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We've had our sales revenue killed overnight by one review when we pushed out a big update a few months ago. We were doing ~$150 a day from one app, running up
by pxlpshr 17y ago
We've had our sales revenue killed overnight by one review when we pushed out a big update a few months ago. We were doing ~$150 a day from one app, running up the Top 100 charts in Social Networking and about to break the Top 50 fold when everything went downhill as soon as that review was posted. Sales dropped to under $30 a day.
The review was written by an Apple technician who worked at an apple retail store. His review sounded very "authoritative" to the average consumer in terms of features and problems with our app. He even cited the SDK but I knew he was misinformed when many of suggestions were forbidden (integration with Calendar, re-route native SMS/phone calls through our app, etc.) Nevertheless, consumers trusted his review and that was all she wrote for that month of sales.
Long story short, we tried contacting Apple to have it removed, no response as usual. After about 3 days of google stalking, I found him on Flickr and sent a PM. I gave him free app codes for his friends, and asked that he kindly change his review so it's factual. I told him I didn't mind honest feedback, but that his post sounded like an authoritative developer and was in fact wrong. He kindly changed the review, and we exchange emails to this day. He's trying to get into development.
Sales recovered some but certainly killed our momentum (and momentum is a big deal on the appstore, the more folds you can break through generally means more stable revenue for a time). The one-way street review system is extremely frustrating... yet another major complaint I have about the store. Wayyyy to much power given to the consumer.
- ujjwalg 17y agoI completely agree with you. We have a lot of apps with >$14.99 price tag and as soon as there is a negative review the sales go down a lot. I also agree with you with the momentum aspect. If you are gaining momentum a bad review can ruin it all for you. It happened to us on a $1.99 app in education which made it to top 25 in that category but 1 bad review and it was downhill ever since. It will be really helpful if Apple allows threaded review system in which the developer can comment on the reviewers comments and the reviewer receives an email notification to respond and change.