Is rating confusing users?

I am starting to believe the “new” app rating (which requires google+) is somehow confusing users and I would like to share my experience.

I had an app with a rate around 4.2, mainly because there were compatibility issues in the first versions.
So I decided to add a dialog for rating the app, together with some small improvement.
The dialog isn’t intrusive and users can choose not to rate the app at all and make the dialog disappear forever.

What I see after 10 days makes me think the system is confusing users.

The app downloads are increasing… also I sell approx 1-2 copies of the full version every day.
The google+ likes increased a lot.
Rates didn’t increase, actually they were pretty stable or even slowed down.
Problem being it looks ONLY people having something bad to say rate my app!!!

Unless for some reason I can’t figure out all of a sudden people don’t like my app anymore (even if I did no significant update) this is my theory: people liking the app click on g+ button (grayed stars maybe doesn’t grab their attention) and they think it’s fine. On the other hand people who doesn’t like the app won’t press g+ button so will rate my app as crap.

Result: global rating decreasing now 3.5, a lot more g+ likes.

I do not know if I should keep the dialog because it looks like it is backfiring.
Do you have similar experience with g+ vs rates?

Suggestions are welcome.

I’m not sure if this is happening for my apps, but what you say about the confusion between the G+ button and ratings makes sense.

Maybe you could try this: only show the “Rate this app” dialog after it has been opened 5 or 6 times. Theoretically this would ensure you only get “regular” users being prompted to rate the app, and those who don’t like it are less likely to give it a bad rating :slight_smile:

If this is a game consider showing it only after user finishes a few levels succesfully. :slight_smile:

Thank you for your replies. It is not a game and I tried not to be intrusive but maybe david got the point.

I launch the dialog once every 10 starts or once every 5+ days and thought it was enough- At this point I believe the problem is the app main activity acting as a launcher.

Maybe new users will go on and off the main activity many times in order to figure out what the app does, thus triggering the dialog.

A good solution maybe a combination of the various suggestions:

AppRater android version code link here:

http://forums.makingmoneywithandroid.com/android-development/969-best-way-integrate-google-reviewing-app.html

David’s suggestion to mention to users:

“Be sure to hit the G+ button when you rate, thanks!”

One easy way would be to just do a Toast.makeText() with that text - do it 2-3 times to keep it on longer.

NOTE: only users who have signed up with Google Play id etc. will see the G+ rating button.

A second thing you can do to cut down the negative reviews is to follow the suggestions here:

Get more positive ratings for your app in Google Play | TechRepublic
Get more positive ratings for your app in Google Play
By William J. Francis
March 29, 2012, 1:44 PM PDT

What this does is - you have three buttons:

  • “Love your app!”
    goes to Google Play so users can rate - these are thus pre-screened to more likely be positive towards your app. It is these users that you can issue an additional Toast.makeText(0 as mentioned above: “Be sure to hit the G+ button when you rate, thanks!”

  • “Needs work”

this launches an intent to send e-mail - essentially this DIVERTS all the pissed off users to not only NOT go to Google Play, but to instead go to something more helpful (for the developer) i.e. a pissed off e-mail message that may point out the issues they were having.

  • “Later”

this can delay a reminder forever, but I would suggest doing a scaled reminder i.e. initially delays reminder for say 5 days or 25 app launches or whatever, but then EVERY time the user does a “Later” you can scale up the increment (i.e. tack on 5 days or whatever) - this will essentially make the reminder rarer and rarer over time.

Hope this helps.

Thank you. needs work diverting pissed off users is a very very clever trick!