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As of iPhone firmware 2.2, every time user removes an app from their device, they are being automatically asked to rate it. Given that most of the time an app would get uninstalled because the user doesn't like it, the reviews would tend to be negatively biased. After all, if somebody likes your app, they wouldn't be removing it (there are exceptions, of course).
So the goal here is to make it easy for people who are enjoying your app to leave some positive feedback in the App Store. Here is one way to do it:
- Keep track of how many times your app gets used or the total time your app has been running on this particular device (store a counter in NSDefaults, for example)
- After, lets say, user launches the app 15 times or spends 20 minutes with it, very courteously ask the user if they would like to leave a review
- If the user doesn't care to do that, quietly move on and don't bother them for a while. The last thing you want to do is to "spam" the user with "please rate me" messages - that's like asking for negative feedback.
- If the user says "yes", open your app's iTunes store page and let user do the rest.
Caveats
- You probably don't know the URL to your app's iTunes page on the initial release - redirect users to your site, which should then redirect them to the App Store.
- Don't wait too long before asking users to review - they might get bored by that time and wouldn't be quite so willing to do it.
- The point of not asking users to rate your app right away is that you want them to use it for a while and get to know it, thus filtering out people who don't care enough - those folks will have a chance to say something negative when they uninstall it anyway.
- Figure out what "users who like my app" category looks like as far as your own app is concerned - is it based on time that a users has spent with it? Number of times app was launched? Number of times user submitted scores online (for a game)? YMMV.
Alternative way
Instead of explicitly asking user to review, have an extra button show up somewhere in your app (not immediately after user downloads it, but after a while, as described above) and stay there until user clicks on it. Call it "Rate this app" or something similar. Don't make it obnoxious, but also don't hide it too far away.
Be very polite and respectful to your users
Most likely, not all of your users will find this funny:
Do you agree?
Is this a good idea is it too much of a "sleazy marketing technique"? :-)
Tell Apple what you think about the rating system
http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html
-- Peter Bakhyryev
P.S. We're trying out the DISQUS commenting system, let us know if it works for you.
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