iPhone Game Development - Chris Craft [148]
Customer Reviews
Customer reviews, like the ones shown in Figure 10.22, play an important part of an application's success. Not only can customers leave reviews for applications, but users can vote on specific reviews as to whether or not a review was helpful to them. You want to make sure your application is as good as possible to keep the highest voted customer review from being “This app does not work!” You will be much happier if your highest voted customer review is “Well worth the money!” If you put enough effort into the fit and finish of your iPhone application, you should not have anything to worry about.
FIGURE 10.22
Customer reviews for Bust-A-Spook
Each customer review is made up of the following information: review title, customer rating, user name, application version review applies to, review date, review details, and the number of customers who found the review helpful or not. Customer reviews are by default sorted by most helpful, but you can sort reviews by most helpful, most favorable, most critical, or most recent.
Note
Only customers who have actually purchased your application can leave a review.
Treat your customers well. An upset customer is much more likely to leave a customer review and rating than a happy customer, so you want to do all that you can upfront to avoid giving a customer a reason to be upset with anything about your application. And if one user is having an issue with your application, there is a good chance that others are as well. Respond quickly and decisively to any issues reported.
You can encourage users of your application to leave reviews for your application. Any time someone requests a new feature in one of your applications and you add it, consider asking the person who made the request to leave a review for your application on the App Store. Most users will be thrilled to have an opportunity to do something in return for you.
Feedback
Apple has done a very good job of creating systems to allow application owners to provide feedback to others and developers. You have everything from customer ratings to customer reviews. The App Store also has a Tell a Friend feature. All App Store application listings have a company Web site link and a customer support Web link. You should make certain to monitor and respond to any feedback you receive from your application users.
You should also consider building custom feedback systems into your applications. Customers appreciate being able to find related Web sites and contact information easily and directly from inside the application itself. Even if all you do is create a couple of hyperlinks that either open your company's Web site or send an e-mail to your company's support e-mail address, you will likely earn the gratitude of more than one customer. With iPhone OS 3.0, you can now take advantage of in-app e-mail features, which means users don't have to leave the app to send an e-mail message.
People also like it when companies have community message boards or forums for their products. If a user is having an issue with an application, he may prefer to send you an e-mail, but if he just wants to learn more about your application's possibilities, sometimes forums are a more natural fit.
Review sites and testimonials
Many applications include reviews from famous iPhone app review sites. There are quite a few of these kinds of sites; a simple search provides you with a good list of some to contact about reviewing your application. You can think of these types of reviews as being like professional customer reviews.
As we've mentioned, many of these sites will be glad to review your application for free if you provide them with a promo code allowing them to download your