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iOS and MacOS Developers Can Now Respond to Reviews

developer.apple.com

111–120 of 222 posts

Re: iOS and MacOS Developers Can Now Respond to Reviews

#111
post #102

As a small indie dev (dealing with hundreds or thousands, not hundreds of thousands of customers), the best way I've found to encourage reviews is to prominently display my email address for any questions or ideas. Then, when customers write (many of them do), I write back a nice response and then add: P.S. If you enjoy Mindscope, would you take a minute to write a short review? It would mean a lot and helps give Min…

Some people here would probably call that a "dark pattern" (I of course don't). Because, you know, it's soliciting for positive reviews from a preselected set of users.

As far as I've seen, happy user have little incentive to go and leave a good review. But the users who have had some annoyances with the app are definitely going to take it to the reviews. This leaves you with negatively biased reviews a lot of the time.

Re: iOS and MacOS Developers Can Now Respond to Reviews

#112
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an unfortunate cause of excessive app rating prompts — what's shown in search results/top charts/other areas is the average of the latest version, not the overall aggregate. If you're at a company that does scheduled releases (e.g. once every three weeks), you'll need to continually ask people to review the app to keep that rating high. Otherwise you only get ratings from new users and users that are disconte…

What's almost worse, is that it disincentivizes developers from updating their apps. If they want to keep their apps bug free, they have to weigh the severity of the bugs against wiping the slate clean on their reviews.

But to be honest you don't do that by updating every couple of days

Re: iOS and MacOS Developers Can Now Respond to Reviews

#114
post #102

As a small indie dev (dealing with hundreds or thousands, not hundreds of thousands of customers), the best way I've found to encourage reviews is to prominently display my email address for any questions or ideas. Then, when customers write (many of them do), I write back a nice response and then add: P.S. If you enjoy Mindscope, would you take a minute to write a short review? It would mean a lot and helps give Min…

Some people here would probably call that a "dark pattern" (I of course don't). Because, you know, it's soliciting for positive reviews from a preselected set of users.

Not a dark pattern at all. There are no interface tricks

Re: iOS and MacOS Developers Can Now Respond to Reviews

#115
post #22

What I was really hoping for is a solution to the problem of every app begging me for a review after upgrading. I get a "please review" popup pretty much every day. When I got back from Christmas vacation and synced a bunch of apps, my iPhone was painful to use for about three days and every app begged for my help. I actually review apps I use and like, I just wish I didn't have to do it every update to help keep the…

There's an unfortunate cause of excessive app rating prompts — what's shown in search results/top charts/other areas is the average of the latest version, not the overall aggregate. If you're at a company that does scheduled releases (e.g. once every three weeks), you'll need to continually ask people to review the app to keep that rating high. Otherwise you only get ratings from new users and users that are disconte…

I'm tied to the Norwegian app store by bank card. Norway has a small population resulting in the majority of apps having the "we don't have enough reviews for this app" and no review data at all. Instead of showing reviews from another country, or overall from all countries, Apple choose no data at all. Really useful.

Re: iOS and MacOS Developers Can Now Respond to Reviews

#116
Now if only I could write reviews... but there's a Long outstanding bug where if you download an app in (in my case Australia) move to singapore, change your store to singapore, redownload the app. The store assumes you don't own the app cos it originated in Australia but your account is now singapore with the singapore downloaded app. And you cannot write a review cos the store is confused. But if the app is downloaded in singapore for the first time you can write a review. Invest the store location again and the inverse happens....

Re: iOS and MacOS Developers Can Now Respond to Reviews

#117

Now if only I could write reviews... but there's a Long outstanding bug where if you download an app in (in my case Australia) move to singapore, change your store to singapore, redownload the app. The store assumes you don't own the app cos it originated in Australia but your account is now singapore with the singapore downloaded app. And you cannot write a review cos the store is confused. But if the app is downloa…

I have the same issue. And it's even worse. I need two accounts - one for the UK and one for Switzerland. And I have to log out and log in of the app store depending on whether I want a UK app or a Swiss app. For a multi-national company, Apple's support for those living across borders is terrible.

Re: iOS and MacOS Developers Can Now Respond to Reviews

#118

What I was really hoping for is a solution to the problem of every app begging me for a review after upgrading. I get a "please review" popup pretty much every day. When I got back from Christmas vacation and synced a bunch of apps, my iPhone was painful to use for about three days and every app begged for my help. I actually review apps I use and like, I just wish I didn't have to do it every update to help keep the…

Apple is trying to limit how often your iPhone apps can bug you to give them a rating

http://www.recode.net/2017/1/24/14375558/apple-limit-app-rat...

Re: iOS and MacOS Developers Can Now Respond to Reviews

#119

Now if only I could write reviews... but there's a Long outstanding bug where if you download an app in (in my case Australia) move to singapore, change your store to singapore, redownload the app. The store assumes you don't own the app cos it originated in Australia but your account is now singapore with the singapore downloaded app. And you cannot write a review cos the store is confused. But if the app is downloa…

What's worse is your purchases don't come with you when you switch stores. This has caused us a lot of problems.
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