My first app is still in review, but my second app has been in the store a few days. It is an application to monitor woot.com, shirt.woot.com, and wine.woot.com. I priced it at .99. I didn't want to make it free because I do want to generate some revenue to pay for the $99 Developer License. The day before my app appeared in the store, a similar app call WootWatch appeard and it is free. I decided that my app had many more features and would still warrant the .99 price.
In the first 3 days I have had 5 reviews. Two of the reviews say they would rather use WootWatch because it is free. I can understand that. But one of these two reviews says "This is the same thing as WootWatch". It is clear that this person did not actually use the app because if he had he would really think it is the same thing. I wish I could response and point out the differences, but that would sort of be unethical for me to review my own application.
Another reviewer says he will wait until Woot produces their own application. If I could respond to this person I would point out that there are dozens of woot monitoring applications for Windows and Mac and that Woot themselves have never produced one. Again, I can't really respond to the review.
At the same time, in the WootWatch reviews, there are several reveiews suggesting enhancements. Many of these are features that my app already has. If I were to post a review there point to my app, that would also be pretty underhanded.
Is anyone else having problems with reviews that they think are invalid driving down their product?
Reviews are a big problem at the store. A number of developers have contacted Apple and I suggest others do as well (contact is at bottom of iTunes Connect)
Issues:
Reviews from people who have never seen the app, let alone used it.
Reviews from competitors.
Reviews from friends of developers.
Most of these could be fixed if Apple required a reviewer have the app before reviewing it. Apple is unique since they know who has the app in question, unlike Amazon and most other online stores.
Also note that this happens worldwide. There are probably bad reviews in China for your app, who knows. Change store at bottom of iTunes.
The reviews aren't marked by version number. That means if there's a complaint about a bug or missing feature and you fix it, that review will still be there and users will still think it applies to the current version. You'll be haunted by bad reviews for a long time unless you have a top 10 app.
To do:
(Most of these can only be done in your own country store)
Click the report concern on a review and select not a review if it's not an actual review.
Apple's never removed any review that I'm aware of but hey, you tried.
Click the useful/not useful review ratings.
You can change your app description and point out some of the features that may be overlooked.
Contact Apple.
The review system is not something most developers are happy with. IMHO, requiring people to purchase the app prior to reviewing would get rid of a lot of "those kind" of reviews. There's no perfect way of doing it though. Apple's certainly not going to accept/deny all the reviews & you certainly can't have developers doing that either.
I think most people can tell the difference between a valuable (and knowledgeable) review and random words from someone who hasn't even used the app.
One problem is a large number of people just go by the star rating and don't check the reviews. If the first people people who 'review' your app just don't like how it seems to compare to something else, they'll give you a low score. That's hard to overcome.
Mine was absolutely trashed by reviewers because I didn't have a Mac version available. I clearly marked that it was Windows only in the description and that a Mac version was coming soon, but still people felt the need to destroy my rating for it, which halted my sales.
I doubt most of these reviewers were even going to buy the program, they're probably just Mac freaks who have nothing better to do than trash anything that isn't Mac compatible. My app had a star rating of 1 because I don't have a Mac version yet.
It's really unsettling to see this. This was my first app as a test to see if I wanted to target any of my other apps towards the iPhone, but so far I think I may just remove my app and forget about the iPhone.
I'm still in learning process and has not tried to release any app yet. I can completely understand how depressing is the situation. Apple is notoriously slow in implementing logical/make-sense changes and very iiresponsive to both developers and customers', again, logical requests. I wonder if a black method can enforce them to really listen and expedite change. Something like CnC bots to sign up to iTunes and giving bad reviews (like "I don't like Apple allowing me reviewing this app although I haven't bought and tried it") and 1 stars to let say top 50 apps.
I only have 6 reviews and one of them says that my app is buggy and crashes a lot, which is completely untrue. My guess is that he was one of those people having the crashing app problems that were iPhone OS related.
I sent apple multiple "report concerns" about the review saying that it was giving false impressions of my app, but there was no response and the review was never removed.
I think it is dumb that you can't see all the reviews from all the different countries without just going to each country's iTunes.
Well I have a different criticism of the review system, which is that good reviews are not worth much. I've been lucky not to have been reviewed by idiots, and my apps (full version and lite version) have among the highest ratings in the store. But my full version's sales have been in the 20s / day for the past couple of weeks.
There's no way to, e.g., sort by highest rating in the app store. To see the good reviews, somebody has to first have found your app on the store and decided to scrutinize it. Getting your app seen in the first place is the hard part.
Of course, making the reviews mean something would just make all the existing problems worse; they can't really do that without fixing those problems first.
This is a topic I'm really interested in working on. There are some serious issues with the reviews, no question. And I know that the majority of end users will not leave the ecosystem that is the App Store. However, I think 3rd party sites will eventually make a dent. I think a select few of these sites will break through and offer what Apple should be doing with the review system in iTunes. Please keep all suggestions and feedback coming.
I haven't gone to all the review sites yet but so far I haven't seen many that were truly worthwhile.
1. 80% seem to review only games
2. Even the others seem to fill up almost all of their reviews with games.
3. Most review a lot of free apps and fill up their site with these reviews.
4. Many sites have 'full reviews' that are a couple of sentences about the app. ('Sorta cool." "Not bad" ) (i.e. the reviews on the App store are actually better than some of these 'review' sites)
5. many sites seem to give all the apps the same ratings or close to it. (4 stars)
6. One site did a video review of my app. It was probably the second time he had even started it. Most of what he showed couldn't be seen on video since he had the settings wrong and he didn't even touch any of the real features. He gave it a good score but if someone based their thoughts on his video I'd be in trouble.
When I contacted him he said he was trying to keep up with 200-300 apps a day and that's as much time and effort he could put in to a review.
This sums up the probem with many review sites - they're targeting quantity, not quality.
If a movie critic approached his job like an App Store critic he'd have this on a daily update: (And would be reviewing all media, including free TV programs)
DarkKnight - Dark
Tropic Thunder - Funny
Days of Our Lives - Joe loves Jill
Rerun of Happy Days - Cool one with Fonzie
National Geographic special - I love monkeys
The Women - I saw the first 5 minutes and it seemed ok.
Here's a hint to app reviewers that might make your site stand out:
Actually review the app. Try to spend more than 2 minutes with it.
Spend your time reviewing apps that cost money. There are 3 dozen other sites reviewing free apps. Users can download free apps and try them out. I'd rather know about an app that might be useful that I have to pay for than to try to sift through 5 pages of free flashlight reviews. (Gosh, I might choose the wrong one and have to download another)
Try to review apps that aren't' featured on the app store. They already have plenty of coverage.
Consider apps other than games and sound effects. I have no problem with game reviews it's that there are so many games and so many review sites for them it just tends to make all review sites the same.
Understand the purpose of the application and judge it accordingly. Don't fall into to the same problem as many App Store 'opinions (i.e. if it's for a niche market that you know nothing about, don't comment or review it)
Review System in App Store Frustrating
Linear Mode
