Those annoying “Rate this app” dialogs

For information here is one of these dialogs: http://arashpayan.com/blog/2009/09/07/presenting-appirater/

This is quite configurable and you can decide to show the dialog only after a given amount of time and a number of uses. This makes sure that the user has used the app quite a bit.

Interestingly, users reacts quite well to this. If it annoys them they can discard this dialog and they would waste less time than by putting a 1-star review as a "punition".

This is especially helpful because updates reset the number of reviews displayed on the App Store. So you can drop for hundreds of 4-5* reviews to a few reviews just because you fixed a bug in an update.

Marco (or rather Instapaper) is not the garden variety app. I have noticed that many apps, especially games, launch as free in order to garner reviews, and then switch to paid later. Some sites (eg. AppAdvice) will not promote free apps unless they have at least three stars, so I can see why the developers feel the need to beg for a rating.

That said, the chances that I will stop in the middle of doing something to exit the app in order to rate it are pretty low.

Conversely, there have been occasions when, having finished with a game, I have looked for a "rate this app" button and couldn't find it. Unless the app/game is exceptional, I may not take the time to go to the App store, search for the App, yada yada, in order to rate it. I suggest every app should have a "Rate this App" on its main menu.

Even better, I wish there was an API that would allow developers to ask me to rate an app in-app, without having to start up the App-Store.

I don't agree with Marco's logic here, but I'm glad that he acknowledges that most people won't remember to go review an app. I think the best solution is to prompt users who consistently use the app for some long time period (30 days, maybe?). I agree that apps that ask for a review as soon as or soon after you load them the first or second time are extremely annoying ("I haven't even gotten to use this, how am I supposed to know what to say about it?!"), but I don't think there's anything intrinsic about a dialog box that makes it annoying if it's timed well. I often enjoy when an app asks me to review it after using it consistently a couple of times, and it _improves_ my conception of the app. Anyway, here are the two main points I disagree with:

I think he's greatly exaggerating the hassle of a single dialog box appearing when someone loads Instapaper. The quote he opens with describes leaving a review prompted by one of these dialog boxes as interrupting your flow; it really doesn't. If you don't want to review the app, then you hit "no thanks," and that's it; if you want to review the app, but need to use the app right now, then you hit "remind me later"; if you want to review the app, and this happens to be a convenient time for you, then you hit "review." Sure, this is annoying if you're perpetually hitting the "remind me later," but that means that user really wants to review the app but doesn't have time; if they want to review the app that much, then they probably find it a feature to be reminded! At the very least, perpetually seeing the dialog could make them no longer want to review the app, but I don't think it would hurt their image of the app as a whole at all. And if you don't want to review the app, which is probably a large portion of users, then you hit "no thanks," and that's the end of it; is that really that inconvenient? A one-time dialog box that's easily dismissed? This reminds me of when I worked on a team last summer rewriting https://weather.torproject.org/, and we spent hours discussing/arguing amongst ourselves and with members of the Tor project whether it was okay to send one email to Tor router operators describing Tor Weather or if router operators would be annoyed by the spam. It was my personal opinion that this was a very silly waste of time, since very few people would see one useful email targeted at a specific group of people as spam. Things start to look like spam when they reappear or show up in your inbox when you have no interest in it. If you're a Tor router operator, you'd probably like to know about a service that tracks the status of your router. I digress, because Tor users (especially users interested enough to run their own routers) seemed to be particularly sensitive to receiving spam, so our decision to not email the list of operators describing the service for the most part made sense given the audience. The point is: are owners of an iPhone or iPad on average going to be that annoyed by a single dialog if they don't want to see it? If they do want to see it, they find it useful; if they don't, they close it. Is closing a single dialog box that painful? Really? Also, when you start to describe your app as a great product, you have to start comparing it to other apps that your audience uses. Say all their other apps use dialog boxes to prompt for reviews. Are they really going to think of Instapaper as that much better and solid of an app because it's the one app that didn't ask for a review? I agree that it does seem classier, in theory, to not beg your users for a review, but does any end user who doesn't read Marco's blog ever get that impression? I certainly didn't until I read this post. I use Instapaper a ton, and I love it. But I never realized it didn't ask for a review. I only notice when I'm asked for a review, not when I'm not. So many apps ask for reviews now that expecting your users to remember which apps haven't asked for reviews is basically idiotic to expect of anyone.

Not everyone who buys his app searches for the app by name because they heard the app was so great and is going to buy it without question. Whether Marco wants to admit it or not, he does have competition in the form of ReadItLater (I don't know about in the iPad space, but at least in the iPhone space). It is completely reasonable that a user would, having heard about the two products, compare the reviews/ratings on the App Store before committing and buying one or the other. Personally, I tried both apps before deciding which one I was going to use, but I don't think most people care that much. Also, this is especially important since ReadItLater has a free version. Users who can't decide can try RIL for free, but they have to pay $5 ($2 more than RIL Pro) to even get a glimpse at Instapaper; if Instapaper's reviews aren't better than RIL's, then why would they ever do that?

From what I've heard these Rate My App dialogs help drive a lot of ratings (which, in turn, helps sales). Most of the people who like an app won't go to the trouble of rating it otherwise.

Those dialog boxes are a double edged sword. If I really like the app then I will go and leave a positive rating in the App Store (Tiny Wings is one example). On the other hand, there was one app that explicitly requested that I rate it 5 stars (and there were a few other annoyances), so I gave it one star. Normally I'd just ignore or delete the app if it's bad, but if you pop up something and ask me to rate it, you better be prepared for the consequences.

This piece is devoid of actual reasoning and data (some will say content). It does however state Marco’s philosophy towards how he treats users.

Yes. I really dislike those dialogs. I wouldn't mind something within the app that had a link to rate it, maybe on a menu, in the settings, possibly even a much more subtle reminder that showed up somewhere else while I was using the app, but interrupting me with a modal is like a waiter asking for a tip in the middle of a meal at a nice restaurant.

I've handled it that after 10 openings of an app the dialog is shown. The assumption I use is that after 10th time user kinda finds it useful. Anyway, 92 4 and 5 star reviews, of total 98 seems to confirm my assumption.

I automatically deduct a star from the rating of any app that asks me to rate it in an annoying way. It has made 5-star apps get a 4-star rating from me a few times now.

You don't have to worry about exiting an app in webOS in order to leave a review.

So when you are just starting out with app development, like me, you have almost 0 network. Maybe I can get a friend to install an app, that's it. So you've got to bootstrap yourself up (I'm learning this as I go).

So far I've found that at $0.99 I am lucky to get 1-2 sales a day. However, on my first app that was kind of experimental, I made it free and immediately got 255 downloads that day, and it leveled off to about 25 a day after a week. Still not great, but at least 25x install base.

So the next step is figuring out how to make an app start to build a network. One big part of this is ratings. I can't make a free app purchase-only until it has word of mouth. This needs ratings.

For the 2nd app I just released, I have baked in a "Please review me" that only fires after 3 days, Facebook and Twitter sharing. I launched it free. I'm working on a Twitter campaign to get people to know about it.

I agree with Marco that with an expensive app, it might be annoying. But its really not that annoying (as long as you only ask once), and its a critical tool for developers trying to bootstrap.

(Shameless self-plug, here's a link to the app. Its iOS only. http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wolfpack-hangover-part-ii/id4...)