How to effectively use and manage negative reviews of APP

There is no need to explain the importance of APP reviews in the app store . However, when I used the ASO tool to check the reviews of some apps, I found that some app reviews had not been updated for several months, and some app reviews were negative . If the problem of not leaving reviews for a long time is easy to solve (encouraging users or directly paying money to buy them), then some negative reviews are easy to deal with.

What kind of users write reviews in the app store?

It is no exaggeration to say that users who write reviews on the App Store all have a "radical" attribute. They either like it extremely or hate it extremely, with almost no middle ground. This also indirectly shows that users don’t like to leave comments unless they have strong feelings about the app (good or bad). Why?

Because the review process of the APPStore takes a certain amount of time, only enthusiastic users will take the time to write reviews. This also leads to a serious imbalance in APP reviews in the app store. There are tons of five-star and one-star reviews. Ratings in the middle (2, 3, and 4) are usually extremely scarce.

We all know that as far as ASO is concerned, app reviews have a certain weight in the algorithm, of course, this is based on five-star reviews and real user reviews. While we APP operators focus on collecting positive reviews, we also need to avoid bad reviews. But the reality is that when the user base reaches a certain scale, negative reviews are almost inevitable. So, how to effectively utilize and manage negative reviews of APP?

1. Users are the best testers

Users are the most honest testers of our APP. They will tell you without reservation what errors and failures your application repeatedly encounters. But, most of the time, they choose to tell you by leaving a negative review.

One way to benefit from negative reviews is to resolve every mentioned bug or glitch as quickly as possible. This way, you will avoid receiving new negative reviews and mentioning the same errors, and also improve the relevant performance of your app.

In addition, the ASO optimization team recommends that you try to isolate all the reviews that mention some words, such as "bug", "crash", "flash back", "not working", and write down all the fault reports, then solve them and finally release a new version of your app.

2. Put you ahead of your competitors

I don’t know how many of you will pay attention to the comments of competing products. In fact, digging out negative comments about competitors is another way to surpass your competitors. Some users may point out what features are missing in their negative reviews of competing products, so we can study and add these features to our own APP.

Moreover, monitoring competitors’ negative reviews can help us know in advance what users’ requirements are for our apps and why they are dissatisfied. This can help us solve some problems in our apps in advance or release new features that better meet user needs ahead of our competitors.

3. Learn how to improve your app’s design

In some APP reviews, users not only mention errors, but also give their suggestions on user experience (UX) or design. Not every suggestion is necessarily useful, but it is undeniable that some suggestions are quite interesting. For some valuable suggestions, operators should naturally fully attract them.

Paying attention to comments at all times is also a job of listening to the voice of users, because for our own products, to be honest, not every operator is a loyal user of their own products. For example , you may play a game, but users will play the game more deeply and for a longer time. This means that our operators may not use the functions of our own applications effectively. Therefore, it is very important to listen to user feedback, and if it is solved properly, it may increase the retention rate of the application.

4. How to avoid more negative reviews in the App Store

A good way to avoid more negative reviews on the app store is to provide users with other channels to voice their complaints. You may not be able to solve the fact that users want to leave negative reviews, but we should try to keep these dissatisfied users away from the app store.

Here are a few ways:

1. Include an email address in the app description and in various other places, and encourage users to use it

2. Add instant messaging function directly into the application.

3. Answer all comments on social media

As mentioned above, dissatisfied users usually leave negative reviews in the app store to vent their dissatisfaction and hope to let the developers know their dissatisfaction in this way. At this time, we provide some contact information and actively answer their messages on social media (such as Sina Weibo ). Finally, we also solve the errors, such as meeting the expectations of these dissatisfied users:

Additional features, better user experience, fewer bugs, etc… This keeps users coming back to our app, and eventually some of them will become satisfied users again.

Additional things to say:

What I want to say is that developers really want to reply to users in the APP review section of the APPStore, but Apple’s application reviews are one-way communication, so we can’t let dissatisfied users know in the first time that some bugs have been fixed and some functions have been improved, and we can’t thank users who have written good reviews.

Regarding comments, Google Play supports developers to reply to reviewers. I hope that APPStore will allow developers to respond to app reviews as soon as possible.

In summary

Negative reviews are actually very harmful. Not only do they affect the product's ranking in the app store, but they can also prevent other users from downloading our products. Therefore, it is very important to avoid negative reviews as much as possible. It is not terrible to have negative comments, what is terrible is not taking further action on the appearance of negative comments. Finally, I would like to ask everyone a question. What should you do if your competitors maliciously post negative reviews on your products?

Mobile application product promotion service: APP promotion service Qinggua Media information flow

This article was compiled and published by @Cicada Master (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!