Is letting answering to App store user reviews a good thing for developers? No

By Ouriel | Published: June 22, 2012

So Google is now letting (some) Developers answer to users review. Most think this is a good idea and even call Apple to do the same thing. But this is not the right problem to solve. The problem is not the review system being frozen (and gameable). The problem is the lack of discipline of most developers to collect and address feedback

 

ITunes 4

Here is what we answered on the Post of TheNextWeb today

 

The problem is not the rating system but the absence of efficient feedback system in the apps created by the developers which force frustrated users to go to the app store to drop a review. When you think about it it just does not make sense: it is as if you were saying that in order to report a tech problem on TheNextWeb i need to contact Google.

Apps are the point of contact between developers and users. And users should be able to easily find a way to contact the developers and provide them with feedback. Bug reports and critical issues should be directly reported with the developer and not in the store: although the store can be also used for this.

It is not enough for the developer to be able to answer comments: he also need an efficient way to 1. be alerted when a comment is dropped 2. have a way to identify the profile of the user (which device, os, location, language,…) Even Google does not enable that making it highly inefficient to adress bugs even with the ability to answer.

Paul from Tapbot is right: their are already too many channels and developers are underwhelmed.

So what can be done? Build a feedback system in your app (or use an existing one like the one that we created i.e. App Booster). Make sure it is easy to find and does not require too much data input. Finally make sure you collect enough valuable information to deal with the feedback.

Most developers would hide a simple email contact in a more stuff section 3 levels below. This is wrong because it is not accessible and does not provide context

Frankly this is not the Stores responsibility which should focus mostly on avoiding that their commenting system should not be gamed (another big chapter). It is clearly an app developer responsibility first

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  • http://twitter.com/sylvainww Sylvain Gauchet

    I have to say that this time I (partly) disagree. You said it :”It is not enough for the developer to be able to answer comments”, but being able to answer (or contact) some iOS users could be nice and give developers a possibility to solve these users’ problems/issues. Not every users will use the feedback tools, no matter how good (there’s a compliment somewhere in there) and omniscient it is.

    That say, it could also lead to a big mess and add confusion.

    • http://ouriel.typepad.com OurielOhayon

      Yes Sylvain this is precisely about trade off. this is not by chance that all online retail stores have not build a way for brands to answer their buyers or that even the online store themselves do not answer reviews. It would create such a mess and confusion. Can you imagine what amazon or zappos would be like?

      The trade off is to allow developers to handle as much as they can themselves

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