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App Store: encourage users to contact dev w/problems, instead of leaving bad review

flowstate
I find that users tend to leave middling-to-bad reviews for inherent CIQ limitations, CIQ bugs, and misunderstood app features.

e.g.
- Why does it take two seconds for a widget to appear?
- Why do I have press START or tap the screen to interact with your widget?
- Why does your widget close after 1 minute?
- Why can't I uninstall your widget?

I find that most developers try to leave a prominent notice that looks like: "Please press Contact Developer before leaving a bad review".

Once again, if every developer has to do the same (extra) thing, perhaps it suggests that a change could be made in the store itself. Maybe the UX of the store could be designed to encourage users to contact developers if they have a problem.

I can't speak for anyone else, but it's demoralizing to get a middling review because of some CIQ limitation/issue or because a user misunderstood a feature (*).

(*) To be fair this is not Garmin's fault, but no matter how much text, screenshots or videos that a dev provides, I'm pretty sure there'll be users who don't look at any of that, and who also assume that some app feature is actually a bug, not realizing that it's there for a reason and can be turned off. I'm also pretty sure there's no perfect app design that has features with 100% discoverability which are intuitive to every user. So the compromise is that some potentially annoying features have to be enabled by default, and some users won't like that.

So my point is it would be great if Garmin encouraged users to contact devs instead of leaving bad reviews. If Garmin puts that in the review form (for example), there's a much greater chance that the user will read that advice, compared to anywhere a dev could put it in the Description or What's New. And of course, if you put that notice at the top of either section, then there's less room for your actual app Description or What's New text, without having it disappear behind More...

Given that there's no way to style text as bold or large in the store, it's also hard for devs to make any such notice prominent enough.
  • The reality is, many users don't read the the page or description - even the first line in the description, so I'm not sure if Garmin says it, a developer says it, it's bolded and flashing, it would make much of a difference and you'll still get reviews likes this. And some devs may prefer to point users at something like a showcase thread, their own website, or their facebook page instead and not encourage contact developer.

    I've gotten bad reviews about apps that I didn't even write! The user was talking about something else. I've gotten 1 star reviews that just say "it doesn't work".

    These things happen. You can request a bad review be removed (as I did when it was about a whole different app!), but just having a bad review doesn't mean it should be removed. Sometimes it's a good way to respond so others about to do a review see it ("please use contact developer and let me know details about which watch, and what you were doing when this happened")
  • The reality is, many users don't read the the page or description - even the first line in the description


    Exactly. Which is why it would be great if Garmin could put something in the review form itself. Just a thought.

    A bad review is not the end of the world, but my point is that many devs have felt that's necessary to ask users to contact them before leaving a review.

    Thanks for the feedback!