by looking at its ratings.

They frequently reflect consumers’ initial impressions of an app, which can affect their choice to download it or not. Users will give your app more stars if they are satisfied with it, and vice versa.

What are app reviews?

However, written assessments known as app reviews provide more detailed comments and insights into the advantages and disadvantages of a given app. Users can share their thoughts, draw attention to certain aspects they value, and recommend areas for development.

By giving you a more thorough grasp of user opinion, reviews help you pinpoint problems and enhance your app specifically.

App reviews give you qualitative information that enables you to comprehend the “why” behind customer contentment or discontent, while app ratings give you a quantitative indication of an app’s popularity.

Making this difference is essential to app optimization since it frees up your time to concentrate on improving the user experience and resolving certain issues brought up in reviews.

You can only fully comprehend your app’s functionality and user feedback by utilizing both app ratings and reviews.

What’s a good app rating?

Your post-launch app development roadmap should include the continual process of monitoring app ratings and reviews. You can set attainable goals to enhance your app’s functionality and user pleasure by knowing what makes an app with a high rating.

50% of customers won’t even consider downloading anything with a 3-star rating, per Apptentive’s research. Additionally, conversion rates can rise by 89% when a 3-star rating is upgraded to a 4-star rating.

According to the survey, all categories combined have an average app rating of 4.3 out of 5. Nonetheless, there are notable differences between the groups. As an illustration, work apps often have ratings of 4.1, whereas games typically have higher ratings, averaging 4.5.

Getting a 4-star rating these days is essential to staying alive; it’s no longer a mark of honor. You must keep your average rating of at least 4.7 if you want your app to be in the top 1% of revenue-generating apps worldwide.

You should be aware of the quantity of ratings your software has in addition to its total rating. For example, an app with five stars won’t welcome new users if it only has twelve reviews. When making selections about what to buy, users tend to trust apps that have a few hundred ratings or more.

You might wonder what makes an app rating good.

Any app that has received more than four stars from hundreds or even thousands of users is regarded as good. This shows that a large number of people have left favorable reviews for your program, praising its use, dependability, and general degree of happiness.

What happens to apps with low ratings?

Your app is less likely to show up in the app store’s search results if it has low reviews. This is a result of the app store algorithms giving preference to apps with better user reviews and higher ratings.

As a result, your software faces decreased conversion rates and consequently fewer downloads, creating a vicious cycle. In consequence, fewer downloads lessen your chances of receiving favorable reviews, which keeps your app ratings low going forward.

Furthermore, your app’s ability to make money is diminished by lower app ratings. This is because consumers who have a preconceived notion that your software might not be worth their money are less inclined to spend money on it.

15 strategies to improve app store ratings

Having learned the consequences of low app ratings, let’s examine how to raise your rating on the app store and obtain favorable reviews 👇

1. Have a user-focused approach

There is no shortcut that can match a sincere attempt to assist users in resolving their issues. Adopting a user-centric strategy guarantees that your app’s users receive value and have a smooth experience from start to finish.

Users are more likely to give your app the thumbs up when you start paying attention to what they need and providing it.

You must deliver a customized user experience and include both necessary and desirable app features in order to achieve this. Recall that satisfied customers promote you on all social media channels in addition to leaving you glowing evaluations.

2. Simply ask

Never undervalue the influence of a simple question. Your users may require a little encouragement at times to voice their opinions.

Positive reviews need to be nudged a little bit, even though negative ones encourage people to write terrible ones. You never know, you might get a ton of great reviews just by asking them to leave you a review.

3. Time your triggers

Review prompts shouldn’t appear on your app at random times. It’s important to time the request carefully and attempt to reach people at times when they are most likely to provide good feedback.

For example, with a food delivery app, your app should ask the customer to rate or review the dish if it arrives earlier than expected. This is because you have a good probability of getting a high rating at that particular moment, when they are probably feeling cheerful.


Conversely, asking for ratings when you’re frustrated—for example, when you find a bug or your app crashes—will undoubtedly result in negative comments for your app.

4. Incentivise users to leave ratings

One win-win tactic to raise your app’s ratings is to provide incentives for users to post reviews. You can provide users with incentives, exclusive offers, or access to only your app in exchange for their reviews, depending on the kind of app you have.

For example, you could offer your users a month of premium feature access in exchange for a review. This tactic tilts the odds in favor of happy customers who were considering leaving a review.

