This is a guest post by Bernard San Juan III, the Managing Partner of Truelogic. Bernard comes from a successful career in online companies, where he played a critical role in building & managing workforce groups. His skills include managing performance, managing costs and training. He also manages overall sales, customer satisfaction, graphic design, copywriting, and training with first line supervisors.
Growing Your Apple App With User Feedback
Mobile apps are becoming more competitive than ever. As more and more apps flood the market, the challenge of retaining market share lies with its developers’ efforts to attract and retain customers. However, how can one attract and retain app users in this fast-paced industry? Simple. Through leveraging user feedback and providing excellent client experience.
By integrating software and user-generated feedback into your pipeline, your app can retain its spot at the top of the charts while garnering new customers. This can be beneficial to your business especially because user targeting has become more complicated due to privacy first policies rolled out by Apple.
In this article, you’ll learn all about the importance of collecting feedback and some good practices you can integrate into your process to ensure high-quality user-generated feedback for your app.
Why should you collect app user feedback?
Collecting app user feedback is an important part of gauging your app’s overall performance. Not only can it help you direct your attention to bugs, but it can also give you the insight you need to improve your app’s performance.
Through app user feedback, your customers can comment on the kind of developments they want to see on the app, making it possible for your clients to shape your app into a better one – paving the way for developer-user collaboration. This practice gives you the critical user feedback you need to elevate your product. Since app feedback sites are also available around the clock, your team can get valuable reviews at any time your client feels like giving them.
Additionally, user-generated app feedback can function as social proof of what your app can do. New users are more likely to download your app if it’s rated highly and has glowing reviews on the app store.
How do you get app user feedback?
There are numerous tools available to help you collect your customer’s feedback. Most companies use multiple methods to collect feedback.
Here are some of the most used in-app feedback methods that businesses use:
- Shake-to-send feedback
- Rate-my-app feedback
- Open-ended feedback widgets
- NPS surveys
- App analytics feedback
- User satisfaction surveys
The reason why companies use a variety of tools for collecting user feedback is so that they can collect different types of reviews. For example, a user satisfaction survey will usually be comprised of short questions to help you understand how happy your clients are with your product.
Ideally, your company should use all the tools available to you to paint an accurate picture of your clientele’s satisfaction.
What to consider when asking for feedback?
Having good practices when gathering feedback from your users can be the difference between a good review and a bad one.
Programming your user feedback prompt to pop up while they’re in the middle of doing something important can lead to negative feelings about your company, pushing them to leave a bad app review. This is why it’s critical to have good practices when trying to gather app feedback from users.
Here are some factors you can consider when deciding when to ask for app feedback:
Time
One of the most critical things to get down when asking for user feedback is timing.
Ensure that your user feedback prompt doesn’t interfere with your client’s experience. Make sure to avoid prompting for app feedback during critical parts of their usage, for example, in the middle of a spectacular game battle or when they’re executing a timed activity.
Another thing you should remember is to give your client enough time to experience your app before asking for feedback. Too soon and they may not have any feedback to give.
A tip we have if you’re collecting feedback for a mobile gaming app is to ask for a review after a successful match – that way, your client will likely be having a good experience with your app.
Intervals
Sometimes your users aren’t ready to give you feedback yet, so they skip out on it first. Setting your feedback prompt to trigger during positive milestones that are far from each other can increase the chances of clients giving feedback for your app.
Additionally, you should remember that Apple has set a limit as to how many times a publisher can ask for feedback. In one session, your company can only ask for feedback up to three times.
Accessibility
One thing that may turn clients away from giving a review of your app is if it exits the app.
This can lead to some frustration for your client due to the possibility of losing progress, so make sure that your feedback tool is accessible from within your app.
Length
If your client is on your app to have fun, they may get turned off from having to give feedback if your questionnaire is too long because it’s going to take up too much of their time.
Keep your feedback questionnaire concise and clear. If possible, you can also add a progress bar to help your users see how far they are into your feedback form.
Response
When your clients spend time giving your team valuable feedback, make sure to create a follow-up plan to inform them that you’ve received their feedback and that you’re working on it. This makes your users feel like their feedback is valuable.
Some companies also choose to reward users who report bugs as a sign of goodwill.
How to Manage User Reviews on the App Store?
Some companies may experience receiving negative reviews on their app’s page on the app store. That’s not uncommon but, you should always be prepared to answer these professionally.
Negative reviews can be disheartening to your team, and they can also discourage potential users from downloading your app. However, with the right app store review management practices, you can leave a good impression. After all, customer service is what can garner a brand its loyal customers.
This means positively responding to customers who leave a negative review and making them feel heard by responding courteously and kindly.
While going through your app’s reviews, you can also ask your customer service representative to highlight the complaints so that your team can work towards improving them.
Collecting Valuable App Data Through SplitMetrics
Obtaining user feedback is a lengthy process, but you’re guaranteed to reap the rewards of collecting client reviews because it can also help you develop your app into a great one. Just make sure to exercise good practices when asking for feedback.
To help you paint a full picture of your app’s success, we also recommend that you find a platform that can give you clear data reporting to help you understand the positives and negatives of your app, just like what SplitMetrics Optimize offers via app store A/B testing.
SplitMetrics has a suite that’ll enable you to maximize your app’s performance for bigger success. If you want to experience this for yourself, make sure to visit our page to book a FREE demo!