i said on startup and you point me to the articles.. you asked the question i should suggest another explanation.. which i find odd in this case because i did not said something that negates anything the articles state.
Ah I see what you are saying. I'm not the dev for our team, so excuse my misunderstanding. I wonder what the App store's standard is on incentivizing reviews? Like having a small button that can be pressed to "review us for +5 smurf berries" or something.
The articles advocate an alert view while you feel it is better to place the rate button somewhere in a sub menu which is contrary to the opinions of the article authors: I am not criticizing your design sensibilities. All I want to determine is how effective your strategy is in marketing terms. A more pleasant user experience is insufficient rationalization. Is it profit producing?
there is no standard.. linking directly to the review section of an app is not even documented by apple as faar as i know.. and you can implement it how you want.. the linked articles show the basic alert views quite alot developers use.. if thats now a standard i doubt that hardly. http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/userexperience/conceptual/mobilehig/UIElementGuidelines/UIElementGuidelines.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40006556-CH13-SW39 taking the HUIG you should not even use an altert view to prompt for user input.. its there to "alert" the user of something of big importance, and no i don't count "hey write a review" as a part of this.. so again (i feel like i repeat myself too often) i think the alterview approach is horrible and a more integrated approach (which is more work) would be better.
what ? where did i say its better to place a rate button somewhere in a sub menu?! i clearly started that that was the past apporach to be nag free and with one of the upcoming games we are trying to implement a more attractive solution.. example given on page 1
A more pleasant user experience IS profit producing if it makes it more likely that people will keep playing it.
Semantic is boring. If the sub menu rate button has been implemented already, did you observe any significant results? Thanks! Are users going to delete the app because a prompt asks them to rate it? That kind of attrition is surely negligible. Is the prompt going to harm sales? Again, probably not. Improving the user experience is only relevant if quantifiable. I need facts and/or figures that indicate the effectiveness of a rate system that doesn't jump out at its customers.
lol hehe i feel like talking to a robot.. Semantic boring! Tell me results! comply or you will be assimilated! is this suppose to make you look more serious or more professional? a bad user experience cause by anything hurts your product.. maybe in a small way maybe in a big way.. if we take responses here and expand them imaginaly to the hole appstore pops up can annoy people.. therefore they either don't vote at all or vote bad.. the first being the most probable result so if you make voting part of the positive user experience its logical that if you ask in a nicely manner more people will comply and leave you with more reviews.. also its not about "jumping" at the user.. at least not from my pov but forcing him to press a button .. its a design approach every gui designer needs to find for himself for his app. You might find apples iOS Human Interface Guideline and interesting read and what they have to say about the alert view and its usage. their main advice on pretty much everything is to integrate it into your product as best as possible.. its like game center.. if it would be apples choice they would rather have an alot more deeply integrated apporach done by the devs instead of using the standard views it comes with ... again i find to use alert views in this case is a missuse of them.. and breaks a flow which should not be interupted in this way.. its about the gameplay experience.. something that can't be measured.. stuff like having fun.
Angry Birds disagrees with you. How do you explain the discrepancy? Again This discussion is not about fun. Any fun you may or may not find here is purely coincidental.
If it's at all irritating (for example the obvious pre-game popup) some people will be less likely to play at all or go back for more if they did and therefore less likely to be shown to friends making it less likely to spread via word of mouth, leading to fewer downloads. I'm not saying rate buttons are a bad idea, posts in this thread give advice on how to eliminate almost all of that possible irritation.
lol.. why do i need to explain a discrepancy, its your silly example.. can you prove to me that thoose reviews are the results of the pop up screen asking for a review? can you even tell me when they implemented that feature? what version introduced it? how much people do click the buttons to rate when the pop up shows up in angry birds.. ? possible the review rate decreased after they introduced such an alert view? can you proove to me that a more integrated non annoying implementation would result in higher rating counts? i need facts, robo! facts! else i don't care.. facts!!!! come one explain me the facts! comply! don't start with semantics because i can't read! short facts! where are the millions hidden?! facts! sorry, needed to write that, your reply was too funny
It seems pretty obvious to me. Angry Birds has sold millions of apps. That is why they have so many reviews, plain and simple. Nag box or not, if you are able to get sales on that level, then it naturally follows that you will get reviews on that level too. Lots of sales = lots of reviews, but I have not seen a single shred of evidence anywhere that points to lots of reviews = lots of sales. FWIW, I never read those reviews. I imagine if someone was 90% convinced to buy an app, those positive user reviews might tip them the rest of the way, but I seriously doubt that anyone is swayed by those reviews alone. You have made that abundantly clear. I'm exhausted just reading your posts in this thread. I think most people here have been very willing to help and forthcoming with whatever information they can provide. If you want to nag your customers then do it. Or don't. I'm not exactly sure what you expect to gain from being condescending to everyone.
It is not possible to determine the number of reviews the alert is responsible for collecting and that was not my point. The example only invalidates your assertion that
I am asking for feedback. I want to compare statistics and implement the most effective strategy. I never said or implied I want to nag customers and I have been nothing short of polite to all participants.
My apologies then. Personally, I agree with Marco Arment's assertion that "More reviews and higher ratings *can* drive sales, but a highly satisfied customerbase drives a lot more.". All of the effort spent trying to figure out how to coerce your users to leave a review would probably be better spent trying to provide them with a better experience, which would in turn make them more naturally inclined to leave a positive review without prompting.
I still like that one guy's idea of offering the player a reward for rating the app. As I said before, I click "No" on all of those pop ups, but if I was suddenly offered a bonus level/unlockable character/in-game credits in return for a quick rate my attitude would change to "Yeah, I'll take some of that!".
No problem and point taken. Thanks for your input. I have much to consider. I like that Idea too but I don't know how it would be possible to verify a review has been left after the customer has been linked to the store. I could do something like that on the honour system and just assume most people will hold up their end of the bargain.
Very true, but I'm thinking a lot of people won't actually know they don't have to rate once they get there. Either way I'm sure it'd encourage a lot more clicks than not offering a reward at all.