One piece of advice would be to steer clear of rewarding only good app reviews since this will make your app ratings seem less legitimate.

5. Ease the process of rating

  • A user should be able to swiftly and simply evaluate your software if they so choose. Any difficulty that could discourage consumers from giving feedback can be reduced by doing the following:
  • Including review prompts in the design of your application
  • Push notification sending
  • Obtaining input through additional channels, such as social media and email, and giving directions on how to rate the app
  • Supplying guidelines on how to rate the application

Encouraging user participation through an easy-to-leave review process leads to a favorable experience.

6. Directly reply to all reviews

It’s a given that responding quickly to user reviews—positive or negative—will increase the app’s rating.

If you respond to reviews with poor ratings in a sincere manner and address their problems, they are more likely to revise their initial ratings to higher ones. Conversely, acknowledging and thanking excellent reviews might motivate readers to interact with your content even more.

For instance, by sincerely and quickly responding to feedback, Slotomania was able to raise both its organic conversion rate and app ratings by 0.7 stars and 15%, respectively.

7. Act on feedback

Gaining feedback by itself won’t help you. In order to provide a flawless customer experience, you must take action.

Occasionally updating your app to reflect even the smallest change won’t make a difference. You must carefully consider the input from your users and make necessary updates to the app experience.

For example, if users point out that your app’s homepage needs more refinement, you should work on several versions and do A/B testing before releasing them.

8. Never buy fake reviews

At all costs, resist the urge to purchase phony reviews because consumers can easily identify them and they undermine the legitimacy of your app.

Actually, the quickest approach to remove your software from app stores is to purchase purchased reviews. There isn’t much you can do to change the situation because this is against app store policies.

9. Avoid poor performance

Negative reviews are often the result of subpar performance. Your app will irritate customers and increase the likelihood that they will leave a bad review if it freezes, crashes frequently, or loads slowly.

You must routinely maintain your software to fix bugs and flaws that cause it to run slowly and ensure that it functions properly in order to prevent this.

10. Add more features

The absence of features that customers expect from your app is a regular issue that you may encounter. Anything from fundamental functions like push notifications to more sophisticated ones like the capacity to design unique reports could fall under this category.

You must continuously add new features and functionalities to your software. This encourages favorable ratings while keeping them interested for longer.

11. Deliver a seamless user experience

Did you know that an app’s design influences 94% of users’ initial opinions? Your app’s design has the power to make or kill it.

Users are more likely to become irate and post a bad review—or worse, uninstall—your software if they find it difficult to use.

For this reason, you must create an intuitive user interface (UI) for your program in order to provide a seamless user experience (UX).

12. Don’t make false claims

Your app is more likely to receive bad ratings if it doesn’t live up to user expectations. A deficiency of features or deceptive marketing materials could be the cause of unfulfilled expectations.

It’s preferable to stay with emphasizing the actual value your software offers and how it will address the user’s issue rather than making exaggerated claims. By doing this, you’ll avoid exceeding their expectations and falling short of meeting them.

13. Make it easy for users to reach out

You give your users a direct line of communication for support by giving your contact details and making it simple for them to get in touch. This indicates your dedication to giving clients satisfying user experiences.

To do this, include support buttons or links in your app’s UI that direct users to informational pages or help desks. Additionally, you can incorporate in-app support tools such as call buttons, live chatting, feedback forms, and chatbots.

14. Report offensive reviews

You have the ability to report spam and incorrect reviews on both Apple and Google. Just report offensive reviews that go against the app store’s policies if you come across them.

There’s no use in responding or poking around for more details.

You can preserve the general caliber of feedback and keep bad or spammy reviews from depressing the ratings of your app by reporting them.

15. Build a community

It is advisable that you focus on establishing a community within your app, where users can communicate and support one another. The goal here is to maintain user engagement while cultivating a sense of community.

One specific subreddit on Slack, for example, is where users can exchange advice on how to make the most of the service. Additionally, Slack hosts “Ask Me Anything” sessions where community administrators answer questions from users and deal with their issues.

Importance of ratings and reviews for ASO

App owners can maximize their presence on app stores and boost software downloads by using a strategy called app store optimization, or ASO. This is accomplished by incorporating metadata such as titles, keywords, and descriptions in their listings along with screenshots, preview videos, ratings, and reviews of the app.

