4 ms·

Last week I released a game in the app store that has a button with the following text: "Please click here to send me an email, so I can keep improving this ga

by Luc 16y ago

Last week I released a game in the app store that has a button with the following text: "Please click here to send me an email, so I can keep improving this game. Thanks!" I could probably have formulated that a bit better. The idea was to get some feedback from players. The result so far has been over 50 emails (many people sent more than one), all _completely blank_ except for the default subject and greeting text. Oops.

rtrunck 16y ago
Same thing happened to me. I have yet to receive an email that actually contains feedback.
- fictorial 16y ago
  I did the same for "Darts." What I experienced is that an A.I. logic bug got reported about 5000 times.
napierzaza 16y ago
I'm surprised how many comments on the App Store could have been emails reporting bugs to me instead. There have been some very nice bug reports too. But way to many people seemed to think that blasting me with a negative review was the best thing. It really sucks because it's a very public way for things NOT to be fixed.
bcl 16y ago
I actually put some text in my description asking people to email when they have problems. It has resulted in about 10 responses (all useful) out of 20k+ users. The App Store just doesn't promote any kind of reasonable engagement between the users and the developers, which is a totally different experience from desktop app development. Maybe it is the form factor, or the type of user.
- matwood 16y ago
  This is one of my big complaints about the app store too. I've had one user get a refund on my app, but Apple wouldn't tell me why or give me any way to understand what happened. All I got from Apple was the boilerplate, make sure you app doesn't crash etc... One thing Apple could do to make the app store a much better experience for developers is to set up some type of communication exchange between the developers and users. They could still keep it anonymous, but when Apple issues an update that breaks my app and then takes over 10 days to approve my 1 line of code fix I'd like to let my users know that it's out of my hands. I have also tried adding my direct email in the app and have never received an email from a user. Admittedly, I have a lot less users than you do though.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
Zev 16y ago
Mobile Colloquy makes it really easy to get into our chat room ("Join Support Room" button if you don't have any IRC connections enabled, and again on the view we have to let people join rooms). There's maybe one person every two or three weeks that comes into the IRC room from the app asking for support. And one person every day or so, who just wants to chat (and doesn't stick around for > a minute or two). But, we've gotten some very useful bug reports from it -- and users who stuck around after it was fixed to report that it was indeed fixed.
rendezvouscp 16y ago
An app I have in the App Store has a “Support” button in its in-app settings; I’ve received a lot of blank emails from users (I think they hit Cancel, then “Save Draft,” then send the email later), but I’ve received a fair share of really useful emails from people who have questions and/or comments about the app. I’d definitely ignore the blank ones and keep the button in your app.
cloudkj 16y ago
Along those same lines - I started working on my first iPhone app and added a simple feedback button to gather user feedback. Then it occurred to me that this feedback mechanism itself can be offered as a service. Kind of like a Get Satisfaction or UserVoice for mobile apps. Anyone think this would be useful? Would anyone actually pay for something like that? It'd probably have a lightweight library for the various platforms, and any app can integrate the feedback button with just a couple lines and an include. Initially it'd just gather raw feedback - probably with a interface that helps let the user know what the form is for - and later on adding more community-based feedback features that other web-based feedback services provide. I know there are a few companies that offer mobile feedback integration, but none that are very active or solely focused on mobile. What do y'all think?
- dan_b 16y ago
  I had the same idea while perusing this thread, would be a great idea.

by Luc 16y ago

rtrunck 16y ago

Same thing happened to me. I have yet to receive an email that actually contains feedback.

fictorial 16y ago
I did the same for "Darts." What I experienced is that an A.I. logic bug got reported about 5000 times.

napierzaza 16y ago

I'm surprised how many comments on the App Store could have been emails reporting bugs to me instead. There have been some very nice bug reports too. But way to many people seemed to think that blasting me with a negative review was the best thing. It really sucks because it's a very public way for things NOT to be fixed.

bcl 16y ago

I actually put some text in my description asking people to email when they have problems. It has resulted in about 10 responses (all useful) out of 20k+ users. The App Store just doesn't promote any kind of reasonable engagement between the users and the developers, which is a totally different experience from desktop app development. Maybe it is the form factor, or the type of user.

matwood 16y ago
This is one of my big complaints about the app store too. I've had one user get a refund on my app, but Apple wouldn't tell me why or give me any way to understand what happened. All I got from Apple was the boilerplate, make sure you app doesn't crash etc... One thing Apple could do to make the app store a much better experience for developers is to set up some type of communication exchange between the developers and users. They could still keep it anonymous, but when Apple issues an update that breaks my app and then takes over 10 days to approve my 1 line of code fix I'd like to let my users know that it's out of my hands. I have also tried adding my direct email in the app and have never received an email from a user. Admittedly, I have a lot less users than you do though.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]

Zev 16y ago

Mobile Colloquy makes it really easy to get into our chat room ("Join Support Room" button if you don't have any IRC connections enabled, and again on the view we have to let people join rooms). There's maybe one person every two or three weeks that comes into the IRC room from the app asking for support. And one person every day or so, who just wants to chat (and doesn't stick around for > a minute or two). But, we've gotten some very useful bug reports from it -- and users who stuck around after it was fixed to report that it was indeed fixed.

rendezvouscp 16y ago

An app I have in the App Store has a “Support” button in its in-app settings; I’ve received a lot of blank emails from users (I think they hit Cancel, then “Save Draft,” then send the email later), but I’ve received a fair share of really useful emails from people who have questions and/or comments about the app. I’d definitely ignore the blank ones and keep the button in your app.

cloudkj 16y ago

Along those same lines - I started working on my first iPhone app and added a simple feedback button to gather user feedback. Then it occurred to me that this feedback mechanism itself can be offered as a service. Kind of like a Get Satisfaction or UserVoice for mobile apps. Anyone think this would be useful? Would anyone actually pay for something like that? It'd probably have a lightweight library for the various platforms, and any app can integrate the feedback button with just a couple lines and an include. Initially it'd just gather raw feedback - probably with a interface that helps let the user know what the form is for - and later on adding more community-based feedback features that other web-based feedback services provide. I know there are a few companies that offer mobile feedback integration, but none that are very active or solely focused on mobile. What do y'all think?

dan_b 16y ago
I had the same idea while perusing this thread, would be a great idea.