Terry Godier
Reviews on the App Store have bothered me for a long time. Review systems in general, really.
People leave reviews to give feedback to developers, and to help other users know what to expect. Sometimes they’re used punitively, as an outlet for frustration, or as a support channel.
But sometimes they’re impactful in a way that doesn’t match the reviewers intent. For example, if you have a 4.1 star rating in the App Store, any 4 star review is going to decrease that average. In other words, leaving a 4 star review is essentially leaving a negative review.
In what world is a 4 star review a bad review? A 1, 2 star review - those are negative reviews with congruent intent. A 3 star review is probably neutral (at least logically on a 1-5 scale).
You will see a lot of 4 star reviews that say things like, “This is my favorite app!” or “Gamechanger!” The apps that tend to have these types of reviews are often over a 4.0 in the store and are being actively harmed average-wise by having them, even though the intent was clearly not to do so.
There’s also a fundamental mismatch in the way they’re used by the platforms (i.e. Apple). Reviews, both velocity and aggregate score, are used in ranking and discovery algorithms. A 4 star review with a glowing snippet of text SHOULD be used to aid in discovery in a positive way, right?
What app developers have evolved to do about this is to time the review ask to just the right moment, where you’ve done something awesome in the app and we have a pretty good confidence level that you’re going to give a good review.
Many take it one step further and that is to show a custom review prompt that any rating selected other than 5 stars redirects you to fill in a feedback form, thus trying to gate the reviews that are transmitted to Apple at all.
With all of this in mind, is the system working as intended? I think not.
The logical endpoint of apps optimizing for a 5 star review invalidates the system as meaningful on the store. The system becomes a better representation of the sophistication at review prompt execution than it does an accurate reflection of app product quality. The incentive isn’t to create an actual 5 star app, but rather to create a robust system that transmits only 5 star reviews.
I refuse to do prompts for review of any sort. My app is a paid upfront app with a calm philosophy and my personal philosophy is that I’ve already been paid as part of the transaction. I don’t feel good about asking people to do something else for me. Many choose to do it on their own, which is great, and appreciated, but I leave that choice to them.
As my good friend Jon Henshaw (mastodon / website) told me today:
“I am my biggest impediment and I’m okay with that. I sleep great.”