It’s crucial to distinguish between ASO and SEO, despite the fact that many people equate the two. Holly Lawton, Head of Sales & Marketing at Pearl Scan, a provider of document scanning services, clarifies:

“The primary commonalities I’ve discovered between SEO and ASO are that, in ASO, reviews play a pivotal role in ranking, as opposed to being just one of several components on a page optimized for search engines,” explains Holly.

For SEO purposes, an e-commerce page with product schema, for instance, would require a significant number of reviews on any app listing in order to provide visitors with social proof and trust signals.

Your app can soar to the top of the app store rankings when combined with the finest tips for app store optimization and good ratings and reviews 👇

1. Increased app visibility and discoverability

Both Google and Apple’s app stores employ algorithms to rank apps according to ratings. Accordingly, the visibility of your app will increase with a higher rating and decrease with a lower rating.

You may raise the likelihood that more prospective users will find your app by keeping up good ratings and getting reviews.

2. Boost in-app downloads

Let’s face it:

People have faith in one another. People are more inclined to download your app after reading favorable reviews. When downloading a new app, 79% of users check reviews and ratings first.

Positive reviews and high app ratings are powerful persuasive techniques that carry most of the weight in getting users to download your app.

3. Enhanced credibility

Your app ratings ultimately become a component of your business image and are closely linked to the experience you offer to your consumers. This is due to the fact that your rating is the first thing a user sees when they see your app on the app store for the first time.

Higher ratings, of course, lend your app more legitimacy and inspire users to download and utilize it. On the other hand, negative feedback and low ratings damage your reputation and could drive customers to competitors.

4. Increase in in-app revenue

Enhancing your app reviews has a direct impact on your app income in addition to improving your ASO.

Higher app ratings enable you to make more in-app purchases as the app owner. This is due to the fact that you will have more options to monetise the traffic if your app has more downloads.

A Playtika analysis claims that a 0.2 star boost for their game Bingo Blitz led to a 30% increase in organic conversion and 1500 additional installs every month. As a consequence of the rise in installations, monthly revenue increased by $135,000.

With your increased app traffic, you can employ a variety of app monetization techniques to boost your income, such as in-app purchases and advertising.

Google Play vs Apple App Store ratings and reviews

The standards for app reviews and ratings range greatly between the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store. Let’s examine how they approach them differently 👇

Google Play Store vs Apple App Store: App ratings

Your app’s overall rating in the Apple App Store is calculated by taking the average of all the ratings it has received. This implies that all of your ratings—positive or negative—go toward the total average.

If you believe that the average rating for your app isn’t a true reflection of its quality right now, you can change it. When you upgrade your app, you receive access to this option. Resetting the rating will give you a fresh start because ratings from earlier iterations won’t be taken into account for the new computation.

Resetting the app rating is a feature exclusive to the Apple platform.

In contrast, the Google Play Store calculates ratings in a completely different way. When determining the average rating, it ignores ratings from the beginning of time. Rather, Google Play prioritizes reviews left for the most recent iteration of the app.

This ensures that the app’s most recent enhancements and changes are more clearly represented in the rating overall and gives a true picture of its current status. As a result, your app’s ratings will rise quickly if customers are happy with the most recent upgrades and enhancements.

Google Play Store vs Apple App Store: App reviews

Once more, they take distinct tacks in the app reviews. Google shows a combination of the most favorable and unfavorable ratings, while Apple just shows the last six reviews.

This implies that you are more likely to reply to unfavorable evaluations as they are prominently featured on the Google Play Store. This method places greater emphasis on addressing user problems and holds you responsible for unfavorable ratings.

Negative reviews, on the other hand, are less noticeable in the App Store, which may deter you from answering them. Even though they might not be as obvious, you should carefully consider user feedback when it comes to improving your app.

The way the two stores handle customer feedback is another distinction.

Users can rate and comment on specific features of your app on the Google Play Store. This covers functionality, design, and simplicity of use. You can use this feedback to help you find areas where your software needs improvement.

Your users can only write a review and rate an app with stars on the App Store. It could be challenging to pinpoint certain areas in which your software needs to be enhanced in light of this input. Consequently, in order to gather comprehensive customer input and create feature updates that meet their needs, you might need to hold focus groups and surveys.

Conclusion

Getting app ratings and reviews at scale is the true issue, yet both good and negative feedback can help you enhance your app.

You might need to, among other things, build up event-based triggers, enhance app performance, and add new features to give yourself the best chance of succeeding in this. Builder.ai can assist here.

Click the link below to schedule a call with our staff and start increasing app ratings and reviews right now 👇

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