How to use In-app Surveys to improve your apps ratings

A couple of months ago we looked at The App Uninstall Report from Appsflyer which revealed that almost half of Android apps (49%) were uninstalled within a month of being downloaded, with 49% of those uninstalls occurring within just one day. 

One of the key takeaways from the report was;  Listen to your users! 

“Be part of any conversation about your app on social networks, app stores (through ratings and reviews), and communities. Make sure to tackle negative feedback – both by reaching out personally to aggravated users and by addressing issues within the app”

We recently looked at an application that had very poor average rating on both the App and Play store.  The publisher responded to user concerns by investing significantly on improving their App.  The next thing they wanted to do was conduct an in-app survey and proactively ask the users if they would provide a five star review on the App/Play Store. 

However this approach can be risky because mistiming a request for feedback via survey could result in creating the opposite effect i.e. adding to the negative reviews.  Contextual looked at the best and worst time to ask for feedback in a past blog post and provided a list of the “Do’s and Don’ts of Feedback Timing”

Our recommended strategy is to use Contextual to create a user cohort which carefully segments users to receive the survey and make the survey as relevant and timely as possible.  In this case any user matched by a specific version of the app i.e the latest version.

 

 To ensure against hitting the user up for feedback prematurely  The survey can then be timed to show after a specific period of time they had used the new version of the app for a specific period of time.

Taking it to the next level.

Taking it to the next level is to present the feedback survey after the user has completed a specific task.  This can be achieved by enabling Contextual Feature and Screen Tracking and including users who have completed a task in the target segment. For example users who have completed or updated their Profile.


 Once the target segment and timing has been set the first step in the  feedback process is to ask How the user is enjoying the app and inviting them to provide feedback. 

  1.  We recommended the first modal be designed to give the user the option to dismiss or touch out as well as touch the advance [Let us know] button. If the user dismisses or touches out it may be an indication that they are not happy enough to provide feedback.
  2. The next modal offers the user the option to either provide a 5 Star review or indicate that they are not willing to do so.  Touching [Yes] takes them to the Apps listing on the Store or a [No] will take them to the next step in the sequence which is the survey.
  3. The next modal can be designed to ask the user to either give a score from 1 of 2 ie a 👍 or 👎or a rating eg #/5. 
  4. The user can then be presented with a free text field where they can provide feedback directly to the publisher rather than in a public forum like the App or Play Store.

Fortunately the App publisher had a relatively small number of reviews that were less than 4 stars. Both the improvements that have been made in their app and managing the user feedback process in this way will help gather more positive scores and increase their average rating.  

Are you looking to get more users to love your mobile and web apps?  Click on the buttons below to get your 14 day free trial or contact us for a demo! 

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    Contextual & StreetHawk Inc 2023.