PlayStore/AppStore Rating

RATINGS AND REVIEWS

Ratings and reviews play an important role in letting people gain healthier insights about your app. The nature of reviews and ratings can result in the raise or decrease of the downloads for your app. Positive reviews will boost up the customer engagement levels with your app and will push you towards making constant efforts for app improvement in the future.

If you are thinking of developing an ios or android app, you must be aware of the relevance of the responses for your apps and how you can ask for responses to use them in the best possible ways. Read this article to know about the importance of in-app reviews & ratings and the limitation of the review prompts so that you must be acquainted with the other side of the coin as well.

THE GAME OF RATINGS AND REVIEWS

Users are the ultimate critic for your app therefore you must be cautious of how to attain the reviews and where to showcase them on your apps. Keep the below points in mind :

RATINGS: Users can rate your aphttps://dash.readme.com/project/notifyvisitor/v1.0/docs/playstoreappstore-ratingp on a scale of 1 to 5. The individual ratings or the summary ratings given by the users are shown on the product page of any app. These ratings are specific to each and every category on the app store. You can choose to restore the summary rating while revising a new version of your app.

REVIEWS: Reviews are the detailed feedback for your apps, which users can provide on your app’s product page. They can review your ios, iPad, and macOS apps. Also, you can reset the summary ratings without disturbing the functionalities of the older reviews on your app.

WHEN TO ASK FOR THE REVIEWS AND RATINGS

You cannot just ask for the ratings and reviews out of the blue. There must be an appropriate time for providing the best possible experience for your app. Keep the below points in mind before charting out your feedback strategy :

  • You can ask for the ratings and reviews only after the user has completed action or task,
    specifically if it’s a time-sensitive task.
  • Avoid asking the users for reviews on the first launch of your app.
  • Do not send repetitive ratings prompts to the users, it can negatively influence your users’
    opinions. Keep a gap of two weeks or so between the rating requests.

HOW TO RESPOND TO THE RATINGS AND REVIEWS :

In order to improve your app’s ratings, you must respond to the reviews of your app. A few handy pointers can help you know how to respond :

  • Make sure your responses can briefly address the feedback of the users.

  • Do not include any personal information or marketing agendas while responding to the reviews.

  • Use a friendly tone that aligns with the aim of your brand.

  • Personalize your responses despite giving generalized responses to everyone.

HOW IN-APP REVIEWS AND RATINGS WORK FOR ANDROID AND IOS DEVICES:

In-app reviews only work on the android devices (phones and tablets) which are running Android 5.0 (API level 21) or higher that have the Google Play Store installed. Also, Chrome OS devices that have the Google Play Store installed also support in-app reviews.

Below are the limitations for in-app reviews in android and ios devices

FOR ANDROID DEVICES:

  • NotifyVisitors does not track any impressions or responses therefore all the responses go into the play store.

  • The UI of the in-app reviews cannot be changed as there are specific UI guidelines to integrate in-app reviews in your app.

  • You need to publish your play store for integrating in-app reviews in your app. But you can test the integration of in-app reviews without publishing the app on the play store by using the internal test tracks or internal app sharing.

  • Google play has set a time- restriction rule to show the review prompt to the users. Google play changes this time value without any notice. Therefore, one should prefer showing the dialog thrice in a period of six months.

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Refer to the below image to know how to ask for a review :

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FOR IOS DEVICES:

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Apple has enforced certain limitations on using the API for integrating the in-app reviews. Let’s read them below :

  • The system will show the review prompt for a maximum no. of three times in a one-year period no matter how many times you are requesting the review promptly.

  • There is no appropriate guarantee to display the prompt by calling the API.

  • The system does not show the prompt for the app’s version which is the same as the current version of the app. It will help in assuring that the user does not review the same version of the app again and again.

  • No callbacks are being provided regarding the submission results and therefore the responses cannot be tracked*

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Notifyvisitors.shared.requestInAppReview(callback_function);

Example :

Notifyvisitors.shared.requestInAppReview(function(result){
     //alert("response : " + result); 
 });