Rating Improvement
As part of ASO, high app rating improves installation conversions
When deciding on installing an application, the user evaluates several parameters:
- Relevance to their search request
- Icon/screenshots
- Rating
- Reviews
A high rating and positive reviews are often the determinant factors: this is how the social proof works. On the other hand, a low rating and negative feedback will dramatically decrease installation conversions.
Benefits of rating improvement
01. Boosting loyalty of potential users
The rating above 4.2 will attract a user and assure them that the app will solve their problem. And this works when the user comes to your app page from search.
If the user landed on the app page via targeted ads, the high rating will develop their interest ignited by the ad creative.
Another factor is the overall number of reviews: the more the reviews, the more trustful your brand looks for users.
02. Forming the rating right after the release
Before entering the marketing and acquiring target traffic, it’s required to work out all the aspects in terms of functionality and app optimization on the App Store and Google Play Market.
For that, first optimize the basic ASO components: semantics, icon, and screenshots. After that, secure an appealing rating and publish several positive reviews. By doing all this, you will increase the chances that users will stick with your app.
03. Adjusting rating after solving technical problems
There is no flawless release. Having faced a technical problem, users will make a point of it in reviews, or just leave a low rating. On the App Store, you can reset the app rating after you release a new version. However, if the app has also accumulated many reviews and ratings and you don’t want to work your way up to the reputation again, you can go with rating improvement.
Telling about the bug fixes alone cannot win back loyalty of your users and ensure that new users won’t be frightened off. What you need to do is to restore your rating (or boost it) and publish some positive reviews and bring them to the top of the page. Make sure that some reviews contain the bug fix news so the users know that you keep improving and enhancing your product, listen to feedback, and solve problems quickly.
How rating improvement works
The App Store and Google Play employ different rating formation methods but set out the equally strict rating publication criteria: in 90% of cases, ratings submitted right after the release will not be accounted.
We have developed a method where 60 to 90 percent of the submitted ratings make it to final publishing. Our agents install the application, spend time in it, then get back on the second and the third days, and only then submit the rating or leave a review. And this technique demonstrates high performance on both platforms.
For iOS
The app rating is the weighted average of all ratings in a certain region. This means that the rating will differ from country to country.
For Android
Currently, the app rating is formed with the help of classified algorithms. Earlier, the overall rating took into account all the ratings for the app’s lifetime on Google Play; but nowadays, fresh ratings have the larger weight.
Initially, Google did not allow resetting the rating, and the new algorithm is called to solve the problem of the low rating after fixing the bugs. The updated application stops getting negative reviews, users start hitting “5” and “4”, and the picture gets better. In real life, such “organic” rating recovery may take up to several months or not happen at all: in fact, the number of negative scores decreases but there are no new positive ratings. And if there are too few new scores, the overall rating will consider all the previous ones.
How long does improvement take?
Improvement time depends on the following factors: the overall number of ratings, organic ratings gained, total daily number of installs.
Assume 100 people install your app every day. Given that, you may not want to involve 200 users in rating adjustment — the stores will smell a rat. You’d better start with small steps and then scale up gradually. All this will accelerate the improvement process.
With a good flow of installations, we can employ the resource to the full. We have some cases where the rating adjustment took just 1 to 2 weeks.
The primary goal is to shrink the flow of negative reviews several times. However, every case is unique, so we always engineer a custom, optimal strategy.
When rating improvement is not recommended
If your product has significant functional weaknesses that make it unusable, rating improvement can’t do. You need to spend some time recovering your app’s capacity. Otherwise, several fives are needed to cover one one-star rating, and when one-star ratings keep coming, rating adjustment starts stretching the budget and turns completely irrational.
Acquiring reviews
Usually, rating adjustment can rarely do the whole job solely: in fact, a high rating doesn’t look persuasive amidst negative reviews. This is why rating adjustments go coupled with acquiring positive feedback.
Indexing reviews on Google Play
Publishing reviews on Google Play may also solve the problem with search query indexing. By implanting keywords in review texts, you can heavily contribute to indexing by them.
Review display
By default, reviews are filtered by helpfulness, and users are who form this parameter. The more the likes (Helpful marks), the higher the position. Sometimes, negative reviews climb to the top despite the everyday flow of positive feedback. You can remedy such a situation by driving certain positive reviews to the top. This is how you can review the feed on your app’s page as you see fit.
The high overall rating and a good number of positive reviews should be your primary concern. A good rating can boost installation conversions (reducing the campaign’s ultimate CPI), while positive reviews increase the potential users’ loyalty and trust in the product.
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