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How to layout an Info screen, so as many as possible are tempted to tap the "review" button?

I wish users would tap the "review" button and write a long positive review on the app store where they praise my app and give it a 5 star rating.

I'm not a native english speaker so I'm having difficulties expressing in a short and polite way if the user want to help with this.

The best I can think of is inserting icons in the table. Inserting a mail icon on the row with "Send mail to developer". Inserting a star icon on the row with "Review this app today". I could remove everything else but the "review" button, but I don't like this idea. I cannot think of a better layout than this, but I willing to modify it.

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5 Answers 5

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Emphasize the button by

  • making it the only button
  • making it the biggest button
  • adding an animation to it (e.g squiggling, or bulging).

(With the latter, don't overdo. A set of different, small-scale animations, played infrequently, probably increases the cute factor. Also, you might remember thatthe user has already reviewed the app and disable the animation)

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    I'm not too keen about animated buttons because it reminds me of evil flash banner ads and click here buttons. I guess it would work though :-)
    – neoneye
    Feb 25, 2011 at 9:27
  • That's why the disclaimer ;) It's so easy to slip from "cute" to "annoying". However, if you have 1..2 second decent animations, and play them once every 1..5 minutes, you should be ok. Another option is a single animation playing once when showing the page.
    – peterchen
    Feb 25, 2011 at 9:50
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Try this:

Mockup with a big button for "Review this app today" and small links replacing the "Email Us" and "Visit our Blog" buttons

http://www.evernote.com/pub/ikonux/stuff#v=t&n=544d5d02-e7df-4efe-b4ba-9ce74717cc43&b=0

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    I get "Access denied" with that link :( You may want to edit your answer and use the "image" button instead: it will upload the file to StackExchange and display the image directly in your answer.
    – wildpeaks
    Feb 25, 2011 at 0:01
  • Just updated this. Sorry.
    – Ikon Eco
    Feb 25, 2011 at 0:18
  • Clever. Making the email button and blog button smaller, leaves the review button very visible. This is a good improvement.
    – neoneye
    Feb 25, 2011 at 0:40
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    I would center, rename and title case that button too, "Review ColorBlind Vision Today". May 31, 2011 at 2:30
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Making sure you only do it once and after the user has had a chance to use your app extensively you could open a prompt and kindly ask for a review: "If you like this app please help us by giving it a good review on the AppStore." Yes. Not now.

Also make sure not to do this on startup but rather when the user ha completed the task (but before the app is closed).

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  • For this I'm trying out Appirater github.com/arashpayan/appirater which prompts the user after a number of times a significant event have happened. So far I have yet to see the effect of it.
    – neoneye
    Feb 25, 2011 at 10:04
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    This has been discussed and many developers including myself consider this to be horrible UX. More specifically i've expanded my thoughts on the matter on my blog here goo.gl/V56Ai. In a nutshell nobody should be bugged to rate an app, they should review it when they want to, this way you'll get honest reviews. May 29, 2011 at 20:42
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The problem is you can make the button as prominent as you like on that screen but it still relies on the user visiting that screen.

You may want to consider prompting the user to review the app within it's main flow. For example the 5th time the user completes a task in the app you could show a new screen with something like "You have been using the app for quite a while, why not tell us what you think?". On the screen would be two buttons [Rate this app] and [No thanks]. If the user does not want to rate it then they press [No thanks] and are never bothered again. Note: you should still have the rate button on the about page as an alternate just in case the user changes their mind.

I have seen this pattern in several app's recently, the "0.03" reaction game included it (after the X number of levels it prompts you to rate the app). Doing this got the app rated over 5000 times.

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    I use Flurry flurry.com for event tracking. The info screen have been shown 173 times, but none have chosen the review button :-(
    – neoneye
    Feb 25, 2011 at 10:09
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The most effective way, it seems, is to show a recurring alert dialog until the user has created a review, as shown in this blog post.

It might not be the slickest, sexiest solution, but in most cases an alert box with a good call-to-action is probably what's going to get the user to rate. The downside is, obviously, that it's quite annoying to some users, but we put up with a lot of bugs and annoying features for apps we like, so I think using this moderately isn't a problem if your app is really useful.

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    Please don't post shortened links. Links won't be so long that you hit the character limit on posts and it could be misconstrued.
    – ChrisF
    May 29, 2011 at 16:03
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    I find these to be quite annoying. They pop up when I actually try to use the application, thus getting in my way. The dialog-blindness really starts playing up. The other day, I even saw one that explicitly asked if I wanted to create a 5-star rating that way. No, they can get a 1-star just for doing that.
    – André
    Mar 6, 2013 at 14:33

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