1.
Why Mobile App Developers must Analyze
their Apps’ Store Reviews & how it’s Done

2.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Turning To Store Reviews To Find Answers
First, You Must Have Enough Reviews
What Makes Store Reviews a Goldmine?
The Problem with Store Reviews
Time for App Review Mining
Some Common Topics Amongst User Reviews, For Most Apps…
Are Your SDKs to Blame?
The Positive Reviews: Time to Pat Yourself on the Back
So… Did I Pass the Review?
 Privacy is still a Thing
 Version Updates are not that Great either
 Crashes, People, Crashes

3.
TURNING TO STORE REVIEWS TO FIND ANSWERS
Professionals in the mobile industry follow a method, a way
to qualitatively analyze their users’ inner thoughts. So should you!
So… Let’s agree that you must find out what does and doesn’t work in
your app. You can never win this business
unless you collect feedback methodically.
Store reviews are a good source for that.

4.
FIRST, YOU MUST HAVE ENOUGH REVIEWS
You have to work hard on collecting reviews,
and more importantly, maintaining ongoing
streams of new reviews that you can utilize

5.
A lot of developers want to encourage users to provide reviews from
within the app but are concerned about receiving negative feedback.
Apptentive has created a solution that
prompts a pop up asking users how they feel
about your app (love, dislike and so on).
Positive users are then encouraged to provide
in store feedback while the rest are directed to
the support team.
HOW DO YOU CAREFULLY PUSH FOR REVIEWS?

6.
Collecting user feedback isn’t easy. Things can get costly if you’re using
surveys via social communities, email marketing, focus groups and/or
developing beta communities.
WHAT MAKES STORE REVIEWS A GOLDMINE?
Thanks to Google Play and iTunes
many ‘user reviews’ are collected
with no encouragement, while
some reviews may be collected by
a nudge (push notification) or small
fee.

7.
Many users are proactively leaving reviews, for many reasons that can teach
you about what works and what doesn’t, and where to focus your
development efforts.
YOUR REVIEWS REFLECT YOUR APP PERFORMANCE
Apptentive

8.
During ‘Google Play Partners’ event, Google’s team shared some data
that supports the importance
of monitoring store reviews:
It seems that 50% of the 1 star
reviews address app stability
and bugs.
Also, they showed a strong
correlation between an app’s
rating, reviews and revenue.
YOUR REVIEWS REFLECT YOUR APP PERFORMANCE – CONT.

9.
Review mining is an essential ongoing process, it allows us to make educated
decisions and gage what’s working and what’s not. Since many app store
reviews are left blank, this process is both necessary and beneficial.
Google Play presents
a sort of formalized
view but it’s not enough…
THE PROBLEM WITH STORE REVIEWS
Google Play provides some help…

10.
A manual systematic review mining process might include the following:
TIME FOR APP REVIEW MINING
Reading the reviews
Listing them
Organizing them by various themes (bugs, UX, features suggestions
and so on) or by keywords that suggest a sentiment
Detailing the frequency in which similar feedback occurred
Doing the same with your competitors’ reviews

11.
For large scale installs, review mining can get very time consuming
and doing it manually might not be feasible…
You may consider using review mining tools such as Appbot,
SensorTower or LaunchKit Review Monitor

12.
Common Topics amongst User Reviews

13.
A complaint about asking for too many permissions is one of the strongest
reasons behind negative reviews.
Just look at Facebook’s Messenger fiasco of 2014: Facebook took away the
option to send messages through their official app and caused millions
of people to download the
messenger app. Within a short
period of time, they had a lot
(some say forced) of downloads
as well as 1 star reviews.
PRIVACY IS STILL A THING

14.
You should review what permissions you’re asking for and consider
removing SDKs that are asking for too many permissions

15.
VERSION UPDATES ARE NOT THAT GREAT EITHER
Users don’t like not having immediate access to
their app.
Also, the end user doesn’t like to see their data
plan and precious battery percentage being spent
on app updates.
Sending too many update requests makes your app
look unstable and therefore unreliable.

16.
CRASHES, PEOPLE, CRASHES
According to Google, if you have negative reviews, chances are that 50%
of these reviews address bugs and other app stability issues.
You can also analyze your app’s reviews to
figure out if there are any technical issues
you weren’t aware of. For example, if you
see a repetitive complaint about the app
always crashing on a certain page or on a
particular level of a game. Voila! more free
feedback.

17.
ARE YOUR SDKS TO BLAME?
Sometimes, without pointing fingers, the SDKs you’ve integrated in your
app are asking for excessive permissions, consuming a lot of battery or
causing your app to crash.
Using our SDK Real Time Monitor and Control Platform, you can now
monitor your SDKs in real-time and deactivate SDKs you found to be
problematic, without
disturbing your users and
sending version updates.

18.
THE POSITIVE REVIEWS: TIME TO PAT YOURSELF ON
THE BACK
It’s always nice to get a pat on the back on a job well done.
In addition, some of the reviews
could be used as a muse to better
the app and add more cool
features to make it even greater.

19.
SO… DID I PASS THE REVIEW?
The reviews section is where your users can best express themselves.
Numbers show that users are more likely to do so if they are frustrated
or are having a bad experience, so you must read the reviews.
Remember, reviews help your future users decide if they’re going to
download your app.
Ignoring store reviews is like throwing a party but never bothering to ask
the guests if they’re having a good time. If you want them to come back
for your next soirée, make sure they’re not only having a blast, but
having so much fun they’ll tell others about it.

20.
THANK YOU!
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