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Comment by anotherturn | Hacker News Reader

I've done a similar thing, but getting people to review is like pulling teeth.

We've tried plenty ways to make this happen:

1. append a footer in the email asking for a review Finding: People ignore it.

2. include custom copy in the emails asking for a review People say yes yes, and then most do nothing.

3. The annoying rate us with stars popup and redirect to appstore. People rate 5 stars inapp, and then close down the AppStore before they apply a rating

Getting reviews is hard for b2c - but the real issue at work is the amount of friction AppStore imposes. I've tried to leave reviews and it asks me to re-sign in to the AppStore, minimum character requirements (can't just leave 5 stars).

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>3. The annoying rate us with stars popup and redirect to appstore. People rate 5 stars inapp, and then close down the AppStore before they apply a rating

Every now and again I click through on that to leave a shitty review as a disincentive to a) annoy me with a dumb pop up every time I use the app and b) dark pattern it such that I only get sent to the app store if I give you a positive review.

I get to the review page and have to sign in/up/whatever and I can't be bothered, even with all that spite motivating me. I sure as heck am not going to as a way of being nice about a product especially when I know reviews have such a short half life to an even slightly actively updated app.

I think you may be an outlier - people mostly just rate 5 stars and then don't follow through. It's contextual for us to a degree. Our (free) app in effect gives people money and at the end of that transaction if they've not yet rated we ask them to rate. None-the-less it's a terribly small inApp-AppStore rating conversion.

I think you missed my point.

Basically I have never written an app store review - and I think that means the first one is a hassle. I suspect most people are in the same boat and when faced with a form to fill in before you can do a quick review will move on to something they care about more.

I just wanted to suggest that despite a relatively strong motivator - I don't complete. So my motivation may be an outlier but I suspect my experience of "eh, can't be bothered" is less so.

Ah, seen. Yes I misunderstood. So despite feeling the strong sense of annoyance, you're still not motivated enough to overcome the AppStore friction.

I'm not sure about newer phones, but with iPhone 4S it took so much time to load appstore, that I'm usually giving up. AppStore is very slow application, it feels like bad website on 2G connection and I don't understand that.

I can't decide if you're trolling people or you don't realize how amazingly atypical your situation is. a) really old phone b) 2G connection. Yes everything is slow for you, and yes, that sucks, but the iPhone world (and phone networks) has largely moved on from that point. Asking for that stuff to be fast is like asking for major web sites to perform well on dialup. even if it _should_ happen, it isn't going to, and that's just the current state of the world. Dev's don't think about the old devices or the slow connections, and their employers don't care.

Poster said "it feels like bad website on 2G connection".

I guess app store is made of webview or some ui framework dynamically updated with xml/html. That might be one of the reasons it loads so slow and can be updated remotely.

I have the same problem with an iPhone 6. Over 4G or wifi on a 100Mbps connection searching the app store takes 30-60 seconds, leaving a review is probably a 5 minute afair to navigate to page.

Generally I now get the iTunes url on my PC, send it to my phone and open it in safari so it opens the app store. It's actually faster that way.

Not to mention its habit of making you reauthenticate repeatedly if your internet connection is less than perfect. It feels like every time you drop a packet Apple decides your session might be fraudulent.

also you cant sign in into AppStore with touch id. you have to enter your password. this is ridiculous considering i can pay only with my finger, but i can't rate.

are you sure? Because I just installed an app using my Touch ID. Perhaps you want to dig through the settings?

Nope, Apple has weird permissions for it - I haven't reviewed an app for a while but remember needing my password to log in to do so, even though my fingerprint lets me buy apps.

I've been most successful in getting reviews and feedback only when triggering a cta at the appropriate time and to the appropriate user. For example, figure out what a valued user means to your b2c product, is it someone who has done x over a specific period of times or logins.

Once you determine that, try showing those users a modal that says something like, are you enjoying "my product", with yes and no answers. If no, ask if they would like to provide feedback so you can make their experience better. If yes, ask if they could rate your app.

I've found that by using this method you, a) show the cta to users that matter, b) get feedback from frustrated users, and c) get positive ratings from people who have expressed a positive intent.

There's an app in the Mac App Store called Disk Doctor which has a huge number of reviews. It cleans your hard disk and presents and nice dialog summarising how much space has been freed. At exactly this moment, it asks if you would like to write a review.

Don't you have to be logged in to the app store to review? I think many children (and some adults surely can't be arsed to log in, too) are logged out by default.

It seems Apple logs me out after a period of time (weeks) no matter how much activity they see - it's quite annoying.

I often need to re-authenticate to download a new app (irrespective of cost). I always need to re-authenticate to leave a review.

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