The Mobile Marketer’s Guide to App Store Ratings & Reviews

Back in March, a quick trip to the Google Play Store revealed some not-so-startling observations on app store ratings:

Naturally, this piqued our curiosity. We’ve always held a special place in our hearts for app store ratings and reviews, but we wanted to dive a little deeper into the issue and explore just how influential they truly are and attempt to finally quantify the value of a star.

And thus, our 2015 Consumer Survey was born to explore how mobile app users interact with ratings and reviews in the app store. After geeking out with our newfound data and the data analysis provided by SurveyMonkey Audience, we decided we had found rather remarkable results.

And one month later, we’re excited to unveil our findings in our latest eBook: The Mobile Marketer’s Guide To App Store Ratings & Reviews.

This new guide provides brand new data we’ve collected from our 2015 Consumer Survey, paired with data from working with thousands of leading mobile apps, to paint the most comprehensive picture yet of app store ratings and reviews.

This free 55-page eBook covers eight key topics:

1. The State of the App Store & Methods of App Discovery

Inside you’ll find:

• Why app store ratings and reviews are now more important than ever thanks to increased competition in the app stores, continued increases in mobile customer acquisition costs, and dwindling retention rates among mobile apps
• The factors that comprise an app’s ranking in the app stores
• The role of ratings and reviews in app discovery, evaluation, and trial

2. The Inherent Biases of App Store Ratings & Reviews

Inside you’ll find,

• The problem will gauging the customer experience off of a single average rating
• The tendency for app store ratings and reviews to be left after negative experiences over positive ones
• The impact that how and when you ask for ratings will have on both rating volume and sentiment
• The self-selection bias resulting from having ratings and reviews from only a very small, non-representative sample of your customers typically

3. What Every Marketer Needs To Know About App Store Ratings

Inside you’ll find,

• A map of the prompt-to-rating journey from the customer’s perspective, and an explanation of why leaving a rating or review might not be as simple as you’d expect
• The role of app store ratings in driving customer behavior: from installs to updates to in-app purchases
• The correlation between app store ratings and conversion
• The correlation between app store ratings and rankings

4. What Every Marketer Needs To Know About App Store Reviews

Inside you’ll find,

• The role of app store reviews in influencing app discovery and trial
• Why recency, volume, and sentiment all matter when it comes to reviews
• The challenge of obtaining reviews when the average app only sees reviews from 0.05% of its customers
• The profile of the typical reviewer
• The negative bias of app store reviews, and the hurdles mobile app marketers face to encourage more representative reviews

5. Key Differences Between the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store

Inside you’ll find,

• Differences in volatility across app store ranking algorithms
• Differences in publisher autonomy when it comes to releasing new updates
• Differences in the role of social proof on an app’s landing
• An explanation of Apple’s current vs. total average rating breakdown, and what it means for mobile marketers

6. Actionable Steps for Improving App Store Ratings

Inside you’ll find,

• The importance of rating prompts in improving both rating volume and sentiment
• What it means for a rating prompt to be intelligent
• Best practices for rating prompts and mobile customer communication
• An original case study showing the effect of intelligent rating prompts

7. Actionable Steps for Improving App Store Reviews

Inside you’ll find,

• The role of VOC initiatives in encouraging positive reviews
• Tips on circumventing negative reviews in the app store by providing alternative communication channels
• Best practices for dealing with negative app store reviews in a way that earns customer trust and loyalty

8. Tips for Taking Your Mobile Marketing Beyond the Star Rating

Inside you’ll find,

• The latest trends in mobile marketing
• An introduction to App Store Optimization (ASO) and its role in app discovery
• Our top 10 ASO tips
• Tips for adjusting your ASO strategy to either the App Store or the Play Store
• An introduction to deeplinks, mobile SEO, and the opportunities they present the savvy mobile marketer

For all of this and more, download the full 55-page eBook: The Mobile Marketer’s Guide to App Store Ratings & Reviews.