I say all this because ratings have a huge impact on your app store listing position, and any small developer can benefit from such a boost immensely.
If you're building on Android too, this functionality unfortunately doesn't exist, however we have also seen a considerable boost in reviews after implementing our own UI which asks users to review (and allows them to press a button to go to the store.)
I never liked the concept of showing them on app launch because it’s so intrusive to the user flow.
- You show the user a internal 5 star rating UI. If they rate anything below 5 you don't forward them to the App store for adding a review. Works well with 3 buttons: "Rate", "Late", "Don't show again"
- Best time to show it to the user for the first time is when they completed the first "major action" in the app. For e.g. a shopping app that would be completing their first order, or for Airbnb booking your first room
- After that you show it to the user every ~5th time they open the app until they rated it or click "Don't show again"
OTOH if I developed an app I'd probably do the same thing :/
It's really just saying 'if you love this app, tell others - if you don't love it, tell us'. This is an honest request.
> If they rate anything below 5 you don't forward them to the App store for adding a review.
This method attempts to passively hide negative reviews from the public while actively prompting users to leave positive reviews.
Storefront ratings don't matter unless the user leaves the app and enters one via the official app store. Without forwarding the user, anyone with a negative review will have to specifically leave the app to leave the review. The dev will usher the positive reviewers forward to leave a public-facing review, while anything neutral or negative is sent to /dev/null or (hopefully in the least) used internally for improvements.
Dishonest may not be the correct term. Perhaps "slightly misleading" is a better way to put it.
Whether grossly dishonest or slightly misleading, the mere fact that we can be arguing over how scummy the pattern may be is a symptom of the failure of the app stores to manage their own review systems. When one seller games the system to get more 5-star reviews, that's them being dishonest. When everyone has a 4.5-star rating on every product, that's the ratings system being lazy and useless. (Looking at you, in particular, Amazon.)
An honest internal review would publish the results on the developer's website, and leave all the app stores out of it, no matter what the user rating might be.
There should be no expectation that you would ask people who dislike your app to leave a formal and business-damaging review. It's the job of the review system to invite those reviewers.
Qualifying which your users like you before kindly asking them to leave a good formal review on a respected system is a sensible practice. (you likely also want to disqualify people who love your app but have a wonky personal rating system)
I suspect that those apps which abuse this system still manage to have low review scores.
Didn't know of the Apple "equivalent", but that seems so much better when it comes to giving users useful app store reviews. Of course all app developers would want their apps to have a 5 star average..
Sounds like Apple should take even more control.
How? In the end both Apple and Google still need to have some influx of rating to their App stores for them to function. Further reducing the ability for app creators to funnel reviewers to the App store would probably put them below that threshold.
Maybe 3 days after purchase for a thumbs-up, thumbs-down initial impression. Two weeks after purchase for an N/5 star review. Two months after purchase for a star rating update and descriptive text review for other potential customers. Six months after purchase, and yearly thereafter, for a star rating update and descriptive feedback aimed at the vendor, such as pain points and enhancement requests. Each time, allow the user to opt-out of review request nagging.
This would also allow a chart of user satisfaction over time, filtering reviews by length of ownership, and trends in user satisfaction, especially in response to version updates. I am far more likely to trust a reviewer that has gone from a three-star rating to a five-star rating, over four years of owning the app, and has reviewed other apps from different vendors, than someone who gives it five-stars after a week, has never reviewed anything else, and then vanishes forever.
One would think that the company that developed PageRank could do something similar for review rankings, to weed out review-bots, astroturfers, and straw-purchasers.
There is a lot money as an indie studio there because although you compete with other Big corporarions like Accenture, KPMG, Cap Gemini, etc... It is easy to outbid them because their costs are at least 2X your costs. Even id you pay you developers generously, you hace little structure and can beat them both in price and speed.
It will be though still, since building a brand, etc. needs a lot of time, effort, and money (last time I checked pay-per-install was about 2 Euros per app).
I think the only thing you can do is push very very hard into a new area like AR or VUI. Otherwise you just have to hope to get lucky and spam everything and everywhere to get users. You might also have a very small chance by focusing on whatever the new API is that the platform is adding for the newest release. The app stores want apps that demonstrate how awesome the new thing is and will often feature an app that does it well for free. However, you need to realize that you must do it very very well, not just a knock off app.
Maybe in a couple of years it will be. If you believe that, then yeah, now is the time to be building your skills and user base. I don’t think you’re going to hit it big just yet though.
I’m not sure how far along you are in this so this advice may seem basic:
1. Factor in costs of your insurance, office space, tools, books, commute etc when working on your pricing model. You can plainly do x usd/hr and get the amount for 200 days and feel confident compared to a salary but there are more hidden costs when running a business and you may not have billable work for the full year.
2. When you underprice your offering to get customers, they undervalue your service. This is where things like blogs, talks, portfolio help in justifying your value.
Focus on the things that distinguish a mobile device from other platforms. The two things that immediately come to my mind are the camera and messaging. It does not surprise me that those types of apps dominate the charts.
(Also, you're going to annoy all the users of any fork you deprecate, unless you maintain all 5 pages and move them to the same source. Also, will Apple even let you do this?)
The parent here proposes releasing multiple versions of an app and seeing which ones get downloads, which seems much harder and riskier - you end up splitting downloads across multiple apps, and then have to deprecate or maintain the ones that don't work out well.
- Negotiate for a half upfront payment and start only when you have received it. It will help you avoid clients that don't have the necessary budget and will save you a lot of pain.
- Document decisions done over the phone or in f2f meetings (e.g. send an email saying something like. As we discussed, we decided to ...). It will help you with unforeseen change requests that the client sees within the scope of the work.
The smartest thing to do IMO is acquire some domain expertise in a big but unglamorous business sector and look for pain points.
Sorry, but what does this mean exactly?
I see too many freelancers or independent 'studios' not spending any time to create any kind of branding for their companies, and people assume that it's not a legitimate operation.
There is a fairly large difference psychologically between seeing a LinkedIn profile that says "Freelance iOS Developer, Self-employed" with no logo and someone who says "Principal, $COMPANY" with a shiny logo. First impressions matter.
edit, found it: One of my personal warning signs on gear is when I get a brand name the same as the device – ie, with this UPS brand UPS from UPS Ltd, I'm fairly sure I'm in trouble
Drafts has been out for several years and has been relatively successful and he's only now able to work on it full time.
Podcast in question: Do By Friday, Episode 79.
2) Once users get into your app, figure out how to keep them around. Identify how often you want users to use your app (once a day? Weekly? Etc) and design the entire app experience around promoting that form of behaviour.
3) Really understand what is unique about your app (compared to all others) and emphasise it. Ensure new users understand it and experience it. Most users drop out minutes after first launching your app.
Also..."startups for the rest of us" (which isn't mobile focused, but arguably more focused on bootstrapping), amy hoy's 30x500, etc.
We were making good revenue, it was still early in the mobile world. These days, it's not as profitable as it used to be outside of few VC funded categories which are heavily subsidized, good luck making a big profit there.
Most apps today are complementary to running at loss. So, need a SaaS app (with enough profit margin) before you make your mobile app.
Today, we develop apps for small businesses which is much easier and doesn't require any special skills. 80% apps are just CRUD apps. If we need something advance like machine learning etc..., we delegate it to Google and Amazon like API providers.
There are some of our competitors in app business who are hiring wizards yet not able to compete with this formula ^