Why developers must analyze their apps store reviews and how its done

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Why Mobile App Developers must Analyze their Apps’ Store Reviews & how it’s Done

Transcript of Why developers must analyze their apps store reviews and how its done

Page 1: Why developers must analyze their apps store reviews and how its done

Why Mobile App Developers must Analyze their Apps’ Store Reviews & how it’s Done

Page 2: Why developers must analyze their apps store reviews and how its done

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Turning To Store Reviews To Find Answers

First, You Must Have Enough Reviews

What Makes Store Reviews a Goldmine?

The Problem with Store Reviews

Time for App Review Mining

Some Common Topics Amongst User Reviews, For Most Apps…

Are Your SDKs to Blame?

The Positive Reviews: Time to Pat Yourself on the Back

So… Did I Pass the Review?

Privacy is still a Thing

Version Updates are not that Great either

Crashes, People, Crashes

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TURNING TO STORE REVIEWS TO FIND ANSWERS

Professionals in the mobile industry follow a method, a way to qualitatively analyze their users’ inner thoughts. So should you!

So… Let’s agree that you must find out what does and doesn’t work inyour app. You can never win this business unless you collect feedback methodically. Store reviews are a good source for that.

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FIRST, YOU MUST HAVE ENOUGH REVIEWS

You have to work hard on collecting reviews, and more importantly, maintaining ongoing streams of new reviews that you can utilize

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A lot of developers want to encourage users to provide reviews from within the app but are concerned about receiving negative feedback.

Apptentive has created a solution thatprompts a pop up asking users how they feelabout your app (love, dislike and so on).

Positive users are then encouraged to provide in store feedback while the rest are directed to the support team.

HOW DO YOU CAREFULLY PUSH FOR REVIEWS?

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Collecting user feedback isn’t easy. Things can get costly if you’re using surveys via social communities, email marketing, focus groups and/or developing beta communities.

WHAT MAKES STORE REVIEWS A GOLDMINE?

Thanks to Google Play and iTunes many ‘user reviews’ are collectedwith no encouragement, while some reviews may be collected by a nudge (push notification) or small fee.

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Many users are proactively leaving reviews, for many reasons that can teach you about what works and what doesn’t, and where to focus your development efforts.

YOUR REVIEWS REFLECT YOUR APP PERFORMANCE

Apptentive

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During ‘Google Play Partners’ event, Google’s team shared some data that supports the importance of monitoring store reviews:

It seems that 50% of the 1 star reviews address app stability and bugs.

Also, they showed a strong correlation between an app’s rating, reviews and revenue.

YOUR REVIEWS REFLECT YOUR APP PERFORMANCE – CONT.

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Review mining is an essential ongoing process, it allows us to make educated decisions and gage what’s working and what’s not. Since many app store reviews are left blank, this process is both necessary and beneficial.

Google Play presents a sort of formalizedview but it’s not enough…

THE PROBLEM WITH STORE REVIEWS

Google Play provides some help…

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A manual systematic review mining process might include the following:

TIME FOR APP REVIEW MINING

Reading the reviews

Listing them

Organizing them by various themes (bugs, UX, features suggestions and so on) or by keywords that suggest a sentiment

Detailing the frequency in which similar feedback occurred

Doing the same with your competitors’ reviews

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For large scale installs, review mining can get very time consuming and doing it manually might not be feasible…

You may consider using review mining tools such as Appbot,SensorTower or LaunchKit Review Monitor

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Common Topics amongst User Reviews

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A complaint about asking for too many permissions is one of the strongest reasons behind negative reviews.

Just look at Facebook’s Messenger fiasco of 2014: Facebook took away the option to send messages through their official app and caused millionsof people to download the messenger app. Within a shortperiod of time, they had a lot(some say forced) of downloads as well as 1 star reviews.

PRIVACY IS STILL A THING

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You should review what permissions you’re asking for and considerremoving SDKs that are asking for too many permissions

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VERSION UPDATES ARE NOT THAT GREAT EITHERUsers don’t like not having immediate access totheir app.

Also, the end user doesn’t like to see their dataplan and precious battery percentage being spenton app updates.

Sending too many update requests makes your applook unstable and therefore unreliable.

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CRASHES, PEOPLE, CRASHES

According to Google, if you have negative reviews, chances are that 50% of these reviews address bugs and other app stability issues.

You can also analyze your app’s reviews to figure out if there are any technical issues you weren’t aware of. For example, if you see a repetitive complaint about the app always crashing on a certain page or on a particular level of a game. Voila! more free feedback.

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ARE YOUR SDKS TO BLAME?Sometimes, without pointing fingers, the SDKs you’ve integrated in your app are asking for excessive permissions, consuming a lot of battery or causing your app to crash.

Using our SDK Real Time Monitor and Control Platform, you can now monitor your SDKs in real-time and deactivate SDKs you found to be problematic, withoutdisturbing your users and sending version updates.

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THE POSITIVE REVIEWS: TIME TO PAT YOURSELF ONTHE BACK

It’s always nice to get a pat on the back on a job well done.

In addition, some of the reviews could be used as a muse to better the app and add more cool features to make it even greater.

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SO… DID I PASS THE REVIEW?The reviews section is where your users can best express themselves.

Numbers show that users are more likely to do so if they are frustrated or are having a bad experience, so you must read the reviews. Remember, reviews help your future users decide if they’re going to download your app.

Ignoring store reviews is like throwing a party but never bothering to ask the guests if they’re having a good time. If you want them to come back for your next soirée, make sure they’re not only having a blast, but having so much fun they’ll tell others about it.