The role of app reviews and ratings in App Store Optimisation (ASO)

Gaining visibility for your app and standing out in the increasingly crowded app stores can be incredibly difficult. One of the most important (and often misunderstood) factors in helping your app rank in the App Store are your ratings and reviews. 

In this piece, I’ll detail the main ways that app ratings and reviews fit into your ASO strategy and give you some tips on how to take advantage.

Why are app store ratings so important? 

According to Apple, around 65% of downloads happen directly after a search. If you’ve made an app, it is vital that users can find it when they are searching on the app store, but it can be incredibly difficult to get your app into the top search results. Very frustrating as you are missing out on free downloads.

This is where ratings come in. Ratings are vital for two key reasons. Firstly, they instantly tell anyone searching in the app store the general satisfaction of people using your app. Secondly, your rating gives the app store an indication of the overall quality of your app.

Your rating also has a huge impact on whether a user will choose your app over another. It’s one of the key pieces of information that is pulled into search results and directly influences a user’s decision-making process. 

Both app stores also use ratings as part of their algorithm, taking into consideration:

• The average rating & user satisfaction (What score out of 5 do people generally give?)
• The volume of ratings your app receives (How many ratings does your app get in a day / week / month?)
• The recency of ratings (When was your last rating?)

Keeping a steady stream of ratings coming in is an essential part of gaining visibility for your app and improving your app store ranking. 

Why are reviews so important?

Another problem you may well be familiar with is a lack of reviews. Research shows that only between 1-5% of people will leave reviews unprompted and it is an issue many apps struggle with (especially those that are new to market). 

As with ratings, reviews can play a key role in your ASO work. Here are a few ways that app reviews can impact your ASO efforts.

Social proof 

If you don’t have reviews for your app (especially positive ones), you’re lacking the “social proof” that convinces people to download. Reviews are invaluable in helping other users decide whether to download your app. Being able to see other people’s experience and opinion (good and bad) has a direct impact on decision-making. You can also reuse some of your most positive / helpful reviews in your app screenshots and long description to further demonstrate social proof and authenticity.

Quick user research

Taking a regular look at your reviews should become a habit for product and growth teams. Users will usually identify the feature (or features) that they love in their review. Take the opportunity to highlight the most loved / standout features in your app description, screenshots and videos to drive conversions.

Users will also take the opportunity to tell you what isn’t working, so reviews can be invaluable for spotting problems or bugs. Finally, reviews can provide a steady stream of feature ideas and improvements to go onto your product roadmap.

Keywords in reviews 

There is some evidence that keywords used in your app store reviews can have a positive impact on your ranking. Again, this indicates to the app stores that your app is relevant for a specific keyword, or topic and can help to bump you higher up the ranking.

An opportunity to engage

The best-performing apps take the time to respond to users leaving reviews. If the review is positive, a simple thank you message is sufficient to acknowledge the user’s support and make them feel good. If the review is negative, you should publicly accept their feedback, apologise and confirm that you are looking into the issue. You can then get in touch with them directly to discuss any problems. I’ve seen many examples where a 1 star review is changed to a 5 star review, just by responding to users’ frustrations.

How do app reviews & ratings impact ASO?

Reviews and ratings are used by both app stores as part of their ranking algorithm and, as detailed above, are used to assess the overall quality of your app. 

As both stores are focused on promoting good quality, relevant apps to users, your app ratings and reviews are key to being able to rank highly.

Recent data from AppTweak showed that better-rated apps were more visible in search results. 

The AppTweak report also showed that on both Google Play and the App Store, your chances of being featured is directly impacted by your overall app rating.

So the key takeaway here is that if your app is not getting enough ratings, or is getting low-quality ratings, you are likely to find it incredibly difficult to rank highly in keyword search results. This is particularly relevant if your app is a new, or lesser-known brand that relies on non-branded searches to drive app downloads (e.g. “music player” vs “Spotify”).

How do you get more app store ratings & reviews? Ask your users at the right time!

In 2023, we decided to see if we could create a product that would help apps to increase the number of people leaving ratings. We hypothesised that if we could ask a user to leave a rating at the right time, it would increase the volume of ratings (and, most importantly, positive ratings). 

A client of ours struggled to get many ratings and reviews - and when they did, poor ratings and reviews shone through, making them a 3 star app.

However whenever we conducted user research, people raved about the product. They kept telling us how much they loved it and how valuable it was.

So, we built a product called Appero that would help anyone get better reviews. Appero takes your North Star Metric(your app’s key event that signals success), figures out when users have had a lot of value and prompts them for feedback. If the feedback is good, they are asked to leave an app store rating & review. Appero can also figure out when users might be frustrated, to capture negative feedback before a user complains.

It helped our app jump up from 3 stars to 4 stars in a month and we have a nice stream of positive reviews to balance out the unhappy users (there will always be some). It also gave us thousands of feedback items to consider for our product roadmap.

Key takeaways for app ratings and reviews: Ignore them at your peril

• Ratings and reviews are used in the ranking algorithm of both App Store and Google Play. If you have a poor rating (or no ratings), you are going to find it extremely difficult to rank highly.
• Don’t be afraid to ask! You should prompt your users for feedback and ratings - especially when you think they have received value. This should help you achieve a steady stream of user feedback.
• Listen to what your users have to say. Reviews can be an invaluable source of new features, roadmap ideas, bugs and frustrations.
• Figure out what is annoying your users and do your best to fix it (as quickly as possible).
• Make sure you reply to reviews (good and bad). Research has shown that replying to reviews can improve your overall app rating and user satisfaction (people like knowing that someone is listening).

If you want to read more on this topic, check out How to increase your app store ranking with ratings and reviews, our resource Turbo-Charge your App Growth, Optimising your app title, description (and other metadata) for better discoverability, and Where to start with paid acquisition for your subscription app.