

How to build the perfect App - alinemary
https://medium.com/p/498a0937fa1a

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hrabago
There was all this outrage a week or so ago about Rate My App dialog boxes in
various iOS7 app. Everybody was proposing fixes to them by focusing on the
dialog boxes. I believe the dialog boxes were themselves a symnptom of the
real problem - the crummy user review system.

It's not unusual for users to take a perfectly functioning app and give them a
low review for reasons having nothing to do with the app (having misunderstood
it) or because of some minor thing they didn't like. While it may mean the app
doesn't get 5 stars, it shouldn't translate to 1 star either. Even Gruber was
recommending that people rate perfectly fine apps with 1 star just because the
app had a "Rate My App" dialog.

Also, developers have no way to respond to reviews. Complaints posted as poor
reviews never get feedback, and misconceptions never get cleared up.

The only recourse is to discern some clue that a user is having an okay
experience and the interrupt the user at this point to ask for a (hopefully
positive) review.

If the user review system itself wasn't in such a bad state, the Rate My App
dialog problem wouldn't exist.

It's been said - be careful what you measure, that's what gets gamed.

~~~
alinemary
I agree that the real problem is the review system. Apple doesn't make it easy
for the user to make a review. So either you end up with a lot of empty 5
stars "Great App" reviews or with one star "I hate you" reviews. And in both
cases they don't really rate the app correctly.

