There are a lot of factors that have a direct impact on app ranking and conversion in the App Store and Google Play. In this article, you will find first-hand information and recommendation from a RadASO specialist about the impact of rankings and reviews on ASO and app promotion in both app stores.
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First of all, it is an indicator of the app's quality. Users' star ratings, where 1 represents the lowest score and 5 the highest, are used to determine the rating.
Reviews are written comments in which users share their opinion about the app.
In both stores, the rating of the application is displayed:
To understand how rating and reviews affect conversion, let's look at how these indicators are displayed in the stores.
Users pay attention not only to the rating itself but also to the total number of ratings received, based on which the overall rating is calculated. After all, it is one thing when the app rating is 5 stars and it has received more than hundreds or thousands of evaluations, and another when the high rating is the result of only a few dozen evaluations:
The Apptentive study shows that most users tend to install apps with a rating of at least 4*:
At the same time, an increase in rating from 2 to 3 stars can boost conversion rates by 306%, and from 3 to 4 stars – by 92%:
Therefore, to get as many downloads as possible, it is very important to maintain an app rating of at least 4 in both app stores, and in highly competitive conditions – at least 4.5.
Featured-reviews (ТОP-reviews) – these are reviews selected by page algorithms and displayed directly on the app listing page.
In the App Store, only 1 review left by an iPhone user and 2 reviews left by iPad users are displayed in the visible part of the app listing page (we also refer to them as featured reviews), so they should be the main focus.
To view the others, click See All, and then you will see all the reviews that can be sorted:
The visible part of Google Play displays 3 reviews (featured). By clicking the See All Reviews button, you will be able to view all of them and sort the results if need be:
It should also be noted that when users rate the app and post a review in Google Play, the page gives them a prompt where they can answer additional questions, but this is optional, and not all users spend time on it.
What responses can be included in Featured-reviews:
1. It is possible to displace the negative review from the featured section if it gains a certain number of "not useful" marks – this number is determined experimentally for each app.
2. You can displace other featured reviews by increasing the number of "Helpful" marks on the positive reviews you want to see on the first page of the app listing.
3. You can request the removal of reviews that go against the app store’s policies. For instance, you can send a complaint or write to the support chat. In this case, the recommended practice is to file a complaint both on behalf of the developer as well as the users.
For example, this is how you can file a complaint about any review in the Google Play console by sending it for revision and requesting a manual moderator review:
And this is how you can file a complaint on behalf of the user:
However, there is no guarantee that a positive review will replace a negative one. According to our experience, Google Play most often features reviews with different ratings, meaning that among 3 featured reviews, there are likely to be both positive as well as negative ones. Therefore, if you manage to displace one negative review from the visible part of the app listing page, another one will appear instead; unfortunately, there is a high probability that it will also be negative.
The same does not apply to App Store reviews: the visible part of the app can contain both exclusively negative and only positive reviews. Based on the sample size consisting of many apps we’ve analyzed, we’ve spotted a tendency that the most recent user comments are usually included in the featured reviews.
Assuming you want to install an app for choosing or making hairstyles. In Google Play search results, you will find several apps that are similar in functionality. Now try to ignore the icon, screenshots, videos, description, and title, and pay attention only to the rating and reviews. Which app would you choose?
The first app has 40 thousand ratings in total and an overall rating of 4.6. In the featured reviews section, users have commented that the app is very useful. The developers reply to each review and show their appreciation for the good feedback.
The second app has less ratings – nine thousand, and the rating is lower – 2.7. After reading the comments of dissatisfied users, which the developers failed to respond to, you are not going to install this app, are you?
Let's consider one more example for the App Store and another niche.
If we look at the results for the search term "English", at first sight, the app "English Grammar in Use" is the least likely to be installed – it has the lowest overall rating and the lowest number of ratings received among all the others.
After opening the app page and seeing negative reviews, your opinion about this app definitely won't change for the better:
The developers often demonstrate their high rating and positive reviews on screenshots in order to convey the app’s advantages in the form of social proof to the target audience:
So, if you want to increase app conversion, you need to focus not only on incorporating graphic elements, but also on getting great reviews and ratings. At the same time, it is important to maintain an average of not lower than 4, and even better – to have a 4.5 or more.
App rating and reviews affect:
Phiture conducted an interesting study on the impact of rating and reviews on conversion.
A brief summary of the key takeaways:
Based on the above, we can conclude that the conversion to installation is mainly influenced by the following:
The rating score significantly affects the app's visibility:
Therefore, if your app's rating is lower than your competitors', your app will be ranking much lower in the search results, and the likelihood of a user installing it will be lower, too.
2. As we have already stated, ratings and reviews significantly affect the conversion from impressions to installs. In turn, this is reflected in the app's position and visibility in search. As you know, one of the main ranking factors in both app stores is the number of installs. Therefore, we can conclude the following pattern.
Pay attention to the search results for any query – it is very rare to find apps with a low rating in the TOP:
Moreover, the more highly your app is ranked and the more commonly users choose to install it, the more likely it is to be featured – as a result, your app can appear in the top categories, thematic collections, etc. It means that your app will appear in the most visible parts of the app store and can thus get even more installs. We've done some analysis to back this up, and the findings are here for you to see.
At RadASO, we conducted an analysis to determine the average rating of mobile apps that are in the top 3 among the top categories in the App Store.
