App ratings and app reviews are important to your app’s growth. Potential subscribers look at the response the app gets from previous users to decide if they should install the app or not.
This guide will walk you through the app growth process by an increase of ratings and reviews that would help you both in google play store and apple app store optimization. Rating and reviews impact differently in the two major app stores, and this guide would help you leverage accelerated app growth by analyzing app reviews.
Why are App Reviews Important for an App’s Growth?
Rating and reviews affect potential subscribers’ decisions.
Researches say that 79% of app installers check ratings and reviews before installing an app, and the majority do not install if the rating is below three stars.
Rating and reviews impact the app-store ranking.
Your app’s success depends on large numbers of positive ratings and reviews. Both ratings and reviews affect user acquisition factors like Google Play and the App store algorithms.
Google Play Store and Apple App Store do not want to prove themselves irresponsible by showing an infrequently reviewed or poorly rated product at the top of their result page. So your app store optimization strategy should consider a steady flow of positive reviews and ratings.
Ratings and reviews help you build a brand aura.
When you get positive user reviews, new users will trust your brand. These are social proof left by your existing or previous users. But, how you respond to your users is also an important factor. The tone, voice, and specific phrases you use also help people recognize your app brand and contribute to increasing brand awareness. You should be able to answer the following:
- What is the particular purpose of the app?
- Why should users prefer your app over competitors?
- Who is your target audience? The answers will help you determine a unique tone and voice appropriate for your app.
How to improve App Ratings
Ask subscribers to rate your app.
Your app rating reflects all the ratings your app has received. How to improve App Ratings, you have to get them in large numbers. The more ratings you get, the less volatile the average star rating will be. Your app also will rank higher.
The highest-rated apps typically increase the number of ratings by asking subscribers to rate the app. You can send push notifications or pop-up messages to invite them to rate the app. However, be careful about contacting them at the right time.
Update Your App
If you want to improve your app rating, you have to update your app frequently. Come up with a feature that users will find purposeful. You can sift through the existing reviews to understand what they are looking for. An update that fulfills user requirements most likely will increase your rating.
Act promptly if you find a decrease in ratings after an update. Try to figure out what exactly the users do not like by analyzing the recent reviews.
Google review reply and customer empathy
Replying to reviews shows that you care about customer service. Google confirms through a survey that apps that frequently respond to its reviewers most likely get an 0.7-star increase in their App ratings. Keep your developer’s responses concise. Assure the users that you’d fix the issue. Replies, which show considerable empathy, bear the potential to change the negative ratings to positive.
Recommended: Here’s our app store reviews slack guide to get instant updates about your appstore reviews on the slack communication tool.
How to improve app reviews on Google
Use reviews for more innovative ideas
It’s never easy to get user feedback. People usually would not reply to your surveys over mail. They are also stuck with innumerable feedback surveys; you cannot disturb your subscribers by calling them. The way you can receive some valuable feedback is through the app store reviews. Reviews let you have glimpses of customer pain points. In addition, you will most likely find some highly innovative ideas on what new features you should launch.
By tactically scanning and analyzing the reviews, you can avoid developing features that your potential subscribers will be frustrated with.
Enhance your user engagement
You can mail or call your subscribers for feedback on your app. All you want is more user engagement. However, researchers confirm these aren’t the best ways to engage users.
The most effective way to make a two-way conversation with the subscriber is through app reviews. Users find themselves worthy when their comments are valued. It not only makes the foregrounds of user engagement but also makes them more loyal.
Get featured in the positive comments.
The Google Play and Apple app stores promote apps with a large number of positive feedback. Apps with the best user feedback get high ranks because no one wants to show products with bad reviews on their result pages. If you get good user reviews, you can be featured. It’s imperative for an exponential increase in app store impressions.
Innovative keyword ideas
The objective of keyword optimization in ASO is to find phrases and words which people use to search your app. However, an effective keyword strategy does not entirely depend on search volume or difficulty level. Instead, it depends upon people’s online behavior to a large extent.
Your app users might describe what they love or hate about your app with relevant keywords. These keywords are directly from user reviews. They help you understand the user mentality and their behavioral pattern in digital world.
Understand your customers from ratings and app reviews
Break the reviews into positive and negative
Organize the messy and chaotic pile of reviews into positive and negative. First, deal with your app’s negative reviews. After all, it proves that your objective is to understand the customer’s pain points instead of anything else. It would also render a positive impact in the long term.
If subscribers love some of the features of your app, it never means your subscribers are bound to keep loving them. It can be out of currency, and later the same feature can be harshly criticized. Positive reviews are really inspiring. But do not get easily satisfied. You must understand there is always room left for improvement.
