All software developers want to get good ratings in the app store. That’s how customers judge the quality of your app. The other desirable metric is quantity of ratings—the number of people who have reviewed the app. It’s hard enough to get good ratings, it’s even harder to get a lot of people to review your app.
Here’s the mystery.
Basecamp for iOS has been out for over a year and has received 578 ratings (as of today).
Basecamp for Android has only been out for a few weeks, yet it has 358 ratings (as of today). That’s over half of the number of ratings we got for the iOS version which has been available for over a year.
Do Android users like to review apps? Do iOS users hate to review apps? Is Google’s Play Store designed so it’s easier to rate apps? I have no idea, but I’m curious about this uptick in Android ratings.
What do you think?
Brent
on 18 Feb 14It’s the location of the review mechanism when updating apps, I think.
When apps are updated on iOS, you can see which apps are updated and a little summary of what changed. It’s nice.
When apps are updated on Android via the Google Play store, you can see which apps are updated, but to see the summary, you have to click through to the Play store. It’s a little more obtrusive than the iOS experience.
But (and this is so typically Google), right there is the five-star review opportunity. Just above the change log of the app. Google makes it very easy for me to give information back to them. I have to want to leave a review in the iOS experience.
I bet it’s not that there’s a real difference in the users of the two platforms/stores, but that Google designed the opportunity to provide feedback so differently, it results in greater participation.
Jeff Yablon
on 18 Feb 14Jamie, it’s at least partially because (OK; ENTIRELY because) Android has a mechanism to … shall we say ENCOURAGE reviews and Android users are accustomed to being accosted by said mechanism and responding in a way that can become practically Pavlovian over time. iApps aren’t allowed to be so invasive, ergo, iApp users respond only when they feel compelled to do so. Over 300 of those in a year? I’d call that number HUGE.
Jeff Yablon
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Eric Portelance
on 18 Feb 14iOS App Store reviews are regionalized (e.g. Canadian reviews aren’t visible in the U.S. store and vice-versa). Not sure if this is the case for Play Store as well.
Matt Chea
on 18 Feb 14http://readwrite.com/2014/01/31/android-ios-app-quality-utest-applause#awesm=~owfz1aKeMzPaih
Justin
on 18 Feb 14What is the ratio of downloads to reviews between the two app stores? If you don’t want to divulge can you at least say if the ratios are similar? Considering how much attention is paid to how much the Android market dwarfs the iOS market you may be seeing similar rates of feedback but the differing size of the markets is making that less obvious.
Chris
on 18 Feb 14This is purely and totally personal and anecdotal: I use iOS. I’ve never used Android. I don’t review apps. I just don’t.
Jamie
on 18 Feb 14@Justin, according to Google Play we have 10,000 – 50,000 installs (big range I know :P). That’s in the 2 weeks the app has been available. Good point about ratio of downloads/reviews and ratings.
Scott Asai
on 18 Feb 14I can’t speak for Android users because I have an iPhone, but rating an app for me is like when Amazon asks you to rate a purchase. I prefer not to. For some reason I enjoy Yelping, but rating apps/Amazon purchases are a bit annoying.
Michael
on 18 Feb 14I use iOS and am “good at technology” and I truthfully don’t know how I’m supposed to review apps except for the prompt in the App Store which is always irrelevant since the only time I see it is before I buy an app. If users are supposed to return to the App Store to review an app, then that is a backwards way to set things up.
Rob
on 18 Feb 14@Jeff: What? As an iOS user, I’m accosted by my apps on a daily basis. “Rate me!”, “Rate me!” they scream. Free, paid, they don’t care. “Rate me!”
Let’s not pretend that iOS is this idyllic wonderland where it’s so much harder and “disallowed” to prompt for ratings versus Android.
Michael
on 18 Feb 14Er, yes, as Rob said, I was just talking about the default experience. I’ve never hit yes to rate an app when prompted by the developer but I presume it would go to the App Store.
Charlie Hayes
on 18 Feb 14The number of Android reviews would probably be even higher if they didn’t require Google+ accounts to rate.
Rob Colburn
on 19 Feb 14When it was new, I reviewed apps a bunch. Then overtime, I just stopped caring (no offense to any apps, just honest). I’m sure that some of the apps I use most have no rating from me.
Also, I rarely ever read reviews. I’ll get a baseline from the stars, and maybe peek if I don’t believe the rating. As long as the app has 0 occurrences of spontaneous combustion, I’ll likely make my own judgement. Super secure, I know, but the whole review system feels like another EULA process.
Matt Murray
on 19 Feb 14I love iOS but the app review UX is poor compared to Android. If you want to review an iOS ap it is not obvious how to do it, unless the app asks you to, which I never bite on because it bugs me.
Phil Chairez
on 19 Feb 14I’ve always thought if the iOS star rating prompts I get from apps allowed me to rate the number of stars right then and there, I’d gladly leaving my honest rating. It’s the redirect that kills it for me. No I will not be redirected then have to rate your app.
I’m not an android user but seems like the UX on non iOS apps allows for that immediate interaction capability.
Present me with the stars, let me choose and move on in one click.
Matt McCormick
on 19 Feb 14How many reviews did you get in the first month of having Basecamp on iOS?