We have chosen several parameters for the analysis:
The result:
The conclusions that can be drawn:
2.3 Impact on purchasesRatings and reviews also affect in-app purchases. For example, Netpeak research proves that most users read online reviews before buying a product:
With mobile apps, the case is the same – before installing and, moreover, buying, the user almost always looks closely at the app and reads the reviews.
Developers who know about this can use it to their advantage. For example, focus on obtaining a high rating and positive reviews by optimizing the subscription page
Mobile apps are an additional modern channel for brand promotion. App Store and Google Play provide great opportunities for interacting with your audience. It is important to maintain a high rating and monitor the app reviews at any stage of its operation:
When users see a new app for the first time, most of them are quite skeptical about it because they know that there are often many bugs and flaws in the initial stages. And if from the very beginning users start to give you high ratings and leave good reviews, it will positively affect the decision of other users whether to interact with your application.
When the app already has a certain number of ratings and reviews, it is necessary to keep the averages at the proper level. This will allow for retaining existing users and encourage new users to download it.
Let's consider the impact of reviews on the brand through the example of the famous Japanese restaurant Osama Sushi.
Yes, this company is getting a lot of reviews on the Internet – positive as well as negative. But, you must admit, not all fans of Japanese cuisine read them on third-party sites. Another thing is the mobile app, which most people primarily use for placing orders.
After opening the app and seeing reviews about oversalted food and problems with delivery, you will involuntarily have a negative impression of the brand as a whole, and you will probably look for another restaurant and another app.
Thanks to regular feedback analysis, you can find ways to improve and further develop the product. For example, users in their reviews can:
In the App Store, the average rating is calculated on the basis of ratings received throughout the entire period of the app's existence.
The rating is unique for each country.
In Google Play, the rating is calculated on the basis of assessments of the current level of app quality (a recent state of the app), and not as an average of user ratings received over the entire period of the app's existence. Observations show that in Android apps, 10-20% of the rating consists of ratings received in the entire period of the app's existence in a particular country, and 80-90% consists of ratings received in the last month in the same country.
The rating in Google Play is based on the type of device people are using to run your app, and reviews are presented in accordance with the language device settings:
The unique aspect of Google Play is that, if there were flaws in the previous release and there was a lot of negativity in general, this is likely to cause a significant drop in the rating. However, if users start leaving 5-star and 4-star marks after fixing the bugs, the negative ones will be removed and the rating will be restored again:
The graph below shows how negative marks are removed when positive ones appear, and vice versa:
Just like in the App Store, in Google Play, the rating is displayed for each country individually, so you need to pay attention to the rating and reviews in all countries.
A feature of the App Store allows you to reset the rating with the release of a new version of the application:
This feature is bound to come in handy in some cases For example, the new release had a lot of bugs. Users instantly responded with negative reviews and voicing their dissatisfaction by giving it low ratings:
As a result, new users who are looking for a similar app see the negativity, and therefore it's much less likely that they will install this particular app.
It will take a lot of time to fix the rating through organic means because human brains are wired to spew out negativity much more often and more willingly than expressing positive emotions.
If a developer has taken the users’ recommendations into consideration, fixed everything, and reset the rating with a new release, it will be easier to gain a good reputation.
However, there are some important things to consider when resetting the rating:
Compared to the App Store, Google Play reviews are being indexed – the store selects certain keywords for which your app can be displayed from the written user reviews. That's why it's important to use key search traffic terms while responding to reviews. This will help you to:
For example, this is how taxi service developers respond to comments from their users using the necessary key phrases:
After a recent update in Google Play, ratings and reviews will now be published within 24 hours of being written.
That is, ratings and reviews are now displayed in the Google Play Console, and the developer can respond to comments, but they will not be immediately visible on the application page.
This allows app developers to resolve the issue within 24 hours, or complain about an unfair review, preventing it from appearing on the app page. It also allows you to fix bugs quickly, and to prevent false reviews or competitors' attacks. However, this requires monitoring the emergence of new ratings and reviews on an ongoing basis.
There are many services that allow you to monitor the dynamics of ratings and keep a watchful eye on reviews your app is getting. Let's examine the available free methods.
How to monitor ratings and reviews for an iOS application in App Store Connect:
log in to Connect => select the app => in the General field select Ratings and Reviews.
Convenient to use filters:
The tool also allows for replying to reviews. To do this, select the desired comment and click "Reply".
In this tool, you can track the rating and reviews of an Android app in the Quality section:
What information is available:
What actions you can take in the Google Play Console regarding reviews:
Very useful service where you can monitor app ratings and reviews in the App Store and Google Play.
Here you can see the rating of the mobile app with a distribution of all ratings in terms of percentages:
You can also track the dynamics of the rating in graphical form:
It is convenient to view all reviews from different countries and versions on a single dashboard:
It is also possible to view the app rating in all countries at the same time and see the number of ratings:
This service has the most comprehensive functionality for working with reviews and ratings.
It offers several benefits:
Human psychology dictates that if the users like an app, they just use it as is without interacting with the developer. On their own, they very rarely consider showing their praise.
However, when something goes wrong, users are immediately compelled to leave a negative review or a low rating to attract attention and vent their dissatisfaction. That is why negative reviews appear more often, but positive ones need to be encouraged.
Most users are ready to review or rate an app if they are asked to do so.
How to incentivize users to leave a review/rating:
However, keep in mind that it is against most app store’s policies to incentivize users to leave a review in exchange for an in-app bonus and you can get banned as a result.
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