When developers improve their apps based on user reviews, the user's loyalty installs, and app conversion rates all increase. In this article, we'll explain how to use reviews in the App Store and Google Play to expertly develop your app.

How to get your start with app review optimization on the App store?

App review optimization involved a series of works, and an effective plan may help app marketers a lot. Here, you can follow our strategy to get your start step by step:

● Check out competitor reviews in the App Store and Google Play
● Detect and fix critical bugs in your app
● Compare different updates in the App Store and Google Play by user review
● Know which features users will enjoy in your app
● Increase user subscription with reviews



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Check out competitor reviews in the App Store and Google Play

Analyzing user reviews not only helps to improve an existing product but also creates a new one. Before developing an app, it is useful to analyze competitor reviews. This way, you can find what features users want in similar apps and add them to your product.

You can manually analyze your competitors' reviews in the App Store and Google Play, or speed up the process through the comments and replies board in Aso World. Add any competitors to the tool. You can also choose the country, rating, and review length. Searching by word allows you to check if the app has the functionality you need.

For example, we want to create an app for podcasting. We analyzed reviews of a popular app and found that users complained about the playback of podcasts. Every time you play a podcast, it starts playing without resuming. It is important to avoid this error when creating our app.

Actually, you should analyze competitor user reviews before developing your app. In this way, you can cover all the important features for your users and avoid repeating the mistakes of your competitors.

Detect and fix critical bugs in your app

After an update, app ratings in the AppStore and Google Play often drop as users discover a slew of bugs. Thanks to the first comment on a new version, you can detect and fix bugs before a large number of users unsubscribe or delete your app.

You can also avoid a drop in ratings if you quickly notice user issues and fix bugs in your app. For example, a user changed their rating from 1 to 5 after the game publisher fixed a bug.

Once bugs in your app are fixed, you should also notify users; that way, they're more likely to change their ratings. Therefore, product teams and application support need to interact quickly: support managers should report bugs in a timely manner, and developers should let them know that bugs have been fixed.

Compare different updates in the App Store and Google Play by user review

You need to analyze the number of positive and negative reviews, in order to track the results of each update. It's especially important to analyze reviews on the day of the update when the app receives more negative reviews. For example, the new version of the app received 56 reviews with a 1-star rating, compared to the average rating of 3.1 stars for the day.

On the day of the update, your support team should be responsive to users and help them use the new version, and developers should be able to fix bugs in a timely manner.

After a few weeks of updating, you can already tell how much better the new version is than the previous version. For example, using rating analysis in Aso World, we compared the ratings of three different versions of the app.

You can also group user reviews, so your product team can navigate them more easily. It's important to have a system in place to help you effectively compare reviews across app versions, communication channels, and user categories.

Know which features users will enjoy in your app

User reviews are a great source of free and useful tips, they will help the app gain a high rating and loyal users. The most popular development ideas are at the top of the page, in featured comments. They are liked by most people, which means they need to be implemented first.

For example, using Featured Reviews Aso World, we examine the Featured Reviews app for languages in different countries and learn about the ability of users to add practice rules one by one, repeat old rules in new lessons, and add help button when there is a mistake.

User reviews are useful to product managers as they make plans for further app development. After fixing critical bugs, you should implement as many user requests as possible.

Increase user subscription with reviews

From user reviews, you can learn what mistakes you make during user onboarding or between installation and purchase. For example, the app publisher removed free content. However, they don't think about how to keep old users who use these features for free.

Comments can also let you know what might go wrong when a user cancels a payment. For example, this user wrote that even though they canceled their subscription, their card was still charged. App publishers need to address this issue to avoid getting negative reviews that damage their app's reputation.

Also, apps often get a lot of comments about being overpriced. In this case, you should decide how reasonable these comments are.

Comments about high prices may also indicate the target audience you attract. For example, you might target users who don’t make purchases in your app or optimize for keywords that users often use to install apps but rarely buy. Read how to find the keywords that will drive the highest revenue for your app.

App Store& Google Play reviews can help with which product department tasks?

Reviews help to improve not only the app itself but also the interaction between users and the product, as well as the promotion strategy. Therefore, in addition to the support manager, the product department should also be involved in your review.

