When it comes to your app, the ultimate goals are downloads and user retention. You of course need people to download your app, but if they are happy with their experience, they will delete it from their device and your usage will decrease.
So, if this is the goal, then fixes and updates are the keys to success. There are multiple ways you can find issues with your app, but one of the most reliable, and frequently occurring, sources of feedback will be your reviews. However, this isn’t the only place you can go to understand what your customers want.
Your competitors can actually help you grow and better the performance of your app without even knowing it. How? Through their negative reviews. If you scan the negative reviews of your competitors, you’ll find insights that will help you improve your app and potentially turn some of their users into yours!
Monitoring the reviews – both positive and negative – of your customers will give you further feedback on how you can improve your own products and services in your app. They will likely have a similar offering to you and simply by default, will present it to their customers in a similar fashion. Take shopping apps, for example, they are all fairly similar as they try to replicate the results of the top performers.
When it comes to positive reviews, there may be a certain feature that your competitor’s users are raving about. Try to understand what this feature is, why it is having such a positive impact and if you haven’t done so already, try to build a similar feature into your own.
This way, you can understand what your market is looking for, and tailor your app to meet their needs. Your user experience should be at the heart of every decision you make, so if you can do something to improve this, it will be worth the time and money.
Seeing others mistakes allows us to reflect on our own without taking the same steps that they have, allowing us to avoid the same errors they have made themselves. Whilst this may sound slightly philosophical, it’s a way of thinking that allows you to learn from your competitors.
When scanning their negative reviews in general, keep an eye out for the issues that are upsetting their users. Take this feedback and apply it to your own app to anticipate any problems before they occur for your users. Instead of having the same issues as those on your competitor’s apps, they will simply get an enhanced experience.
Another way to leverage these insights is to monitor reviews after a large update. Perhaps your competitors are announcing a large redesign or a new feature. If so, watch reviews closely for the weeks and months that follow the launch of this update. When the negative reviews come in, try to understand the shortcomings of these new designs and see how you can avoid them yourself.
If you’re feeling particularly bold, you can respond directly to these users to better understand their concerns. We aren’t by any means suggesting that you should reply to them directly on the platform that you’ve found their review, but if you can find their email or another social profile by clicking on their user name, reach out to them this way.
Don’t come at them with a hard sell, instead, try to understand their problem and suggest ways this could be improved. If your app already has this covered, great! If not, you now have key info to get a leg up on your competitors.
This might feel a bit cheeky, but it’s a sure-fire way to inform any new and existing users of your app that you have fixed any bugs that your competitors may have.
As and when you make any fixes or updates, announce this on your social channels, your website, and on your app store pages. This will make the improvements you’ve made clearly visible for all to see – even your competitors.
If you haven’t started doing so already, you need to be monitoring the negative reviews of your competitor’s apps. There are multiple online tools that can help you to track these metrics, so be sure to do your research.
These reviews are a goldmine of insights to help you improve your app’s performance so don’t ignore them! Use them to understand your target market and improve your app to suit their needs as best you can.
