From 10,000+ global user reviews, I found these 6 points

Do you think that user reviews of apps are valuable as references? Whether you are a microcopy designer, UI designer, developer, or product person, do you often review user reviews? As a user, do you refer to previous user reviews before downloading an App? Today's article is authorized for translation from Dropbox micro-copywriter John Saito, and will share with you John's 6 major discoveries from 10,000+ global user reviews.

I recently read thousands of user reviews about Dropbox. It is no exaggeration to say that this is the funniest thing I have read this year - there were tears, laughter, and of course some very heartwarming content throughout.

Why do I read so many reviews? In fact, I went there with a mission. I want to learn more about users and what they think about our products.

At Dropbox, although we also did user research, we always felt that it was not enough. I want to see the feedback from users around the world - all the complaints, compliments, etc. between the lines.

Now looking back on this experience, I have to say that we still have a lot to improve. I also learned a lot of new things from users, which I might not have learned through other channels .

I've been talking for so long, but I haven't gotten to the point yet. Are you a little excited? Here are my top 6 findings:

1. Users have a strong desire to post content on the wall

The feedback that impressed me the most was the strong feedback from users on Dropbox. I noticed that many user reviews contain the word "most", such as most, best, worst, etc. This word appears frequently in user reviews.

No picture, no truth, here are some feedbacks:

Some people love it, some people don't

Through data analysis , I found that more than 70% of the reviews were either 5-star positive or 1-star negative . More than two-thirds of users are indifferent - they neither like it nor hate it.

I am very curious, why are there such "extreme" comments? I can think of many reasons for this, but I'd like to believe that Internet users simply like to express their opinions.

Users have a strong desire to put their posts on the wall, and a 1-star bad review or a 5-star good review is likely to attract more attention.

2. Users are curious

Almost a year ago, we decided to stop providing text descriptions of Dropbox app updates. Instead, we just kept a message stating how often we update. Although we would like to include a text description, we are unable to do so due to internal reasons.

You might be wondering, does anyone actually read update descriptions? I’m not afraid to tell you that many users have actually seen it! When we stopped providing update descriptions, 12% of our users complained to us about it. This is an average of 1 out of 10 people complaining!

For a few months, we received feedback like this:

This is really horrible.

These are all true stories. Hundreds of users gave 1-star negative reviews without mercy just because there was no update description.

We value this feedback very much. After internal coordination, we once again pushed the update description and App update simultaneously . To be honest, if it weren't for these users' negative reviews, we might still not do this.

3. Unexpected ways users use apps

Humans are very creative animals. You may never imagine the various ways users use your app.

Did you know that Play-Doh was originally designed to clean wallpaper? But later, its founders discovered that some users used their products for artistic creation.

So the company decided to transform and position it as a children's toy. This transformation was a spectacular one - sales subsequently soared, and it became one of the toys with the highest market penetration in the 20th century.

Really appreciate the comments from users. Through comments, I also learned various interesting ways users use the app. For example, I found that some users use Dropbox as a music player or note-taking app.

By understanding these “gestures”, our team can further optimize the design for these scenarios , such as adding a random play button or designing a convenient way to take notes. Who knows, some of the comments may inspire us, and we can wait and see for the next update with powerful features.

4. There are many highlights in the comments, which are very touching

Making products is not an easy thing. When we’re so caught up in our day-to-day work, we sometimes lose sight of how we can actually impact people’s lives. Regularly reviewing App user reviews will bring us back to the issue of product development.

Every once in a while, I see some heartwarming comments from users:

Sometimes, I also see some heartbreaking comments:

Whether heartwarming or chilling, the comments from users have many highlights and are truly touching. To me, user feedback is like a gift from God. Of course, sometimes we don’t receive the gift we expected, but at least it was valuable.

User feedback is also a calming agent for us. These feedbacks made us realize that we are designing for real users, rather than just designing for company goals.

5. Ratings vary from country to country

Dropbox has users in more than 100 countries around the world. Apart from the different interface languages, the rest of the content of the App is basically the same.

Since the content is pretty much the same, we should assume that reviews from different countries and regions should be similar, right? However, the results are quite different, and the feedback from users in different countries and regions varies greatly.

Take iOS App as an example. In the United States, the number of users who give 5-star positive reviews and 1-star negative reviews is almost the same. But in Japan, the number of users who gave 1-star negative reviews was twice that of users who gave 5-star positive reviews. In Brazil, the data is different, with only a few more users giving 5-star reviews than 1-star negative reviews.

Different feedback from different countries and regions (the feedback in the above picture comes from: the United States, Japan and Brazil)

What is the reason for these differences? I guess there are two main reasons:

• Translation quality. It is indeed difficult to translate between some languages. For example, have you tried translating "Sunflower Acupoint Pressing Hand" into English? If the language of the original text is not natural and fluent after being translated into the target language, users may give the App a bad review.
• Cultural differences. According to the survey, there are cultural differences among users when filling out questionnaires. App experience feedback is equivalent to a questionnaire.

A few years ago, Dropbox also launched a survey for global users, which mainly collected feedback from users on the quality of App interface copywriting.

Take a guess, which language had the lowest rating? ——Japanese. This means that our Japanese copywriting lowered the overall rating in the Japanese App Store.

However, there are always two sides to a coin. The relatively high-scoring version is Brazilian Portuguese - which is roughly on par with the English version. Could it be that this is because Brazilians like to give good reviews? I can only say it is possible. A survey conducted by the Youtube team a few years ago also found similar conclusions.

6. Android users give more positive reviews than Apple users

Well, this discovery does leave me a little confused. For some reason, Android users give us much higher reviews than Apple users.

The following is a set of comparative data:

Looks like Android users should be happier, eh?

Maybe, our Android version of the app is different from the Apple version of the app.

This is really strange. Actually, I can’t confirm the reason behind this finding yet, but it is definitely something I will explore later. Of course, if you understand the reasoning behind this, I'd love to hear about it in the comments.

It's perhaps the greatest unsolved mystery of our time: Why are Android users, on the whole, happier? Aren’t their expectations for apps high to begin with? Who else knows?

Do you read app reviews?

In a survey I conducted on Twitter, 37% of app developers responded that they rarely or never check user reviews of their apps. Are you one of them?

I know that reading app reviews takes time, but I think it is definitely worth it. If you want to know who is using your app, read their reviews. User feedback also takes time. If they take time out of their busy schedule to write a review for your app, do you at least take some time to "listen" to their voices?

Whether you are a developer, designer, copywriter, or product person, you might as well try to read user reviews. I bet you can learn a lot of useful things from them.

Or, at the very least, it might inspire you to write an original article on the topic, which could become a hit once published on Medium.