Reviews are a gold mine because they let you understand what you need to improve. Organize and analyze the reviews for understanding the most unarticulated needs of the customers because it helps you avoid throwing dirt into the darkness and you can come up with an awaited feature to outsmart your competitor.
Engage reviewers more intensely in conversation
Sometimes your users might seem quite irrational. They can put forward vague claims with absolutely no substantiation, and these might seem vague and expression of being entirely subjective. But if you consider such cases a chance to understand their problem more intensely, it can be more helpful. You can say sorry for not meeting their expectations, share your support email-id, and ask them to write more elaborately to your support team. Certainly, it helps you jump in, and start a conversation with the user.
Translate the reviews in a lingua Franca
Great apps usually localize themselves to a target audience. Your app, too, can be available in multiple languages. Localization helps to gain better reachability to a broader audience. Along with the UI texts, short and long descriptions, and other textual elements, you can also translate the app reviews; it helps you localize your app store listing. If a user gives feedback in her mother tongue, you should translate that and while replying, try to keep that in their language.
Users would be pleased to find the effort you take to speak in their language. You have to pick a people-first narrative in terms of replying to the reviews; translating the reviews into the user’s mother tongue helps achieve the same. You should restate the reviews and replies in a lingua Franca like English that other visitors also understand.
Understand keywords and set the tone by analyzing the reviews
People often use the exact short and long tail keywords for searching your app, which they also use to describe your app in reviews. Therefore, you can note the keywords for implementing them in your app listing. Besides, you can also analyze the intonation and sentiment of the reviews (particularly the colloquial phrases) to keep your users on the same page by using similar expressions in your app.
Google play and Apple app store reviews: Differences and management
Keywords in reviews affect app store ranking.
Google play store, like Google itself, works as a search engine that considers every keyword found that describes your app for ranking. So the keywords found in the reviews are not out of consideration. You should sneak your priority keywords in your replies to the reviews. But it doesn’t mean you must stuff the keywords in the replies. If you do so, you should expect punishment from the search engine instead of a blessing.
Apple, on the other hand, does not index keywords found in reviews. Instead, Apple gives an additional keyword field, and you can add the different keywords that are not in your app title and subtitle.
Apple takes care of billing and downloads for ios apps.
Apple enjoys centralizing its products. So the app store team takes care of the subscriptions and publishing of every app. It releases your burden because Apple takes care of the billing and downloading of your app. Therefore, all you need to be concerned about is giving clear instructions about refund issues for your subscribers. The more clear and transparent your refund policy, the less you should expect negative reviews.
Highlighted reviews in Apple
Apple happens to show six reviews on the app store result page; you probably don’t want negative thoughts popping up there. But if you can come up with a reply from the developers that they would fix the inconvenience, it takes you on top of damage control. Users understand that a team is there to fix the issues. On behalf of your app, it is also an instance of user empathy.
Most positive and harsh reviews in the Google play store
Google takes up both praising and negative app reviews. It’s unavoidable. Therefore, you must be more conscious about replying to every thought, prioritizing the cynical ones as people want you to acquire more user empathy.
Workflow management: Rating and Reviews of your app.
App store connects and Google play console.
There is a requirement for roles for managing, reviewing, and replying to the reviews. For example, in App store connect, you require customer support or admin roles. While in the google play console, you must have the right to reply to user reviews.
Keep track of app reviews.
Keeping track of answered and unanswered reviews can be hectic. You need to assign some reading time and break them into positive and critical categories. Understand that these are subject to analysis for a clearer understanding of the user behavior and expectations. The more you organize them, the more it’ll be convenient for the analyzers.
Use templates for replying
Often the user feedback can be similar. The replies need to be likewise. Instead of Sisyphean typing of the same answer, use templates. It helps maintain a consistent tone and voice for your brand.
How to improve app ratings?
Find out sementic anomalies, use data to track rating patterns, use in-app review prompts, remove areas of friction from user experience.
How to respond to app reviews?
Always be considerate, never be curt or rude because that will reflect very poorly on your brand and won't help the user. And try your best to resolve the issue.
How to reply to reviews on Google
Never be rude, always be considerate of the feedback - as this may change the user's mind.
How to respond to app store reviews?
Try to reply them in their native language if possible. Always be courteus and welcome negative feedback. Sometimes right replies can also result in a user changing their mind, and thus the rating.
How to Increase App Ratings
Show in-app review using the in-app review api on certain events. This can greatly increase your app ratings.
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