What's your strategy to handle mobile app reviews and ratings?

I start by showcasing positive quotes from reviews on social media or the app's website to highlight the strengths of the product and attract new users. By identifying trends in positive feedback, I gain insights into what users value most about the product. When it comes to negative reviews, I analyze them carefully to pinpoint recurring problems. This analysis helps prioritize bug fixes and feature improvements, ensuring that we address the most pressing issues. Transparency is crucial! Make sure to be upfront about any limitations or challenges when responding to negative reviews. Additionally, I leverage positive reviews as powerful marketing tools to enhance our app’s reputation.

?????It may seem illogical, but many successful mobile applications request a review during the first launch after a few seconds. This is because most people do not open the app a second time, and statistics prevail in this case... It's even heard from the successful ones that no review is worse than none!

App Store Ratings Are Important in App Store Optimization and play a critical role in your app discovery. 75% + of users check ratings/reviews before downloading an app. Tendency of Users rating the app manually for negative reasons is higher than tendency of users rating the app for positive reasons. So its important we provide more avenues for regular/casual users to leave their feedback or nudge them to get their feedback. In App Rating dialogs -> Use Native Rating dialogs provided by Android and iOS platforms for authentic and familiar experience for users instead of 3rd party tools. Trigger the in-app review flow after a user has experienced enough of your app. Do not prompt the user excessively for a review.

Respond to everything and respond quickly. It is not the end of the world to get a bad review and customers will check bad reviews more often than good ones. Responding to good reviews will improve your ASO and store listing and responding to negative reviews is an opportunity to write something that potential downloaders/subscribers will actually read. Make sure when responding to negative reviews that you actually respond, don't just type "Can you send us your email?" or "please tell us more by emailing [email protected]" - answer the issue and write something constructive, this can turn a negative review into a positive customer impression

Our policy was to turn any 1-3 star review into a 5 star. Giving them extra help and making sure they knew we took every issue seriously. As an accessories manufacturer, we were the #1 Brand in the top keyword on Amazon for 8 years. Anything less than 3 stars we made sure that we turned them into raving fans. Usually sending them additional items or discount as a "thank you" for allowing us to be their brand of choice. The key is to respond softly, not pointing the finger at them or blaming them for the situation. Show them that you understand and that you are there to help no matter the outcome. Remember, whoever's in charge of responding to reviews needs a peptalk every now and then. Positive reinforcement really works.

Analyzing trends in app reviews is crucial. Regularly using tools to track and measure reviews across app stores and conducting sentiment and keyword analysis can reveal valuable insights. For example, in my previous business with 1800 product SKUs in the system, we encountered two significant issues: one batch left black marks on foreheads (yikes!), and another had material separation. Both problems hurt our bottom line, but because we constantly analyzed reviews, we caught these issues early. We managed to pull the faulty products from all platforms before they significantly impacted our reviews. This proactive approach allowed us to address problems quickly and maintain customer satisfaction.

???????It’s simple! Ask the customer to rate from 1 to 5 stars. If they give you 4-5 stars, direct them to the app store to leave a review. If they give 1-3 stars, something is wrong, and it's best to direct them to support or ask improvement form to implement change requests...

??????All positive things like testimonials, quotes, reviews, and feedbacks should be shown during onboarding to reassure the user that they made the right choice.

Learning from other brands in your niche is key. My prior manufacturing business started by understanding competitor reviews. People often complained about headaches from their headbands, so we created adjustable headbands to solve the problem. Despite knowing nothing about the headband business, we got into 1600 Kroger stores and became a top seller on Amazon. Check out competitors' app store pages, websites, and social media to see how they handle feedback. Read their reviews to understand customer issues. By doing this, you can discover best practices and avoid common mistakes, making your brand the top choice.

?????? I recommend the YouTube channel "App Masters," which interviews successful apps and learns from them onboarding, in-app, notification, selling....

Negative reviews are an opportunity. No-one is interested in your responses to positive reviews but everyone that reads a negative review will read your response. If your response is only a contact email address or a generic "I am sorry to hear that" then you are loosing out on an opportunity. Be descriptive, address concerns in the response and show potential downloaders/subscribers that you are on top of any issues that your app may have, describe that you are optimising loading speeds or that thank the reviewer for letting you know about the login issues they are having and that this will be reviewed before the next update This will turn a negative review into a net positive