iOS Reviews - Limited Region Visibility?

[xStep]

Recently I received a review from the UK that I cannot see via my personal US iTunes account. Is it normal that reviews are not shared amongst regions?

I asked Apple this question a week ago and haven't heard back. I also looked through the iTunesConnect developer guide and didn't see an answer there.

 

[dejo]

Is it normal that reviews are not shared amongst regions?

Yes, that's normal. But you can see the reviews from the various countries by logging into iTunes Connect and then visiting Manage Your Applications > appName > View Details (for Current Version) > Links: Customer Reviews. Also applications such as AppViz are able to pull down the reviews from every country and consolidate them in one place.

 

[firewood]

The reviews are visible in other regions in iTunes, but you have to Change Country in iTunes (link is near the bottom) on your Mac or PC to read them, as Apple probably assumes that, otherwise, people only want to see reviews in their own language.

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

Yes, that's normal. But you can see the reviews from the various countries by logging into iTunes Connect and then visiting Manage Your Applications > appName > View Details (for Current Version) > Links: Customer Reviews. Also applications such as AppViz are able to pull down the reviews from every country and consolidate them in one place.

:-/ Just discovered I have a two reviews in the UK... a 5 star and a 1 star.

The 1 star review is "App fails to launch"... any idea what I should do? The person didn't contact me at all... they appear to use their actual first and last name as their username... searching on Facebook, I found five people with the exact first and last name, 1 of which is in the US and another of which is in Canada... the other 3 don't give their location information, so I'm inclined to believe it's one of those 3 people...

Of course, contacting them via Facebook is probably excessively creepy, so probably a poor choice.

There's a "Report this Review" link, but it won't let me on account of my account being US based.

That person has received a "1 out of 1 customers found the review not helpful"... is more people burying his review with "not helpful"s the best I can hope for?

 

[dejo]

The 1 star review is "App fails to launch"... any idea what I should do?

Not much you can do. This is one of the weaknesses of the App Store, as I see it: users submit 1-star reviews rather than using the support link available to contact the developer directly. And the developer has no mechanism to respond to the review. I can understand Apple not wanting us to contact the reviewer directly (privacy concerns and all) but perhaps a mechanism where Apple serves as proxy to allow communication with the user would be nice.

 

[firewood]

Just discovered I have a two reviews in the UK... a 5 star and a 1 star.

The App store has well over 100M customers, which means 1M of them are likely to be in the bottom 1% of whatever human trait you value.

I assume that there are people who will download any app, including your app and my app, without reading the description (maybe they can't read?) and then giving it 1 star when they find out that it's not Angry Pigs, or somesuch.

No use even trying to contact that segment of humanity. Neither is Apple. Since they increase Apples' Billions in revenue by 1%.

Or, on the other hand, maybe some customers don't like your app because they are 100X smarter than you. You can contact those alien intelligences by telepathic mind-meld. No need for such primitive low-tech as Apple to intervene.

 

[xStep]

Yes, that's normal. But you can see the reviews from the various countries by logging into iTunes Connect and then visiting Manage Your Applications > appName > View Details (for Current Version) > Links: Customer Reviews. Also applications such as AppViz are able to pull down the reviews from every country and consolidate them in one place.

I know about that primitive iTunesConnect option. It only works for the current app version that is for sale. I updated the version from what the UK review is attached to so now can't see it. Apple's reporting capability sucks. Hell, the App Store is better at this because at least you can see reviews for all versions.

I had just read about that AppViz capability. If I release apps that are popular enough I'll buy into it or something similar. It sounds dreamy.

The interest in my question is that customers are blind to other reviews in other regions. Right now I only have two reviews, and the 5 star one isn't available outside it's region. That sucks.

Perhaps in the future Apple will set their way to combine reviews based on language.

The reviews are visible in other regions in iTunes, but you have to Change Country in iTunes (link is near the bottom) on your Mac or PC to read them, as Apple probably assumes that, otherwise, people only want to see reviews in their own language.

Thanks for the tip. That worked, but I don't expect customers to randomly switch regions to find other reviews.


Thanks guys. Your'e more reliable than Apple!


I need to get more reviews. I'm thinking a nag screen. This technique has been discussed here before and seems to be a decent idea if you don't abuse your customers.

My thought is that if I ask for a review after say 15 recordings, I'll get reviews by experienced users who like using my app and therefore more positive and constructive reviews.

BTW, the five star review came from a customer I had personal interaction with when they emailed me an issue. In the end I couldn't help with the unique problem, but being friendly, helpful, researching a possible solution, and somehow mentioning that people are reluctant to write reviews, persuaded him to write the review.

Through this customer interaction I also got some feature requests and an idea that would help with the issue in a future version of my app.

 

[dejo]

Perhaps in the future Apple will set their way to combine reviews based on language.

That would be real nice, along with a lot of other enhancements to the developer-user-review interaction landscape.

I need to get more reviews. I'm thinking a nag screen. This technique has been discussed here before and seems to be a decent idea if you don't abuse your customers.

I've incorporated the poorly-named Appirater into some of my apps. Others say nagging for reviews is an absolute no-no but I find their approach to be the least annoying, aside from no-nag.

 

[xStep]

That would be real nice, along with a lot of other enhancements to the developer-user-review interaction landscape.

Yea, this is one area where Apple does the minimum to the disgust of it's users, the developers. How can one take their server based products seriously when they can't get beyond the first step of basic features.

I've incorporated the poorly-named Appirater into some of my apps. Others say nagging for reviews is an absolute no-no but I find their approach to be the least annoying, aside from no-nag.

Looks interesting. I'm wondering though if asking for a review for every version change is a good idea. If a user has already reviewed the app, they may find another request annoying.

Yesterday I discovered blog entries by Santiago Lema regarding getting reviews, encouraging positive entries, and encouraging feedback off of the review system. The entries are Taking control of your reviews and Going from 5 to 100+ reviews per day (well, precisely 185). He has some other interesting blog entries too. I enjoyed his site so much that I tweeted about it.

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

I need to get more reviews. I'm thinking a nag screen. This technique has been discussed here before and seems to be a decent idea if you don't abuse your customers.

My thought is that if I ask for a review after say 15 recordings, I'll get reviews by experienced users who like using my app and therefore more positive and constructive reviews.

BTW, the five star review came from a customer I had personal interaction with when they emailed me an issue. In the end I couldn't help with the unique problem, but being friendly, helpful, researching a possible solution, and somehow mentioning that people are reluctant to write reviews, persuaded him to write the review.

Through this customer interaction I also got some feature requests and an idea that would help with the issue in a future version of my app.

I have two prominent buttons, "Contact the Developer" and "Leave a Review" in my app. It seems that a good deal of customers hit the "Contact" button, shoot me an email with questions or suggestions, I respond within a few hours, give them a link and a request to leave a review, and then they do. It seems to work really well for collecting 5 star reviews. I have found having excellent customer service really isn't that hard, and it seems to make a world of difference in the reviews.