Apple will allow users to respond in the App Store: expert opinions

With the release of iOS 10.3, developers will be allowed to respond to user comments in the App Store. How this will affect the work with the audience, App2Top was told by representatives of ZeptoLab, Mail.Ru Games, IGG, devtodev and Publisher Wanted.

On January 24, it became known that Apple has updated the documentation for iOS 10.3. After the release of the new version of the operating system (its beta was released yesterday), developers will be able to respond to user comments on applications and games in the App Store and Mac App Store.

Another notable innovation will be the new API, when using which developers will be able to ask users to rate or write a review on the application directly in the program, without opening the App Store.

App2Top interviewed Russian market experts about the innovation and its impact on the ecosystem and user experience.

Mikhail Sviblov – Head of the publishing direction at ZeptoLab
The ability to respond to reviews is a great tool for communicating with players, long expected by many developers.

I am sure that both users will benefit from it, whose problems will be solved more quickly, and developers who will be able to direct feedback in the right direction, letting players know that they are listening to the opinion of the community.

The ability to evaluate the application without having to go to the store can multiply the number of ratings, and, as a result, we will get a more accurate rating.

Previously, in order to evaluate the game, you had to leave it. If the game did not cause negativity, then the player had no motivation to leave it, so fewer ratings were given. In general, both innovations, in our opinion, are very important. They will help improve communication between players and developers.

Ivan Fedyanin – Head of Fast Forward Studio (Mail.Ru Games)
Rating through the application, of course, will increase their number.

On the other hand, it will worsen the “controllability” of the rating – everyone has long learned to cut off bad reviews from the pseudo-“Rate us”, where the user is sent to the store for evaluation only if he has previously set 4-5 stars.

Whether the new solution will definitely be better than the current good implementations is a question of the quality of the game and the policy of Apple, which may at any moment begin to be more jealous of such dual behavior in “Rate us”.

But we will definitely try it.

As for the answers, in any case, this is already something. I didn’t find any information about whether the user will be notified after the developer’s response. If there is no notification, then most likely only other users will see your answer (and perhaps, having seen it, they will not write a bad review). If the user receives a notification that he has been answered, then it will become much more convenient to process the feedback.

Timofey Fadeev – IGG Brand Manager
Judging by the experience of [working with] Google, it should be very good and convenient.

Another channel of communication and work with the negative.

[Thanks to the new API] it will be easier to motivate users to put ratings if you don’t need to go to the store itself and write everything for a very long time (it really pisses me off personally as a user).

Sergey Kopov – Founder of Sunday Games and Publisher Wanted
Apple is slowly catching up with the technical backlog of its store from the Google platform.

Not so long ago they introduced advanced analytics, now this.

Innovations will finally allow you to establish contact with your reviewers, suggest a solution to a problem, find out details or thank you for a positive review. The number of ratings and their average value will increase.

The lack of such an opportunity, coupled with the long wait for the application to be checked, made the App Store an extremely unattractive place for softlonches. Now these problems have been fixed, and, I believe, in the near future we will see more applications choosing the Apple store as the first platform.

I would also venture to assume that the appearance of this function 9 years after the opening of the App Store is due to recent improvements in the ranking and search system for applications, i.e., perhaps the weight of the evaluation in these algorithms will increase.

Vasily Sabirov is a leading analyst at devtodev
In principle, this will not change anything, it will just become more convenient to communicate with the user (previously it was necessary to write to them by mail).

We are waiting for interesting burning comments from those services that are famous for their style of communication with users “don’t like our application? Oh you…”

As a user, I am glad that it will be possible to indicate the rating of the application without leaving it. And I am even more glad that this window can be banned from showing.

Stock up on popcorn!