amro's blog

Filed under: app store

More Tips to get 4 or 5 Stars on the App Store

A few days ago I suggested using Appirater to boost App Store review quality. It's also important to provide in app help as it gives users a place to find quick answers and request assistance before giving up and leaving a poor review.

We prominently display a "Help" button at the top of BillMinder's Settings tab. It's clearly easier to find than something hidden at the bottom of a table. Tapping the Help button brings up an alert sheet, which lets users choose to view the FAQ or email support.

Adding an in-app FAQ page means users always have common answers available to them. We load BillMinder's FAQ in a web view so we can change the content without pushing another build. This is great since it can be tailored to trending questions received via support emails. The obvious drawback to using a web view is it requires an internet connection. That's a trade-off we're willing to make. We also ensure the FAQ page matches the app's style to make the experience a little more pleasant.

In the event that a user doesn't read the FAQ (ha! ;) or find the information they need, they can request assistance via email from within BillMinder. This is handy since it makes it easier to ask for help than leave a 1 star review. It also aids the indie dev giving support since they remembered to add important information, like OS and app version, to the bottom of the email.

As always, YMMV but these things work well for us.

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How To Get 4 to 5 Stars On The App Store

The reality is some developers pay for downloads and reviews to get higher rankings on the App Store. It's tough for Apple to do much about it since the sales look legitimate. It's easy to be frustrated by this sort of thing but there are two things you can do to beat it (ymmv, of course): 

1) Release a good app
2) Use Appirater

Appirater asks your users to review your app after some conditions are met. This seems simple but generally the folks who give feedback are the ones who are upset. When you ask repeat, often happy, users of your app to review it, you get some decent percentage of folks who are pleased to essentially /up vote/. #WINNER

We added Appirater to the latest version of BillMinder 3. Here is the current version's review graph:

Review_graph

Apple's Priority Queue

So I'm convinced Apple uses a Priority Queue to prioritize app reviews. I believe the following three factors greatly affect the priority assigned to an app submission:

  1. Whether the submission is an update to an existing app or an entirely new app
  2. How frequently a developer submits binaries
  3. How frequently a developer rejects the binary for a given submission

App updates seem to move through the review process more quickly than new app submissions. A higher priority is assigned to updates because the review team has already vetted the app being updated at least once. Updates also often bring bug fixes, which means a better user experience and happier iDevice owners.

Developers who submit frequently can take more than their fair share of the review team's time, so their submissions are assigned a lower priority. This group of developers might also introduce bugs in their hastily-completed updates, which requires additional updates to fix, more of the review team's time and therefore a lower priority in the queue.

New submissions can also be hastily thrown together. If you submit and developer-reject a binary several times, expect the priority of your submission to drop with each binary rejection. It would be a waste of the review team's (and other developers') time for Apple to start reviewing your app only to have you reject your binary in the middle of the process. This is factored into priority assignment to make sure you're satisfied with your build if you self-reject your binary (more than once?).

I believe Apple does all of these things to encourage developers to do a better job testing their apps prior to submission and to prevent high volume developers from hogging the review team's time. The net result is better quality apps on the store and a more fair review system than a straight FIFO queue would allow for.