App marketing: Reviews are your secret sauce
Published 24th November, 2016 by Stuart Hall
App reviews and ratings are extremely important to the success of your app marketing efforts. Successful app developers understand this and use it to their advantage. In this overview you'll learn:
- Users are judgemental about your star rating
- App reviews & ratings have a big impact on rank
- You are much more likely to be featured with a high rating
Want to monitor what users are saying about your app?
Join over 25% of the Fortune 100 and 35% of the top charting app developers using Appbot.
Try Appbot free now, no credit card needed →Here are 3 reasons you should really care about app reviews.
Users are judgemental about your star rating
At ASOBarcamp 2 Thomas Petit summed it up well in one diagram.
Unless your app is at least 4 stars (preferably 4.5 or 5 stars) then users view your app as rubbish.
Users are significantly more likely to download your app if you have a high rating.
App reviews & ratings have a big impact on rank
Reviews and ratings are a very strong signal for us on Google Play - Ankit Jain, Google Play
Moz studied the factors of ranking studied the factors of ranking and came up with the formula:
Ranking = fn(Rating, Rating Count, Installs, Trends)
Weight of factors in the Apple App Store ranking algorithm:
Rating Count > Installs > Trends > Rating
Weight of factors in the Google Play ranking algorithm:
Rating Count > Installs > Rating > Trends
Fiksu shared some really interesting data around what happened when ranks and reviews were introduced as a weighting.
After the algorithm changes apps with ratings, 4+ stars received a ranking boost. Apps rated under three stars dropped down in the charts. Mid-rated apps of 3 to 4 stars settled to middle ranks.
You are much more likely to be featured with a high rating
We dug into the top charts on iOS and found interesting results.
Over 50% of apps featured by Apple had a 4.5 star or higher rating. 75% of apps have at least a 4 star rating.
Reviews & App Marketing
App reviews and ratings are critical to user perception, ranking and your chances of being featured. These are arguably the three most important factors in the success of your app.
Want to monitor what users are saying about your app?
Join over 25% of the Fortune 100 and 35% of the top charting app developers using Appbot.
Try Appbot free now, no credit card needed →Where to from here?
- Explore Appbot's sentiment analysis tool to gain deeper insights into user sentiments and optimize your app accordingly.
- Integrate Appbot's app store review API to efficiently handle and analyze user feedback.
- Reply to app store reviews on the Apple and Google Play stores for happier customers and better star ratings.
- Automate your app store review responses with intelligent AI replies.
About The Author
Stuart is Co-founder & Co-CEO of Appbot. Stuart has been involved in mobile as a developer, blogger and entrepreneur since the early days of the App Store. He built the 7 Minute Workout app in one night and blogged the story of growing the app to 2.3 million downloads before exiting to a large fitness device company. Previously he was the co-founder of the Discovr series of applications which achieved over 4 million downloads. You can connect with him on LinkedIn.
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Appbot is leveraging next generation AI to offer even more powerful, personalized and time-saving features for managing app reviews. We're working with Chat GPT and others to ensure our customers remain at the forefront of the adoption curve, and stay ahead of their competitors.
