5 ms·

77% will not download a Retail app rated lower than 3 stars

39 points by martin_tipgain 12y ago

martin_tipgain 12y ago
It will be interesting to know to what extend this research is transferable to other app categories?
Kaibert123 12y ago
Just looked at the android side of things (Canadian side of things). Not one app in the top 50 had an app rating less than 3. The only big name in the top ten below 4 stars was Canadian Tire.
herbig 12y ago
Title should be "77% of users surveyed...". User surveys seem like a really poor metric here. Also, being posted by the article creator, 12 upvotes and only 1 comment seems to suggest gaming the system.
- benologist 12y ago
  OP has a 100% success rate getting a bunch of upvotes which can be a sign of foul play: https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=martin_tipgain https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=martin_tipgain And at least one account helping out with comments exclusively on his submissions: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=Kaibert123 https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=Kaibert123
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- jsonchen 12y ago
  YC founders usernames appear as a different color to other YC founders and some percentage of them probably upvote every post they see.
  - Lidador 12y ago
    So HN is an YC founders's bookmark site. Fool of me thinking this was a community.
giarc 12y ago
We know people pay to have fake 5 star ratings, I wonder how many pay to have their competitors given fake 1 star ratings. Even though I know people game the system, I still glance at the number of stars when downloading an app.
joshstrange 12y ago
I don't really trust high star rating but I'm inclined to trust lower star ratings. What I mean by that is if an app has 4-5 stars I don't assume it's good (unless it's an indie title) I assume they paid for the ratings. If an app has 1-3 stars I will read the reviews to see if my device or my use-case are mentioned (ie. Doesn't work on iPhone X OR Works great except feature X seems broken) but if the reviews are all "This sucks!!!!" or "Don't Buy" then I will take them into consideration but it won't stop be from downloading necessarily.
- jonnathanson 12y ago
  I'm with you on this. Five-star ratings don't pass my astroturf gut check these days. One-star [1] or two-star or three-star ratings are usually there because there is some glaring flaw that everyone is upset about, and it's usually worth reading the reviews to see if it's a problem I'll also encounter. Fifty percent of the time, that "flaw" is a bunch of complaints about price or IAP [2]. The other 50% is crashing on certain devices. Vanishingly few people with thoughtful, in-depth grievances about an app will actually take the time to review it. They'll just delete the app and move on. So there is a bit of a selection bias at play in the ratings set. [1] I do feel there's a big gulf between one star and two stars. At least in my anecdotal experience, a one-star rating often means the app is so buggy as to be borderline unusable, or else fundamentally flawed in some way. A two-star rating is a very different animal; it often means the app itself shows promise, but it is priced poorly, or else it has stability issues on certain OS versions or devices. Three stars is where you start to enter the territory of legitimately mixed opinion about an app's quality in and of itself. (Assuming, of course, that the number of reviews is large enough.) [2] Incidentally, these complaints are often valid, albeit expressed in very peremptory ways. I'm not dismissing them, especially when they concern pay-to-play IAP mechanisms. But I do take them with a grain of salt.
  - joshstrange 12y ago
    I'd be interested to see a grouping of all the apps I have installed by current app store rating (Or a broader study of multiple people's devices and their "Average star rating"). Of course this data probably wouldn't mean much until it was weighted by usage, but even that is hard to quantify "use" there are apps I used that more or less "have" to use and apps that I don't need to and/or rarely use that might skew the results. Edit: Hmm, I'm jailbroken, I wonder how hard it would be to get a list of installed apps by SSH'ing in and then combine that list with this endpoint (No affliation with app, found link on stack overflow) https://itunes.apple.com/lookup?id=422876559 https://itunes.apple.com/lookup?id=422876559 to get the ratings....
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- cjg_ 12y ago
  The survey was about retail apps, which Facebook is not.
drivingmenuts 12y ago
I think we'd be better off if we had people who curated apps, then rate the curators. The App Store has such a limited interface, that's it like walking into a minefield. You can't tell if something is crap or not until you've blown your money. Apple doesn't even try to prevent you from buying crapware because they've already made their money.
- toxican 12y ago
  Android used to have an hour-long window after you purchased an app to get a full refund with the tap of your screen. Then they knocked it down to 15 minutes, which, depending on the app, may not be long enough to install and test out the app. Then as you suggested, Apple has nothing like that in place at all. It's kind of frustrating as a customer.
  - srathi 12y ago
    It is changed to 2 hours now.
MrDosu 12y ago
A survey involving 115 people, mentioning percentages with fractional places with no mention of statistical error... Myself working in the field of statistics this really makes me cringe...
joe_the_user 12y ago
I wouldn't download a Retail app of any sort anyway. I may be a geek here but I think approach is likely to catch on rather than die away. Even with all the hype, an "app" is supposed to be something more than a website or a brochure. I can't see much of a future in particular retailer or state agencies or whatever turning their websites into apps - it only really has the force of novelty on its side. Consumers will learn the uselessness of such things in the way that they previously learned the uselessness of free pens and other novelty material items.

