If you have an iPhone or an iPod Touch you know how it works. You get to the App Store, you browse around, find an interesting app, check on the reviews… purchase and boom, you have a new app on your device.
But what happens next?
You try out the iPhone Native application and if you like it, you keep it on your device. You will never be prompted to submit your likely positive review to the App Store. Basically, you must love the application so much that you will think “wow, now I will go on the App Store and write a positive review to recommend this app to everyone!”
This is very rare in my opinion because what you are more likely to do is to tell your friends rather than actually leave a review through the iPhone and if you’re like me, you’ll never do that through iTunes! ;)
So, what happens if you don’t like the App?
Obvious: you’ll remove that. And what happens at that point?
YES! Here’s the thing!
Apple will ask you what you think of the app and propose you to rate it!
Bottom line: negative reviews are much more likely to be posted to the App Store than positive ones.
Does Apple take this in account when it shows the overall App rating on the store?
UPDATE: check how we solved this issue and get the full source code to add this feature to your own app!
App submission changes
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How to build and submit a Universal App for distribution on the App Store with the iOS 4 SDK
Microsoft Pink smartphone project: KIN gets killed
Mauro, I couldn’t agree more. I wonder if developers will try to work the system like they have in the past… maybe encourage users to uninstall/reinstall by offering freebies to new users? You might possibly have more satisfied users go through the feedback “loop” this way.
[...] apps are more likely to get negative reviews. Here’s why: a user is prompted to rate an app when he deletes it. When the app is deleted, it is pretty safe to say that the user was not satisfied with it, so the [...]