What to do with a huge influx of negative reviews?
The craziest rollercoaster happened to us a few days ago -
We were averaging a modest 20~ users after the launch of our AI travel planning app, Orbt (https://www.orbtapp.com/) when all of a sudden around 5 days ago, our new count jumped to 200+, then 400+ the 2nd day, to up to 500+ the next day.
We offer Orbt in both the App Store and Play Store, but this huge boost in numbers was 100% Android users and thus, Play Store users.
But our smiles quickly faded when we realized we were getting hit with a bunch of 1-star reviews. A few had genuine qualms, but most we felt were nit-picking something or mad that there was a paywall.
Three things I've learned on the mobile app journey so far, with 2 apps created:
- Android/Play Store users are much more likely to leave a review, and those reviews are mostly negative (i.e.: our first app has a 4.4 on the App Store and a 3.8 on the Play Store. This app has a 4.7 on the App Store and now has a 3.3 on the Play Store)
- Users in general (but mostly Android/Play Store) are hell-bent on every app being free
- iOS/App Store users are much more likely to pay for an app
There seems to be this stigma that all apps should be free - when they are businesses just like any other! And it leads to negative reviews, which is very unfair. Before this huge surge in users, we actually had a decent subscription rate with no complaints (pretty small sample size, but still).
Has anyone else been in a similar situation? Do you try to appease those using your app for free (and costing you server-side), which can lead to more positive reviews, or do you simply continue catering toward paid users? How do you deal with this affecting potential users now being turned off by the rating?
Any help or experience would be appreciated!
Can't you monetize with ads or affiliate offers? Could you add a book your trip button or something?
We had plans to add a book button but after a quick launch of the MVP + 1 major update, we decided to focus on a big rewrite of our 1st app. Then this happened, so the timing is crazy 😅
We do plan on allowing users to access a few premium features after watching a video ad though in the future so they don’t have to subscribe
Each bad review opens an opportunity to find a pain point and do something about it...
Also, you should never forget that predators are looking for your reviews to get all those customers to their side.
Absolutely- it did reveal things we need to work on. Just sucks that we couldn’t receive support emails instead 😅
Thanks for sharing your findings on the behavior of the two user-bases! That's interesting. I don't have any experience on Playstore and App store, but I'm interested to know more about your next step? Based on what you mentioned, sounds like the best thing you can control is the paywall and see if it's possible to push it to a later stage in the flow? Again, not even sure if it's possible.
We have a few things in mind, but unsure of the “right” way so to speak. However, the timing of this is really bad as we had just committed to a huge rewrite for our first app 😅
But when we do get back to this app in about a month or so, we plan on allowing users to access some premium features by watching a video ad instead, for those that don’t want to subscribe. We also plan on allowing one of the premium features for free. And we always plan on adding more and more
And about the store differences - its almost so much so that id recommend simply only doing an iOS app! But maybe the sample size is too small