How Overcast Asks for Reviews

Marco Arment:

My strategy to get good App Store reviews is simple:

  1. Make an app good enough for some people to love it. By nature, you’ll lose some people along the way, but that’s OK: an app that strives to satisfy as many people as possible will usually only get people to kinda like it, not love it.
  2. Accumulate a huge surplus of goodwill from those customers with a combination of step 1, usefulness, delight, and adding more functionality over time.
  3. Make it easy to rate the app with a button that’s never annoying or in the way, like in the Settings screen.

Maybe it’s just me, but in the past year, I’ve seen fewer apps interrupting me with an alert asking to rate the app. (When I do see such a prompt, I still do what I recommended last year: I give it a review with a low star rating.)

I’m also seeing more and more apps asking, in an earnest and honest way, for reviews in their App Store update notes. That’s a great practice, and I often do just that to reward them.

★ Thursday, 11 December 2014