3 steps to earn higher user ratings
Need to raise your app’s ratings and increase downloads? Gimmicks and hacks to get higher ratings and more reviews won’t get your app meaningful long-term growth. Instead, the best way to get better ratings is to build authentic relationships with your users–truly listening and responding to their feedback. This leads to a better product experience, loyal users, and ultimately sustainable growth.
Here are three steps to use reviews and ratings to improve your app and increase user engagement.
Step 1: Read and address ratings comments
- Book an hour in your calendar each week to read through ratings comments.
- Reply to user reviews to help address their concern or gather more detailed feedback.
- Pay extra attention to those who gave you 1 or 2-star ratings as their comments will give you more insights for improvement.
- To make sure you’re getting feedback from the most appropriate users, define the signals that prompt your target audience like “reached Level 10”, “completed the first booking”, or “opened 3+ times in a week”
- Choose a placement in your app where you don’t interrupt user experience. Unexpected pop-up messages asking for a rating can bother users. Instead, place the review request after a user has had a positive interaction with your app, like successfully completing a task or level.
- Ask about the user’s happiness level first. Depending on their happiness level, provide different channels to escalate their feedback:

Step 3: Analyze and act on user feedback
- Apply filters to see feedback by rating, written language, app version, and/or device.
- Understand your user better by interpreting comments against user-related metrics such as download sources, retention rates, and in-app behavior.
- Update your app with users’ feature requests and fix issues they have raised. Be sure to respond to the comment directly in the Play Store, sharing the positive changes you’ve made.