
How to ask for reviews without feeling icky about it - coloneltcb
https://m.signalvnoise.com/getting-from-%EF%B8%8F-%EF%B8%8F-to-%EF%B8%8F-%EF%B8%8F-%EF%B8%8F-%EF%B8%8F-%EF%B8%8F-c65cc3bb7cb1#.rgrwe5cnw
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mikeash
The best way to ask for reviews is to use my Review Buddy service:

[https://mikeash.com/review_buddy.html](https://mikeash.com/review_buddy.html)

All you have to do is enter your app's bundle identifier, and then my system
takes care of prompting the user for reviews at appropriate times. It's
totally free and you don't even have to integrate an SDK, it's completely
automatic.

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amjd
Hi, can you briefly explain how this works? I didn't find any explanation on
the website.

~~~
mikeash
It's a placebo. It's never appropriate to prompt your users for a review, so
it can accomplish its task of asking users when appropriate without doing
anything at all.

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javman
It would be nice if this was an OS feature instead of implemented differently
by every app developer. That way it could also be disabled system-wide with a
single setting. The OS could either show a nice dialog on update as shown in
the article, or show it after the user has launched the app a certain number
of times. Rating good apps that people use frequently is a benefit to all
users.

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decwakeboarder
> It catches the customer at a good time because we just gave them something
> new.

Now ask for a review after a crash. This is just asking "we introduced new
stuff, you like the idea?" when really progress comes from asking "you've now
been using X that we introduced Y ago, how's it working for you?"

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siddharthdeswal
For the products that are regularly used by me or my team, I love reading
about new features. In fact I've subscribed to the product update emails of
our most important software.

This because often, new features means increased efficiency or new
capabilities for the team and I. And I love it when that happens.

If they've developed a feature that I wanted for sometime or solves a current
problem, I'm almost certain to rate them highly.

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chris_7
When an app asks for a review, I typically go and leave a one star review.

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charlesdm
That's ridiculous, given 99.95% of users will never leave a review unless
prompted. That's like saying: I love your product, but if you DARE ask me to
leave a review, I'm going to be a hater. That makes absolutely no sense to me.

~~~
mikeash
If an app interrupts my workflow for no benefit, that is a _legitimate_
negative point against it. If it does this repeatedly (many apps nag a lot)
then that can substantially impact its usability.

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gingerlime
Interesting to read all the complaints about these types of popups. I also
dislike those. But what's clear from this post is that most people are
actually happy about them or at least that they don't result in lots of
negative reviews but rather lots of positive ones.

I love it when an a/b test or some other type of experiment blows in the face
of our personal bias.

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panic
Lots of positive reviews doesn't necessarily mean most people are happy. It
could be that the unhappy people don't click the "leave a review" button, or
that they're slightly unhappy but not enough to leave a review. If you think
about it, it's actually quite hard to tell for sure whether something makes
people happy or not.

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tomjen3
When I see the what's new screen I always visually scan for the dismiss
button, which has now been changed to no thanks. I don't want to see a what's
new menu, I don't want it longer, I want to open the app do what it was I came
for and get on with whatever I was doing.

~~~
hmate9
True, but that reading 4 bullet points takes ~5 seconds and you might have a
new feature which really helps you and you might miss it otherwise.

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panic
If you use an app infrequently enough that it updates between each use, you'll
see an alert every time you open the app! 5 seconds isn't that much, but many
5-second inconveniences add up. Plus, if you have to read a bunch of text to
understand the features of your app, most people are going to miss the
features anyway.

~~~
mcguire
If you use an app infrequently enough that it updates between each use, then
it isn't going to be adding up to much.

It may well be the major thing you remember about the app, though.

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xirdstl
These review/rating popups really annoy me, though the mechanism they're using
in this post might not be as bad.

Can you imagine if websites nagged you in this same way? Why do we think it's
an acceptable user experience to nag in apps?

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karmelapple
We don't, but it translates into serious increases in downloads if done right.
It's pretty hard to ignore, though I don't do that in my current apps.

One area where this can be addressed is at the App Store level; change the
incentives so writings reviews aren't so important. If the OS is collecting
how much people use an app, for instance, why not more highly rank apps in the
App Store that demonstrate consistently high use?

