“Please Rate My App” Dialogs
Amy Worrall (tweet):
I used to really dislike the door-slam dialog boxes that many apps pop up when they’re updated, saying “Please rate my app”.
[…]
John Gruber encouraged his readers to rate apps that asked for ratings with one star. Now that the App Store is so hard to make money in, I’ve come up with an analogy for that:
Pressing “No Thanks” to the rating dialog is like refusing to give change to a beggar. Rating the app 1 star because of the dialog is like punching the beggar in the face to try and discourage people from begging.
[…]
I put a distinctive, attention-grabbing ratings prompt into the table view on the main screen of the app, three days after an update is installed. But it doesn’t stop you using the app. You can navigate to other screens without issue, and still use all the features. The prompt stays there until you press one of the buttons.
I’m not sure the analogy holds, but I am much more sympathetic to ratings requests these days—if they’re not modal dialogs.
Update (2016-05-20): Dan Moren:
Blackbox upends the usual iOS way of doing things in a number of ways, of which convincing users to rate the app is only just one. Ryan’s post is well worth a read, especially for developers trying to figure out how to get those reviews without raising users’ hackles.