User reviews can help you address several important tasks of a product manager at the same time:
-Conduct a comprehensive analysis of competitors;
-Create a product development roadmap;
-Determine priorities when implementing updates and fixing bugs;
-Evaluate the results of each update;
-Think about the pricing policy in the app;
-Build a funnel from app release to purchase;
-Learn which target audiences your app shouldn't be promoting to.

Therefore, in order to develop a product effectively, a product manager needs to have the skills to handle reviews in the App Store and Google Play. Aso World tools will let you analyze, filter, and save user feedback faster and more efficiently. Start using tools for your application for free.

What we can do for your app growth?

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Examples of how reviews analysis helped us increase one app’s revenue

1. App revenue increased by nearly 50% with review analysis 

In one of our clients' kids' role-playing games, a new location was closed for a long time, and users saw a "soon" sign. When we first released the game, we planned to open up the location almost immediately, but then we started to doubt our plans. This updated development may require too many resources and we don't know if it will increase our revenue.

We started monitoring reviews to see if people were interested in the game and if we should consider its expansion. Then we noticed that in every second of reviews on the AppStore and Google Play, we were asked to add a new location.

By the way, you can find requests for a certain feature or bug reports with a search by text in the Reviews & Replies Board with ASO World Review feature

We also use the Featured Reviews tool to explore the top reviews that are most popular with users from different countries. If a critical comment gets a lot of likes, then people worry about it. That's why it's important to explore featured reviews.

Thanks to the comments, we realized it was time to update the app. We expect that the new service locations will help encourage people to renew their subscriptions and increase user loyalty. After we added a new location, AppStore downloads grew 24% in six months and revenue grew 48%.

We've also changed how we monetize, so the change isn't just because of new locations. However, the location definitely plays a big role in improving app performance as it opens up more content for the user. Players are more interested in signing up for longer subscriptions.

We wouldn't have decided to develop it if it weren't for the flood of reviews asking us to add a location. Therefore, it is very important to rely on reviews in the AppStore and Google Play when planning updates.

2. Raise App’s rating from 2.4 to 4.1: “Rate us” shows up in the right place

We have an app on Google Play with several learning topics for kids aged 0 to 3. One of the themes is free, while the rest can be accessed with a paid subscription. This app makes a lot of money, but it has a low rating.

Every month, the rating went down, eventually reaching 2.4 as users left many reviews.

We analyzed the reviews to understand why this rating is so low. Users noticed that we had so little free content that everything was paid for. All developers with paid content get reviews like this, but we have too many of them.

While testing the game, we discovered an issue: after the first level, the "Rate Us" popup appeared in the wrong place:
-The user passes the free tier.
-They wanted to go to the next one, but it's closed.
-At this point, a "Rate Us" window will pop up on the screen.

So we realized that we were essentially triggering negative comments from our users. The "Rate Us" popup should be placed after the player experiences positive emotions. But we put it in the wrong place, which caused players to get annoyed, give low ratings, and leave bad reviews.

With the review analysis tool, you can see how many positive and negative reviews users have left on a certain version of the app in the country you want. If you want to analyze your app's updated reviews, try ASO World review analysis tool. 

Therefore, we address the low-rating problem in a complex way:
-First, we changed the "Rate Us" popup and added a few levels before it.
-Second, we opened another level as a reward for watching an ad.
-The screenshot below shows the number of positive comments starting to change after the update.

It took about nine months for the rating to grow from 2.4 to 4.1. After 6 months, revenue increased +26% for several reasons. First, people started believing that apps get 4 points instead of 2 points for apps. That said, in many ways, the increase in revenue was due to the movement of the "Rate Us" pop-up. Second, users have the opportunity to test more game content before purchasing.

The main conclusions of these cases

● If a part of users asks you to add new content or functionality to your app, it’s best to listen to them. In our case, a new location in the game helped increase revenue and app downloads.
● If your app gets too many negative reviews, test it again. Maybe you put the "Rate Us" popup in the wrong place. More strategic placement of pop-ups, and the addition of free content, helped nearly double our rating.

In addition, many of our users will choose ASO World service to buy app reviews and ratings to help them level up the information about it on the app store product page rapidly.