Rather than hijacking Nick's thread any longer, I might as well start my own. Anyway, we've all seen it: the nag box. After launching a game about a dozen times you are politely asked to visit the App Store and rate it. The app even offers to drive you there. I need to know how effective this is. Do you do it? Have you come across any hard figures about increased ratings, type of ratings, increase in sales, anything? Please note that I don't care if you as a customer don't like this feature. I am willing to bet most customers would rather not be asked to do anything if given a choice. I am only interested in determining whether or not this is a financially beneficial strategy. If you like my thread, please take a moment to post in it. Thanks!
I've seen a couple blog posts that state it significantly improved their overall rating, most notably Noel Llopis. I also saw this post just today. I'm sure there's more.
Very interesting. I suspected it would have a positive effect but that is exactly what I am looking for: that first hand hard data. Thanks.
I recommend to use it. It brought me some good reviews. Just don't abuse it. Respect the user's choice. Never ask them again if they didn't want to review it. Also, don't offer any reward for the reviews (new levels..) or people will complain about it.
my personal view as a customer of thoose alert boxes is that they annoy me.. because( here comes the dev) they are so cheap implemented.. a standard uikit alerbox poping up, stopping me right there and breaking every current playmood i am in.. i am all for such slight reminders but not in the "in your face" popup way, where you have to! click to continue.. what the devs do here is break the zen. i would love to see more developer taking such things a tiny bit more serious and incorporating such reminders into their gui and into their game flow.. in the games i've worked on we've only implemented an "ordinary" rate me button without any further logic in various places on the different products in one of the upcoming games such an reminder will be implemented into the game over gui.. it will only show once in a while, it will be an addition to the general menue points so you are not forced to press anything you don't want to, not even a "f u_c k off" button, and of course once trigger it remains unseen.. this combined with a little polish and nice integration should have an alot more appealing feel to it.. than thoose alert views.. one has to ask himself.. hey i am implementing something that has a button that tells users which i am annoying to press it.. stop right there.. i am doing something wrong my 2 cents.
I've always clicked "No"/"Don't Ask Again". I'm in the middle of enjoying a game and now they want me to stop playing? Shuuut uuuup! I'll rate it in my own sweet time.
It is possible to be too subtle though. Mine appears as a new "Rate on iTunes" button in the settings menu after a user has got to the 4th level. I like the idea of having it as an extra button next to "continue" on the game-over screen.
yeah we've ben subltle so faar too.. put it somewhere in the credits, about, more etc... somewhere outside of the normal flow of the game.. which of course does not results in much visibility.. but also is 100% nag free.. this one time trying something different..
After reading Marco Arment's post at marco.org I've decided to take the nag boxes out of our game in our next update. They weren't really effective at getting us more user reviews (though I'll be the first to admit that we didn't exactly tear up the charts to begin with, so that probably has a lot to do with it), and I really hate the thought that we are pestering our players when all they want to do is play. Cheers to Mr. Ugly, I think your idea is pretty great, and am thinking that I'll probably do something along those lines for the next update.
Yes cheers to mr.Ugly. I've just implemented a custom version, fading out the screen and "dimming" the music, then using custom GUI to show the options...but now I'm thinking it will be better if a new button appears at this point instead, something that will stay for the next hour or so. The amount of time between showing the nag screen is what I've thought about a lot since finishing the code...at first the plan was to measure how many days since last nag. I didn't like this as users would spend different amounts of time using the app, and some would get the nag each time they rarely loaded, another user loaded daily and said that it doesn't nag much. What I've done now is measure time spent in different parts of the app since any previous nag...the numbers are tricky to juggle without hind sight though. These times are also based on: time since first use, time since loaded/resumed, minimum time to ask later, plus when a new version appears and a user said "no thanks" in an older version, I think it's worth asking 1 more time...maybe with a longer delay, give them chance to get to know the update longer than normal...maybe I'll record how many milliseconds it took them to jump on the no thanks button lol! If it's presumed an automatic response, rather than a thought process (min 1 second?), then I'll flag their half-second response as a don't ask again. Again the numbers need to be considered carefully. Though I'm only looking for a few reviews as even UK has none yet.
Agreed that's implemented poorly. But I look at games like Tiny Wings that prompts for a review at the score page after you've reached the 3 or 4th island for the first time. I think this is a good logical point to ask for a review. The default Appirater launches on _startup_ and that doesn't work very well. I just started the app so I want to play it not exit it immediately to rate it. But if I get prompted at the end or near the end of a good session (new island, new highscore, etc) then I'm feeling good and would probably be more likely to rate and give the app a higher rating.
Please come back and share your findings when you have enough data to determine the effectiveness of this strategy.
Good point. I suppose as long as the app has natural breaks that is a possible alternative, though I would still like to see actual figures if available. If the user is prompted at launch, you know he or she has free time whereas at the end of a level, maybe there is pressure to get back to work or whatever commitments a person may have.
well a alert view to rate on startup makes no sense for several reasons.. its just the wrong spot.. i start the app to play it.. not to be stopped right away by a window that i definatly just click away.. the developer then just annoyed a customers and did not gain anything from it..
And that's a fair point. I have always clicked no thanks, myself. But if it is ineffective, can you suggest another explanation for the apparent increase in the volume of reviews and positivity of reviews claimed in the articles Promit linked to?
you might want to read the linked articles more carefully and you see that they both don't put it just into the startup sequence. they even advice against it which makes complete sense. so the points here in this thread and in thoose articles are more or less the same.. i personaly then speak against thoose horrid alterviews.. because they still take you out of the flow when they pop up.. and would rather see a more integgrated approach.
From our research, it seems the rate me box has the best chance of helping improve your ratings when it pops up after a user has a good experience. We are going to have the rate me box pop up after the players complete the first 4 missions in RoboArena which are basically tutorials disguised as levels. Ideally this won't interrupt the flow too much since the game is mission based. However, a more integrated approach would be more desirable, I'm just not sure how flexible the API will let you be with the ratings... eventually you have to leave the App and rate it in the store right?
what api? there is no api.. dev use the alter view because its easy to implement and they are usualy lazy to make up their own gui for such stuff.. no matter what you do at the end its a button that opens an url to the appstore, nothing more.. there is no magic api behind it so you can really write your reviews in app.. my point about integration is that an alerview is line an annoying ad.. you need! (NEED) to click it away to continue.. thats like being forced to klick on a ad banner to continue to play.. from a interface/usability standpoints thats a horrible way to implement such a (good) feature. thats all..
