Developers argue that Apple’s App Store ratings are broken in at least a few different ways — including the fact that your 4-star rating can do more harm than good.
They also highlight the conflict between users who don’t want their app experience disrupted, while Apple forces developers to delay rating and updating…
All iPhone developers know that Apple highlighting their app can mean the difference between failure and runaway success. This, they say, is where the first problem with App Store ratings arises.
Encourages/holds users to review
App users generally don’t like being pressured to rate and review an app, especially if it interferes with the very thing they use the app for. Developer Steven Troughton-Smith says they have no choice but to give it a go because tons of 5-star reviews are what lead Apple to highlight apps – and enthusiastic users are what generate those reviews.
Review information is the difference between a good app that gets five good reviews, and thousands of good reviews. I would never recommend to a developer not to use APIs. It’s suicidal for the App Store for most apps, as Apple tends to only select items when it has that review data.
He says developers should show this notification when the user opens the app, and repeat it every few months. However, some argue that this is the most annoying time to do it.
Show it after the action it ends what the user wanted to do. Like saving or publishing. But please never after opening the app. I opened the app because I want to do something about it – this is the worst time to be distracted.
This can be tricky, however, as developers don’t know when you’ve met your goal.
A 4-star rating is a negative review
Another problem is the mismatch between how users perceive the star system and how things actually work. This is the exact same problem that happened with Uber driver ratings.
Logically, we might think that star ratings would work like this:
- 3 is the default rating, which means the app performed as expected
- 4 = ‘Better than expected’
- 5 = ‘Complete – could not be upgraded’
- 2 = ‘Worse than expected’
- 1 = ‘Bad/unusable’
Engineers like Terry Godier say this is not how things work. Apple only considers 5-star reviews, and if you leave a 4-star you intend it to be something good, that actually can be damage the orientation of the application.
If you have a 4.1 star rating on the App Store, any 4 star update will drop that rating. In other words, leaving a 4-star review is actually leaving a negative review.
Should Apple switch to thumb?
John Gruber says that Apple’s way of solving this problem is to leave the star system in line with what most users actually do – which is a rating of 5 for the app they like and 1 for the one they don’t like.
Star rating systems are never fun to put together. If you are going to collect average ratings from users, the most efficient system is binary: thumbs up or thumbs down. Netflix went from stars to sixes in 2017, and YouTube went from 2009. The App Store should change to thumbs.
What are your thoughts? Should Apple replace star ratings with likes/dislikes? And how should Apple solve the rating/information update problem?
Photo by Benjamin Muntz on Unsplash
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