The oracle of consumer apps happiness

WRITTEN BY STEPHAN VENTER

Reveal the reasons behind poor app reviews

It is common for users to provide cryptic or even empty reviews alongside app ratings, leaving app developers guessing what the problem is. It can be an infuriating process for developers who are keen to keep users from drifting away to competitors. Besides, the number of users leaving bad reviews are just a fraction compared to users who uninstall an app or simply never launch it again.

Finding out why an app gets poor reviews is therefore paramount. But how can developers bridge the knowledge gap? We built Netradar App Analyzer to help developers answers these questions. Read on to see how App Analyzer can reveal the real reasons behind poor app reviews, and low app engagement.

App Analyzer works behind the scenes

Netradar’s App Analyzer seamlessly integrates with your app and collects app performance data in the background. Via the App Analyzer Dashboard, you can monitor UX across a range of variables; including individual app features, OS and device types, connectivity mode and geographic location.

As a result, you can get unparallel insight into how your app behaves in the wild. App Analyzer can reveal previously hidden information that you can use to identify a range of hard-to-find reasons behind user experience problems, including:

Not optimising for the right devices

Device demographics is a complex topic. It is difficult to predict on which devices your app would be installed and though you could make broad predictions and test for a selection of devices, you may miss the mark. To further complicate matters, optimising for some devices can lead to a reduced UX with others.

Device demographics is a complex topic. It is difficult to predict on which devices your app would be installed and though you could make broad predictions and test for a selection of devices, you may miss the mark. To further complicate matters, optimising for some devices can lead to a reduced UX with others.

App Analyzer not only shows you which devices your app is installed on most commonly, it also highlights which devices most frequently encounters problems with your app. You can also use the list of commonly used devices to test your app on an app testing service like bitbar so you’re sure the bulk of your users always get a good experience.

Problems with cellular connectivity

Each country and region’s cellar networks have unique characteristics, and these should not be a cause for a poor user experience if managed correctly. With Netradar App Analyzer you can get behind UX issues caused by network problems.

Are poor local cellular signals causing problems with your app’s features? Find out easily by analysing the difference in how your app responds when the user is connected to WIFI, compared to cellular. App Analyzer outlines how long it takes to get to your app content on each connection type and flags failed attempts too.

App features that are unloved

It is no good developing a top app feature that is never used by users and users probably won’t tell you that they’re not interested in a newly released feature. Thankfully, you can rely on App Analyzer to highlight which app features are not seeing the light of day.

App Analyzer outlines how frequently app features are accessed by logging events according to in-app flags set by the developer. Developers, in turn, can monitor feature popularity across several variables including OS and device type which allows developers to more finely tune an app’s range of features.

Freshly released updates that cause trouble

Again, as much as developers thoroughly test updates before release, the user experience on devices in the wild can vary widely. Potential problems can be unpredictable and quick action is the best way to get frustrated users back on board.

Developers that monitor app usage variables with App Analyzer are in the position to rapidly spot problems caused by a new version of an app. Not only that, but App Analyzer can also highlight which devices are at the core of update-related UX problems.

User satisfaction changing over time

Once-popular apps can quickly fall out of favour and developers don’t always know why. With App Analyzer developers can closely monitor the user experience across a series of app releases as the App Analyzer dashboard keeps in-depth records across every published version of an app.

This data can highlight to developers how certain subsets of users are changing their engagement with an app. Perhaps some features are proving less popular in some countries, or with certain device classes? App Analyzer gives real transparency to these types of changes over time.

Actionable data thanks to App Analyzer

We’ve outlined some of the typical user experience issues that App Analyzer can help developers to uncover, even if these issues do not emerge in app reviews. In turn, app developers can respond by making the matching changes to their apps:

• Provide a guide to users. Notice that your app’s features are not evenly used? Guide a user through your app as soon as it is installed so you don’t lose feature visibility. You could focus on those features that App Analyzer shows are unloved, when in fact they should be top features.
• Utilise A/B testing. App Analyzer can provide detailed statistics on any number of published versions of your apps. By pushing an update with a minor change you can monitor how users respond and either proceed or roll back the update in a newly published version.
• Manage connectivity issues. Because App Analyzer can track issues with cellular connectivity app developers can either adjust the bandwidth requirements of their app, build in redundancy features or at least advise users of connectivity requirements — all in order to manage and improve the user experience.
• Fix major, unknown issues. It is very difficult for developers to test their apps on every single popular device. App Analyzer will highlight issues with specific devices, allowing app developers to address these issues before user concerns emerge via bad app reviews or uninstalls.

By using Netradar App Analyzer app developers can acquire concrete data that lead to real insights into user behaviour. Instead of waiting for evidence to mount in the shape of bad app reviews, developers can spot and deal with issues in real time.

Developers that use App Analyzer can also detect smaller, less critical issues that are interfering with a smooth UX and act on these to prevent competitors from getting a foothold with a better UX. In essence, App Analyzer eliminates the communications barrier between user and app developer by reaching behind the scenes. Try it out www.netradar.com/appanalyzer