App ratings and reviews are vital to your app's success in the Google Play and App Store. People use ratings and reviews to decide whether they should or should not download an app. 

If we talk from the perspective of a developer, app reviews and ratings are everything. Whenever you publish an app, surely, you get curious about the feedback of the user. User reviews and ratings are one of the primary criteria that decide if an app will survive and thrive in the market, or not. 

Now, to make that happen, go through the mobile app marketing guide, make an optimized and well-designed user interface, and integrate unique but useful features among others. 

A report published in 2018 says, 94% of customers avoided a business after reading negative reviews online. Moreover, 80% of customers do not interact with a business having a rating lower than 4.0 stars. That can be related to the app market as well.

Why ratings and reviews are important?

• As the report for January 2021 says, Google Play Store had approximately 511,000 apps with an average rating of 4.5 or higher;

• 80% of customers avoided business with a rating of 4.0 or lesser;

• Google Play has 48.9% which is 1,476,104 apps with an average rating of 4.1;

• Among the best free android apps in the United States, Lumbercraft is on the top with a 3.9 rating and 500K+ downloads.

Data published says that 47% of iOS and 53% of Android users found the mobile app via search engines. Search engines display apps with good app reviews. So, a good strategy to improve app reviews might create an impact.

App Ratings Affect People's Decision to Download Apps

App ratings and reviews matter a lot when it comes to user acquisition. They play a massive role in a person's decision to download an app. Research shows that mobile users won't even consider downloading an app that's rated lower than 3-stars. Moreover, 79% of people will read at least one review before they install an app.

App ratings and reviews influence app store rank

You need not only positive ratings and reviews, but you also need a large number of them. Ratings and reviews influence another important user acquisition factor: the Google Play and App Store ranking algorithm. That's right, your app rating and reviews largely affect your app store rank. Why? 

Well, imagine that you are Google or Apple. You want to curate the best products for your customers. By highlighting a low-rated product or an infrequently rated one, you're telling your customers that you don't care about the quality of the products in your store. 

The Google Play and Apple Store algorithms think in this way. Getting a steady flow of positive ratings and reviews needs to be a big part of your App Store Optimization strategy. You'll rank higher, increase app store impressions, and convince more people to download your app. 

Furthermore, your app has a better chance of being featured in Google Play and App Store when it has good ratings and reviews. The apps featured in the App Store editorial story, How to Work Out at Home had a collective average of 83,000 ratings at 4.7 stars.


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Increased number of installations

App reviews can influence 70% of people in installing the app on Apple devices. On the other hand, 75% read app reviews and downloaded them.

In 2014, the Apple App Store had 128,000 best business apps onboarded. With this competition, you can understand why reviews are important. The number of installations is directly dependent upon reviews. According to data by the Sensor Tower, overall, 71.5 billion mobile apps were downloaded.

Improved user retention

To make any app successful, user retention is important. The retention rate can boost with the help of a few tricks such as great user experience, easy navigation, and cool user-interface among others. In short, if users are happy with the app, they will stay, and provide good app reviews as well.

Data by Upland Software states that the app retention rate can be multiplied by 3 with features such as In-App messaging. Moreover, integrating apps on multiple platforms or making them Omni-channel friendly will help in boosting the app retention rate and app reviews parallelly.

Increase in-app revenue

As a developer, your primary goal must be the app revenue, right? Well, app reviews affect app revenue directly. However, with good app reviews, opportunities arise. Your overall app rating will influence users to download your app. 

Moreover, it will also attract more promotional opportunities from clients. According to Statista, top-rated apps are expected to grow global revenue up to $935.2 billion by 2023.

Boost in-app visibility

As mentioned earlier, good ratings can have a direct impact on app searches. If you go through a few app download statistics, you will find that apps in the top 50 have a good number of reviews and ratings. 

In short, good ratings can make it easier for users to find your mobile app. One of the top importance of ratings and reviews is that good reviews push your app to the top in search engines.

