Prompting Users For App Ratings, Reviews, and Responses

Asking users to “Rate this app!” got a whole lot better as of iOS 10.3, Apple released changes which enable users to rate apps without breaking flow and bouncing out to the AppStore.

How It Works

You can now requestReview() from Apple, who may then display a generic prompt for users to rate & review in app.

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Apple’s Guidance

• Only ask users after they’ve found value
• Don’t interrupt critical flows
• Don’t be a pest, ask once.

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How We Did It

• We ask users to review after 30 minutes. You understand the value ✔
• We only ask in low intent experiences. Don’t interupt ✔
• We ask you once. No pestering ✔
• Not to mention we spent 9 months building the Redbubble app. ⌛️

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Why Ratings And Reviews Matter

Ratings and reviews help us build a better product. At Redbubble we get feedback on what’s working and what’s frustrating users. We use this feedback to better prioritize and understand whats important to our users.

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Ratings and reviews also help user make decisions about the quality of an app before deciding to download (more below on this).

What We Learnt By Using In-app Reviews

After adopting ratings & reviews in iOS 10.3 we saw three fundamental changes in user behaviour;

• a significant lift in the volume of ratings & reviews,
• an increase in our star rating (48%☝)
• improved install conversion from AppStore to App Units (66%☝).

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More Reviews 📈

By prompting users after 30 minutes we got a significant lift in the number of reviews & ratings. This didn’t change the distribution of ratings – this continued to hold at 3.3 stars.

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A Better Rating 🌟

When users rated the app (with no review) we saw a shift from our 3.3 star average to 4.7 stars.

By the end of May we held a 5 star rating in the United States and 4.7 star average across all other territories.

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More Installs 👩‍💻

How did going from 3 to 5 stars impact downloads? We saw a 48% lift in conversion of users viewing the Redbubble AppStore product page to installing the Redbubble app.

Conclusion

Requesting ratings, reviews and responses in iOS 10.3 surpasses previous best practices. Getting it right can have a material impact on the number of reviews, your star rating & download volume.

Remember though, there is no substitute for a great experience, focus on building a great experience which solves the problems you set out too and only then think about how you best ask your users to rate & review your app.

Thanks for reading! 👋

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