You almost certainly had a devoted Android user base that was excited to finally get the app and, as a result, more likely to review it.
Previous comments make it sound like Android makes it super easy to review (I’m an iOS user so I don’t know for sure) so that’s undoubtedly part if it. But I’d be shocked if those who download the app over the next six months review at anywhere near the rate if the first month.
Side question: What are the quality of the reviews between the two platforms. Since iOS makes it more difficult, do you find more helpful reviews on iOS?
Davide
on 19 Feb 14As a iOS and Android user, I can confirm that the Android rating UX is far better.
I just want to add a thought at Brent’s comment: the rating stars in Google Play shows up right after you downloaded an app, for lightweight apps, it can happen that you see the stars before leaving the app screen.
There’s a chance that a fair amount of rating happens (by accident or maybe because is a Basecamp aficionado) even before someone actually opened the application – just speculating, I think that only Google has data about it.
Michael Guren
on 19 Feb 14Your download to review ratio seems way too low. Are you prompting users to review your app? When is the prompt displayed? Is it displayed again after each (major) update?
I would wager a bet to say that my app PocketPharmacist has far fewer downloads than basecamp, yet it has over twice the reviews.
Justin
on 19 Feb 14“Your download to review ratio seems way too low.”
@Michael Guren, what do you think a “normal” ratio should be. I’ve long wondered this and it’s hard to get good stats.
Daniel
on 19 Feb 14Like @Eric mentioned, in the iOS App Store the reviews are localized: you can only see reviews that are written in the same localization that your Apple account is tied to.
Also, as someone that sometimes write reviews for apps, I noticed that reviews you write are not instantly published: sometimes it takes a few days and sometimes it never appears. My theory is that Apple’s mechanism to prevent fake reviews is way too picky and leads to false positives.
Jeff Yablon
on 19 Feb 14@Rob: OK, so that’s new … or more to the point FOR ME, different. I’mm actually an Android guys despite what I was describing above and my experience with the iTunes/store model is limited to playing with my partner’s iPad about a year ago for a month or so, and fixing broken iPhones that her daughters … just keep mucking up.
Interesting that I never saw the begathon on iDevices. My bad.
Jamie
on 19 Feb 14@Michael Guren, we don’t prompt for ratings in the Android app. We do prompt for ratings in the iOS app after a certain amount of time.
My colleague JZ noted that Apple requires a star rating PLUS a written review. That’s a big obstacle. Google Play lets you just add a star rating.
Hayden Bray
on 19 Feb 14I think that the culture on Android is different from iOS. Apple users as we know are more likely to accept that they have to pay for great software. Android users in my opinion are more likely to want to share ratings with people and complain about software that’s bad, whether free or not. I think that the biggest problem that App developers face on either store isn’t that people aren’t willing to pay for software or bad or good reviews, but that it’s just hard to direct attention to your App when there’s hundreds of thousands of them in all of the App stores. Good advertising options are few and far between when Apps are sold for 99 cents. Some people try and use social media to get ahead and there are some decent options (see FacebookLikesReviews.com) but these aren’t always ideal. Apple and Google both need to do a better job with app discoverability.
Thomas Eyde
on 19 Feb 14I don’t rate iOS apps for three reasons: 1. When I answer ‘yes’ to rate, I am redirected to the app main page. I can’t rate there. I have to go to ‘reviews’ to to that. Reviews != rate.
2. Once on the reviews page, I have to select ‘write a review’. Still no rate function. But to give the review, I have to sign in.
3. I have a draconian password, generated for me by KeePass. There’s just too much hassle to open KeePass, sign in, search for my Apple id, copy, go back to app store, paste.
So all in all, there’s nothing in it for me.
Miro Majtaz
on 20 Feb 14Android does not require logging in before rating.
iPhone asks me to log in before rating and I have to write a header and an actual review, sigh.
IIRC, iPad allows me to just rate an app on the review tab without logging and writing a review. I don’t have an iPad at hand to double check on this.
Hongseok Yoon
on 21 Feb 14iPhone users familiar with high quality apps more than Android users, so they are severe in grading…may be :)
Tor
on 21 Feb 14« My colleague JZ noted that Apple requires a star rating PLUS a written review. That’s a big obstacle. Google Play lets you just add a star rating»
Nah, just give it a star rating, press send.
Just look at your screenshot. 578 rating, 421 reviews.
Jamie
on 21 Feb 14@Tor … Ah ha. Excellent point! Well then..that makes this even more puzzling.
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on 21 Feb 14w
InfinPixels London
on 22 Feb 14That’s interesting. I am an iphone user and I don’t review apps. But that doesn’t mean I don’t like them. It’s just too much work for me. I agree with the previous comment. If Android doesn’t require login, then it’s easier to review.
InfinPixels London
on 22 Feb 14One more thing, most of the apps launches IOS version first, and later Android. So they are happy to use the app, they are most likely to review it.
InfinPixels London
Jeff
on 24 Feb 14As many have already said, the review/rating experience on iOS just isn’t as good as it should be. The redirect is annoying, and many quality apps that I would otherwise review, I put off, because when I open an app to use it, I don’t really want to get sidetracked and then go over to the App store. There are probably other factors at play, but I’ll blame the UX.
This discussion is closed.