The applications positioned in the top 100 of Google Play or Apple Store have a high number of ratings and reviews, coincidence? -I do not think so.

As I commented in the ASO 2018 Manual, one of the most important Off-Metadata factors to improve the ASO positioning is the number and quality of the evaluations.

However, we have to be careful with our actions since Google has a system to know if the reviews we have are false or not.

In this article I’m not going to tell you anything that can be sanctioned by Google or chief email list, it’s simply about taking advantage of technology to boost the growth of an application.

Ratings and reviews strategy
An effective strategy to get ratings and especially reviews can help us to improve notably the ASO of our app, which will result in a better conversion and therefore in a greater number of organic downloads.

If we are going to encourage the user to value our app, we must be sure that we offer a stable, reliable product with a great user experience. If not, we will achieve the opposite.

Example of suggested assessment: Du Recorder

Suggested assessment example: Revolut

In the second example we see how the valuation request is much more aggressive, it asks us directly if we want to score with 5 stars.

The three steps you must follow to create and put into operation the ratings and reviews strategy are:

Identify the “happy” moments of your application
What is the happy moment? The happy moment of an application is one in which the user feels that he has met a need, or rather, has achieved his goal.

Each application is different, but all have an objective, a rationale, otherwise we would not have them installed. Some examples of happy moments:

Lime: After a trip with the electric scooter and after having blocked and parked correctly it is time to assess the app. The experience should have been good.

BlaBlaCar: After having finished a trip we have achieved our goal of transport, either for comfort, price or availability. We are ready to evaluate the app.

Uber: When the first trip with the app has been completed.

Many of these applications use that moment to get users an assessment of other users of the app (owners, drivers, delivery …) with which we have had a relationship. The review system in the digital era is fundamental.

It is the most important step, if we do not identify this happy moment well, we have loaded all the strategy.

Design an efficient valuation strategy
The second step is to draw a flow that explains the actions we are going to carry out based on the user’s assessment.

Valuation example La Caixa

The strategy consists of showing the positive and neutral opinions in the store, while the negative ones will be redirected to the ATC service, where they will try to solve the problems.

In this way we will avoid generating negative comments with this strategy.

It may seem unethical at the marketing level (I do not argue), but it is also very unfair that users only value applications when they are unhappy or have had a problem, which is what happens most of the time.

flow of the ratings and reviews strategy

We have to be honest with the users, we must NEVER force the user to value to continue using the application or to unlock extra resources. Example:

Obligatory valuation ASO

Implementation of the strategy
To implement the strategy of in-app messages we have to talk with our development team, tell them what our idea is and how they could translate it.

In the case of iOS there is an Apple development that streamlines this implementation (iOS Rating Prompt). In Android you have to develop a little more.

If we do not have enough human resources or the necessary time, we can always hire the external services of a specialized company, such as Apptentive, with which we will practically only have to install their SDK.

Improve organic conversion
The result of this strategy of reviews is an improvement in the brutal organic conversion, and also of the total conversion (organic + paid search).

Depends on the number of ratings and positive reviews we will improve more or less the positioning ASO. According to Apptentive it is something like this:

reviews to improve positioning

Negative opinions affect positioning more than positive opinions, which means that a negative opinion is not “eliminated” with a positive one.