Apptica Talks. Episode #8. Mastering Reviews Management: How to Turn User Feedback into App Store Success with Anatoly Sharifulin from AppFollow

Wrapping up the 1st season with an episode where Apptica Talks about Mastering Reviews Management: How to Turn User Feedback into App Store Success with Anatoly Sharifulin, CEO at AppFollow

AppFollow is an integrated service for working with app stores. It includes tools for review management and automation, organic app performance analysis, competitor research, app performance monitoring, and analysis.

What we have talked about:

• What's app reputation and app review management
• The data sources of reviews (App Store, Google Play; Custom sources: GP beta feedback, Testflight feedback; other android stores: Huawei, Galaxi, etc)
• Benchmarks for App Store and Google Play, correlation between rating, store position and organic growth
• Ideal strategy for review management: 3 steps to keep in mind
• The future of app review management: AI automation, better reporting, more data sources (including social media and custom user feedback sources, which have product insights)

Key Takeaways:

• App review management is an essential component of  ASO, which aims to improve the visibility and ranking of an app in app store search results. Positive reviews and high ratings can improve an app's ASO. Impeccable product page with ideal screenshots and icons will not push UA strategies if 5 featured reviews are negative. At least 3 out of 5 featured reviews should be positive
• Benchmark: average rate for having a possibility of organic growth is 4.0. <4.0 - you app has limited chances for elevation. >4.5 - high chances to be boosted in the stores organically
• To change an average rating you need to have twice as many positive reviews than negative, which might be a hard exercise in the long-term
• Hypercasual games that have stable paid channels for UA are likely to neglect review management
• Some app categories have a broader set of channels for app reputation. E.g. banking, e-commerce may use YouTube, reviews platforms as Trustpilot to gather feedback, detect the gaps, bugs
• Gaming category is interested in community management apart from traditional channels
• Strategy to adhere:

1 crucial step for all developers: start to reply to negative reviews
2 step: select possible semantic topics of the reviews and create corresponding templates for easier review management and to avoid standard non-specified replies.
3 step: reply again with the updates regarding the problems and bugs to those users who claimed them, i.e. build chat communication in reviews section

• It’s important to set relevant KPIs and metrics for evaluating review management, as up until now there is no standard and App Store with Google Play do not provide a relevant reporting system.
• Apps with a great number of reviews need to integrate AI to have a smart segmentation and management, as manual strategy won’t succeed due to limited custom tags

You can learn more about AppFollow on the website and get more insights in its blog.

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