It will be interesting to know to what extend this research is transferable to other app categories?

Just looked at the android side of things (Canadian side of things). Not one app in the top 50 had an app rating less than 3. The only big name in the top ten below 4 stars was Canadian Tire.

herbig 12y ago

Title should be "77% of users surveyed...". User surveys seem like a really poor metric here. Also, being posted by the article creator, 12 upvotes and only 1 comment seems to suggest gaming the system.

benologist 12y ago
OP has a 100% success rate getting a bunch of upvotes which can be a sign of foul play: https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=martin_tipgain https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=martin_tipgain And at least one account helping out with comments exclusively on his submissions: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=Kaibert123 https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=Kaibert123
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
jsonchen 12y ago
YC founders usernames appear as a different color to other YC founders and some percentage of them probably upvote every post they see.
- Lidador 12y ago
  So HN is an YC founders's bookmark site. Fool of me thinking this was a community.

giarc 12y ago

We know people pay to have fake 5 star ratings, I wonder how many pay to have their competitors given fake 1 star ratings. Even though I know people game the system, I still glance at the number of stars when downloading an app.

joshstrange 12y ago

I don't really trust high star rating but I'm inclined to trust lower star ratings. What I mean by that is if an app has 4-5 stars I don't assume it's good (unless it's an indie title) I assume they paid for the ratings. If an app has 1-3 stars I will read the reviews to see if my device or my use-case are mentioned (ie. Doesn't work on iPhone X OR Works great except feature X seems broken) but if the reviews are all "This sucks!!!!" or "Don't Buy" then I will take them into consideration but it won't stop be from downloading necessarily.

jonnathanson 12y ago
I'm with you on this. Five-star ratings don't pass my astroturf gut check these days. One-star [1] or two-star or three-star ratings are usually there because there is some glaring flaw that everyone is upset about, and it's usually worth reading the reviews to see if it's a problem I'll also encounter. Fifty percent of the time, that "flaw" is a bunch of complaints about price or IAP [2]. The other 50% is crashing on certain devices. Vanishingly few people with thoughtful, in-depth grievances about an app will actually take the time to review it. They'll just delete the app and move on. So there is a bit of a selection bias at play in the ratings set. [1] I do feel there's a big gulf between one star and two stars. At least in my anecdotal experience, a one-star rating often means the app is so buggy as to be borderline unusable, or else fundamentally flawed in some way. A two-star rating is a very different animal; it often means the app itself shows promise, but it is priced poorly, or else it has stability issues on certain OS versions or devices. Three stars is where you start to enter the territory of legitimately mixed opinion about an app's quality in and of itself. (Assuming, of course, that the number of reviews is large enough.) [2] Incidentally, these complaints are often valid, albeit expressed in very peremptory ways. I'm not dismissing them, especially when they concern pay-to-play IAP mechanisms. But I do take them with a grain of salt.
- joshstrange 12y ago
  I'd be interested to see a grouping of all the apps I have installed by current app store rating (Or a broader study of multiple people's devices and their "Average star rating"). Of course this data probably wouldn't mean much until it was weighted by usage, but even that is hard to quantify "use" there are apps I used that more or less "have" to use and apps that I don't need to and/or rarely use that might skew the results. Edit: Hmm, I'm jailbroken, I wonder how hard it would be to get a list of installed apps by SSH'ing in and then combine that list with this endpoint (No affliation with app, found link on stack overflow) https://itunes.apple.com/lookup?id=422876559 https://itunes.apple.com/lookup?id=422876559 to get the ratings....

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

cjg_ 12y ago
The survey was about retail apps, which Facebook is not.

drivingmenuts 12y ago

I think we'd be better off if we had people who curated apps, then rate the curators. The App Store has such a limited interface, that's it like walking into a minefield. You can't tell if something is crap or not until you've blown your money. Apple doesn't even try to prevent you from buying crapware because they've already made their money.

toxican 12y ago
Android used to have an hour-long window after you purchased an app to get a full refund with the tap of your screen. Then they knocked it down to 15 minutes, which, depending on the app, may not be long enough to install and test out the app. Then as you suggested, Apple has nothing like that in place at all. It's kind of frustrating as a customer.
- srathi 12y ago
  It is changed to 2 hours now.

MrDosu 12y ago

A survey involving 115 people, mentioning percentages with fractional places with no mention of statistical error... Myself working in the field of statistics this really makes me cringe...

joe_the_user 12y ago

I wouldn't download a Retail app of any sort anyway. I may be a geek here but I think approach is likely to catch on rather than die away. Even with all the hype, an "app" is supposed to be something more than a website or a brochure. I can't see much of a future in particular retailer or state agencies or whatever turning their websites into apps - it only really has the force of novelty on its side. Consumers will learn the uselessness of such things in the way that they previously learned the uselessness of free pens and other novelty material items.