App Store Reviews Are Getting Bad For Business

Opinions are like assholes—everyone has one, and they all stink.

In addition to thousands of apps, the Google Play and iTunes App Stores are full of opinions. Those opinions constitute reviews. And those reviews can be very important to the businesses that invest millions of dollars in the design and development of mobile and desktop applications.

We all do it when we’re considering installing an app on our mobile device. We look at the ratings and reviews. Lately, however, I’ve noticed that the level of discourse in app store reviews is devolving into YouTube comment territory. That’s not a good thing. App store reviews are becoming full of spam, fake reviews written by PR & social marketing agencies, and absurd diatribes about how awful an app is because it doesn’t support the latest device or OS within hours of its release. These valueless reviews are beginning to inundate and overwhelm any thoughtful content making it more difficult for all of us to find apps that we will want to download. This is bad for business both for the app stores and the app developers.

Amazon—an innovator in the customer review space—discovered this challenge years ago, and is constantly taking steps to improve and filter the reviews that appear in their online store. Another community powered entirely by user reviews, Yelp, takes great care to filter out reviews that their users won’t find valuable.

User generated content isn’t easy, and Apple and Google aren’t historically companies that really “get” social (remember Ping and Google Buzz?). Unfortunately, if they don’t start doing a better job making sure that their app store reviews provide value, customers will start to look elsewhere.

Ideas to Improve App Store Ratings

Here are some ideas on how Apple and Google can start taking steps to improving the state of reviews in their app stores:

• Professional reviews by a staff editorial board. Allow users to filter reviews and/or subscribe to professional reviewers whose opinions they trust
• Help me find reviews by people who I trust—people who share similar taste, Facebook or Twitter connections
• Rate the reviews. Amazon added the “Was this helpful?” feature to weed out worthless content

Those are just a few ways to start improving the app store customer experience; I’m sure the smart folks in Cupertino and Mountain View can come up with a few more. Hopefully, we’ll start seeing improvements before we all start making fun of how pointless app reviews have become.

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