Interesting. I'd wondered about an inflection point in my graph as well, but in the opposite direction.
Our average rating has been climbing much faster since Dec 10.
Looks like this feature is influential, but not necessarily negative.
Google Play Store Ratings Drop
31–40 of 59 posts
Re: Google Play Store Ratings Drop
#32I understand the frustration of the developers affected by this UI change, but I think that actively asking users to rate an app they have downloaded may lead to better ratings in a statistical sense. User ratings greatly suffer from self selection bias ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-selection_bias ). Asking users who didn't initially rate an app do so as part of some other workflow might reduce that bias a litt…
It would also help if the graphs in the post started at 0 stars on the y-axis, because the drops look much more severe than they really are.
I imagine in an ultra-competitive niche that the drop in the third graph from 4.72 to 4.54 could be a painful drop, but the first graph has a drop of .03 stars, and the second is a drop of .05 stars. Perfectly in line with a very slight adjustment (though I'm sure it's alarming when you first notice it happening).
To be fair, the graph formatting doesn't look like the author's fault, just the analytics page automatically zooms and crops like that.
Re: Google Play Store Ratings Drop
#33I added a dialog that asks the user rate the app, remind later or just ignore it.
The trick is to add the dialog to show up on like 5-10 startup off the app.
If the user is starting the application after 5 tries, he is going to like it. And provided the way to rate it in couple of clicks, the user usually gives positive ratings.
Re: Google Play Store Ratings Drop
#34Maybe it's related to this new awful app review trend? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7044833
They're at least referring to the same phenomenon. The followup article to this one that tgasson posted[1] quotes and links to that very HN thread.
Re: Google Play Store Ratings Drop
#35I understand the frustration of the developers affected by this UI change, but I think that actively asking users to rate an app they have downloaded may lead to better ratings in a statistical sense. User ratings greatly suffer from self selection bias ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-selection_bias ). Asking users who didn't initially rate an app do so as part of some other workflow might reduce that bias a litt…
actively asking users to rate an app they have downloaded may lead to better ratings
Re: Google Play Store Ratings Drop
#36I think legislation should be made (maybe anti-trust laws?) which requires companies to provide adequate, free 1st-level user support for paid services, and reasonably priced user support for free services.
The current way of big companies "just doing stuff" which deeply affects other people/businesses who do not have a single way to contact the offender is a nightmare which has to stop. As the market obviously fails here, legislation is required.
Re: Google Play Store Ratings Drop
#37I understand the frustration of the developers affected by this UI change, but I think that actively asking users to rate an app they have downloaded may lead to better ratings in a statistical sense. User ratings greatly suffer from self selection bias ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-selection_bias ). Asking users who didn't initially rate an app do so as part of some other workflow might reduce that bias a litt…
actively asking users to rate an app they have downloaded may lead to better ratings But it's not asking them to rate the app , it's asking them to rate the suggestion . And since rating a suggestion is usually a thumbs-up/thumbs-down, it primes users to select the extreme ratings.
>But it's not asking them to rate the app, it's asking them to rate the suggestion.
No, if this is really the UI in question then it is not asking users to rate the suggestion: http://blog.testfairy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/quick_s...
It's clearly asking users to rate one app to get suggestions for other apps.
Re: Google Play Store Ratings Drop
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of the worst sins of UI is "unification". It's helpful to have meaningfully consistent metaphors and themes across applications. For the UNIX / Linux commandline, that's processes and pipes, BSD and GNU argument flags, and the like. There are various competing keyboard accelerator schemes: emacs, vi, Wordperfect keyboard templates, DOS, Windows 3.x, Windows 9x/NT, Apple's Mac hotkeys, GNOME and KDE.... There are…
The worst thing for me is that they design for big screens and I have small one. Even when you pick up compact scheme. The record was stats screen on blogger which shown me 3cm of information panel and the rest was taken by huge sticky !mostly empty! top and bottom rows. Way to go, really.
You see that everywhere, unfortunately. I'm on a 2012 Macbook Air, and the Bootstrap documentation's sidebar navigation doesn't fit in the height of my screen.
If that doesn't demonstrate how hard it is to get responsive web design right, I don't know what does!
Re: Google Play Store Ratings Drop
#39I understand the frustration of the developers affected by this UI change, but I think that actively asking users to rate an app they have downloaded may lead to better ratings in a statistical sense. User ratings greatly suffer from self selection bias ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-selection_bias ). Asking users who didn't initially rate an app do so as part of some other workflow might reduce that bias a litt…
It would also help if the graphs in the post started at 0 stars on the y-axis, because the drops look much more severe than they really are. I imagine in an ultra-competitive niche that the drop in the third graph from 4.72 to 4.54 could be a painful drop, but the first graph has a drop of .03 stars, and the second is a drop of .05 stars. Perfectly in line with a very slight adjustment (though I'm sure it's alarming…
Can you rate something 0 stars?
Re: Google Play Store Ratings Drop
#40I might be an overly conservative old fart, but there was a time not so long ago, where your success wasn't depending on the UI decision (or any other decision) of a corporate overlord. Back then, you made a product and it was immediately available for all the world to use. Yes, you had to spend some time/money/effort for promoting it and yes, the success might have been dependent on your ability to promote it. But y…
> Yes, you had to spend some time/money/effort for promoting it and yes, the success might have been dependent on your ability to promote it.
And you're back in exactly the same situation. Where are you going to promote it and who else has control over that communication channel?