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How to encourage users to give meaningful feedback

flocsy🤠
1 month ago

1st, I have to admit: I do give negative feedback to other apps, both in Android's Play Store and in Garmin's. But in Android I do edit it as they improve the app, and here's the big confession:

In Garmin store I stopped giving even 4 star reviews, as now (as a developer) I see them as a punishment, similar to 1 star reviews. This is because any rating less then the current average is decreasing the average, and stays that way forever (because once a new version is released it's impossible to edit or remove it) If I don't receive a response to a "Contact Developer" message after a week I will leave a negative review with few stars.

So today I added the following paragraph at the beginning of one of my app descriptions:

"If you give less than 5 stars  Starreview, it's your choice, but know that I don't get any useful feedback on how to improve the app. So if you really care, then please use "Contact Developer" and leave me your email address so I can get back to you, or at least write a short sentence in the review I can relate to."

Unfortunately I have a feeling that this (being in the beginning of the description) will have a negative effect on the app's downloads, but I won't be able to confirm it, because we no longer see how many times the app is downloaded every day.

Unfortunately I also have a feeling that there will not be many users who read even the 1st sentence of the description before they leave a review.

What is your experience?

Top Replies

  • 22 days ago in reply to flocsy🤠 +1
    flocsy said:
    Wrong. If exactly 50% of the users feel it's a good app and the other half that it's crap (and they all vote 1 or 5), the "limit" will be 3. Similarily if the percentage of the voters (who…

All Replies

  • 1 month ago

    I wouldn't beg for 5 star reviews.  I think a better solution would be if some text was required for any review, even a 5 star.

    I wouldn't consider a 4 star review a bad one, but there's something the user doesn't like that means it's not "5 star" in their eyes.

  • 1 month ago in reply to jim_m_58

    I agree that there could be improvements from Garmin's part, and we did discuss some ideas here. But what can we do until that will happen?

    I think I know (at least I have some idea) what a 4 star can mean. But if the current average is above 4, then in my mind 4 stars is also a bad review. And I'm not talking about an app that was just uploaded 2 weeks ago and has <10 reviews.

    However more than not wanting to get "negative" rating I would want to improve my app. For that at least it would be nice to get some indication of the things they don't like.

    It's not always possible to improve it. I got one review telling that the fonts are too small, which is objectively true, but the only meaningful response I could reply with was to tell the dude to switch to a watch with a bigger screen. I could remove the support for watches with smaller resolution, but this review was clearly an outlier, considering (to my surprise) this app's biggest percentage of users (22%) use fr55 that has both small screen with only 8 ugly colors.

  • 1 month ago in reply to flocsy🤠

    I would consider a 4 star review a good review in all cases.  Even if the Average is 4.5, it's that because there was something that stopped some users from giving a 5 star, and they can't give a 4.9

  • 1 month ago in reply to jim_m_58

    Probably you're right, but it doesn't help me with what I asked. What "tactic" works to encourage users to first use Contact Developer, then if they want at least leave a message, not only the rating.

  • 1 month ago in reply to flocsy🤠

    When I get a review that's not clear, I reply with a message about using contact developer.  The person that left the review may never see the reply, but everyone else looking at the reviews will.

  • 1 month ago in reply to jim_m_58

    I do that, I just don't feel it has any effect at all.

  • 1 month ago in reply to flocsy🤠

    How would you know?

    In the same way. if I see an app with a number of reviews and all of them 5 star, I tend to ignore that app.  And from screen shots in the store, I'm a pretty good judge if the fonts look to be too small for my mid-sixties eyes, and they also get ignored.

  • 1 month ago
    flocsy🤠 said:
    In Garmin store I stopped giving even 4 star reviews, as now (as a developer) I see them as a punishment, similar to 1 star reviews. This is because any rating less then the current average is decreasing the average

    By the same logic, if you give a 2 star rating to an app with a 1.5 average rating, this is actually an excellent rating, as it will raise the average. Do you agree with that? I doubt it. So why does that argument only work on one direction?

    [1/x]

  • 1 month ago in reply to FlowState

    The meaning of a 5-star rating scale isn't relative to the average starred rating of an app [quick, find the flaw in that system *], it's supposed to be a [more or less] absolute scale. The point is to compare the app to a more or less objective standard or to other apps, not to itself. Nobody buys something from Amazon and says "wow, I really loved this purchase, I have to give it a higher-than-average rating, to make sure the average goes up!"

    (*) for example, if *everyone* believed this and acted accordingly, then all average ratings would approach 1 or 5 (at least for the apps which are "objectively" good or bad), reducing the rating system to a binary thumbs up or thumbs down system. Indeed, with your implication that the only good review is a 5-star review, you are basically collapsing the 5-star review system into a binary.

    [2/x]

  • 1 month ago in reply to FlowState

    In fact, Garmin actually defines which each of starred ratings is supposed to mean, so we don't have to guess:

    So actually, 4 stars is supposed to mean "Good", it's actually not an extremely negative rating that's meant as a punishment.

    To be fair, this scale is only shown on the CIQ website and not the app, but it does reflect Garmin's intent and it does seem to match most people's common sense understanding of 5-star rating systems. I'm pretty sure that 100% of ordinary non-technical people would agree that 4 stars is not a punishment, it's a good review.

    [3/3]