Better conversion rate

Currently, users are cautious about what they are installing on their smartphones. And for their assurances, app reviews come into the picture. A report shows that 90% of users go through reviews and ratings before installing any app.


If you are still asking questions such as why are reviews important? Well, have a look at the infographic, you will get your answer. You can see that top-rated apps with 5-star-rating have the maximum percentage of users downloading them. 

However, the 1-star-rating category has the least download share. The data mentioned here is based on the survey done on real users. These app conversion rates are directly related to app reviews and ratings. App reviews help in building trust in the users' minds.

App ratings and reviews contribute to your app branding

Another reason that app ratings and reviews are so important is they contribute significantly to your overall app branding. When your app has positive user feedback, new users will be able to trust your brand more quickly and with less friction. Your current users are providing social proof that reflects well on your app. 

In addition, how you respond to your app reviews shows people the type of communication you prefer to use with your users. Is your tone friendly? Do you use specific phrases or even hashtags that match your app brand? All of this contributes to increasing brand awareness.

How to improve your app store ratings?

Ask users to rate your app

Your Google Play or App Store star rating is made up of all the past ratings that your app has gotten. Naturally, the first step in improving your app store ratings is to get more of them. 
The more ratings you have, the less volatile your average star rating will be. In addition, apps with a large number of ratings rank higher in app stores. 

The best way to get more ratings is just to ask your users. Send them a push notification or pop-up while they're engaging with your app. Be sure not to interrupt any of their activity or catch them at the wrong moment. Happy users are more likely to leave positive ratings.

App review plugins are effective

Review plugins are easy to integrate and can provide a quick medium to users for the app rating task. In short, a pop-up on the smartphone screen will appear while users are using the app. Users can directly rate your app from the screen and it will impact the app rating on the respective app store.

Release frequent app updates

Your app ratings should reflect the improvements each time you release updates. You know that the changes you've made and the problems you've fixed are working when your app ratings increase or improve after an update.

Carefully track your app ratings. If they were to get worse or decrease in number following an update, you need to react fast. Read through your newest reviews to see what users didn't like about the latest update and work quickly to amend the issues. It's never too late to rescue your app store ratings.

Provide excellent customer service

Not everyone amongst your users is tech-savvy. You have to make sure that you are always available to help your users. With the help of features such as integrated customer service, easy-to-contact customer support, and 24x7 availability, etc. An excellent mobile app customer support will help you in earning good reviews, and it will also improve your brand reputation. A study by Sprout Social says that 47% of users will complain about a product or service online.

User personalization

As an app owner, you must have an understanding of the current trend. Almost every modern app existing at the moment is trying to provide a personalized user experience. Customers are finding products and services easily via apps due to the user personalization techniques. Therefore, it can positively impact your app feedback.

Focus on the quality more than quantity

It might be a little tricky to understand, however, you have to understand that quality matters more than quantity. While releasing updates, just do not try to integrate anything randomly in your apps. Do market research, go through market trends, and then work on features that might help users. Most importantly, consider user feedback while working on removing bugs, or creating updates. It assures the user that you are taking them seriously.

How to Leverage App Store Reviews?

Get feature ideas from users and find bugs faster
Getting user feedback for your app can be a challenging task. People either don't respond to your emails asking for feedback or are just sick and tired of feedback surveys. 

They are probably also not randomly stumbling on or purposefully heading to the feedback submission tab in the app. There are other ways to gather user feedback, one of which is app store reviews. 

In your app reviews, you'll see that users, whether they're happy or unhappy with your app, will mention features that they like and ones that they don't. 

Furthermore, they'll also ask you to implement new functionalities. These feature wishes are precious to your app development roadmap. It guides your development in the direction that serves your audience.

Take Advantage of Your Competitors' Reviews

At first, reading through the user reviewers of competitor apps sounds senseless, like a waste of valuable time. But, stop and think for one second. It's not. What can you get from combing through competitor apps' reviews? A lot, let me tell you. 

Users will inevitably complain about something, no matter how good an app is. If there isn't a bug, then there's a missing feature or one that can be improved. Now, this is where you benefit.