APP 的评价值得去阅读吗? - Are app reviews worth reading?

2017-09-13 10:51:00

APP的评价值得去阅读吗?

从阅读过上万的APP评价中学到的东西

BY John Saito（Dropbox设计师）

翻译：Kevin嚼薯片

我最近读了上万的关于我们Dropbox应用的评价，多得让我快疯掉，但这是我一整年读到的最有价值的东西。会让我发笑，让我伤心，也让我从中获得温暖。

为什么会有人读这么多的APP评价？其实，我在做一个事情，我想更多地了解我们的用户以及他们对我们产品的看法。

是的，我们在Dropbox上会进行用户研究，但我想知道得更多。我想听听全世界用户的声音。我想读读他们的真心话 —— 那些激烈的讨论、那些得意的心情，等等。

回顾这段经历，我不得不说，这是令人难以置信的体验。我学到了一些我从没想过的关于用户的新东西。

想知道我学到了什么？下面是我阅读这些评论的一些比较大的收获。

1. 用户都想被倾听和被关注

在阅读这些评价的时候，我首先注意到的是用户对我们的APP有着如此强烈的意见。当我反复查看时，我注意到用户使用了很多极端的词汇，比如“最”、“最好”、“最糟糕” 这些词反复出现。

为了让你体验一下，我展示一个评价的小样本：

喜欢我们产品的，讨厌我们产品的

在整理完这些数据后，我发现我们APP超过70%的评价都是5星或1星。超过三分之二的评论者要么很爱、要么很讨厌我们的APP。

为什么用户会倾向于给出极端的评价？有很多理论去试图解释这些极端的反馈，但我认为互联网上的用户只是热衷于表达自己的观点而已。

用户想要被倾听和被关注，给出一个1星或5星会使得他们的评价更容易被关注。

2. 用户想知道产品的状态

一年多以前，我们暂停了去写我们iOS和Android的版本说明。取而代之的是，一个关于我们如何“定期发布更新”的通用信息。因为尽管我们想写版本说明，但有很多内部原因让我们无法这样做。

你可能会想，“谁会去读版本说明？” 但事实证明很多人都这么做。在我们暂停写版本说明后，12%的评论者抱怨我们的那个通用说明。每十个评论中都有一个！

几个月来，我们一直得到这样的评价：

忧伤的时刻 :(

这是真的。成百上千的用户给了我们1星评价，仅仅因为没有版本说明。

我们把这个铭记于心。在过程中找出这个问题后，我们现在坚持为每一个iOS和Android写版本说明。如果没有之前的这些评论，我们可能就不是这样了。

3. 用户使用APP的方式是你意想不到的

人类是有创造力的，你永远不知道用户会如何使用你的产品。

你可能知道 Play-Doh 的设计初衷是一个壁纸清洗剂。但在某些时候，创始人发现一些用户正在使用该产品进行艺术项目。

该公司决定调整产品，并瞄准儿童玩具市场。这是一个聪明的举动。Play-Doh 的销售开始暴涨，现在它已经是20世纪最著名的玩具之一。

Play-Doh 的演变过程

多亏了我们的APP评论，我发现了用户使用Dropbox的各种有趣方式。例如，我发现有些人使用Dropbox作为音乐播放器或笔记应用程序。

考虑到这一点，我们的团队可以设计一些功能来优化这些使用场景，比如添加一个 shuffle 按钮或快速记下笔记的方法。谁都说不准，也许这些评论可能会激发我们构建下一个大功能。

4. 反馈是一种激励

创建产品是一项艰苦的工作。当我们在工作中遇到瓶颈时，很容易忘记我们的产品是如何影响用户们的生活的。用户的评论经常提醒着我们，我们正在构建的东西很对他们非常重要。

每隔一段时间，我就会看到一些用户的个人留言，让我内心感到温暖：

有时候，我看到一些评论，会让我觉得很伤心：

不管它是好是坏，这些评论都是一种激励。用户反馈是一份礼物。当然，有时这不是我们所希望的礼物，但它仍然很有价值。

这些反馈让我们脚踏实地前行。这些评论提醒着我们，我们在为真实的用户设计，而不仅仅是实现一堆公司目标。

5. 各国用户的评价差异很大

我们的Dropbox支持在100多个国家使用。除了UI语言，这个APP在每个国家的功能都是差不多的。

因为这是同一个APP，你会自然而然地认为在每个国家的评价都差不多，对吧？但我们的评价在每个国家都是不同的。

让我们来看看我们的iOS应用。在美国，我们的5星和1星大致相同。但在日本，我们的1星几乎是5星的两倍。在巴西则完全相反——更多的是5星，而非1星。

不同国家的评价都不一样

是什么导致了这些差异呢？我能猜测的是以下两点：

翻译质量：有些语言比其他语言更难翻译。如果我们的产品文案在这些语言中听起来不那么自然，人们可能会给我们更低的评价。
文化偏见：研究表明，用户填写评价的方式存在文化差异。

几年前，Dropbox进行了一项调查，要求全世界的用户对我们的UI文本进行评价。

猜猜哪个语言版本得分最低？日本语。这意味着我们的翻译版本可能会拖低我们在日本App Store的排名。

另一方面，巴西语、葡萄牙语的得分很高，与英语水平相当。难道巴西人一般都倾向于给予更高的分数吗?极有可能是这样。YouTube团队在几年前的一项调查中也发现了类似的结果。

6. 安卓用户比iOS用户更加快乐

好吧，我承认这一点让我很困惑，但出于某种原因，安卓用户给我们的评分比iOS用户高。

看看以下的事例：

为什么安卓用户比较快乐?

我发现这很令人震惊，因为我们的iOS和Android应用程序并没有太大不同。

为什么？我目前还没有任何能解释的理论，但这肯定是我想要进一步探索的。如果你有任何理论，或者你知道关于这个情况的任何研究，请告知我！

这可能是我们这个时代最大的谜团：安卓用户是不是更快乐？他们对APP的期望是否更低？谁知道。

你有去阅读你APP的评价吗？

我做过一个非正式的Twitter民意调查，37%的APP创建者表示他们很少或从不检查他们的APP评价。你是其中之一么？

是的，我知道阅读APP评价需要时间，但我认为这完全值得。如果你想了解更多关于谁在使用你的APP，看看他们在APP评价中说了什么。如果一个用户在忙碌的一天中抽出时间来分享一些有深度的反馈，你难道不应该花点时间倾听他们吗？

如果你想深入研究APP评价，你可以使用像 Appfigures 这样的服务。它能让你更容易地去搜索和筛选你的APP评价。

无论你是一个开发者、设计师、产品文案写作、还是产品经理，我保证你会从中学习一些新东西。

嘿，至少，它可能会激励你写一篇关于这些评价的文章。:v:️

在文章底部打赏并留言，将获得《产品经理能力模型地图》和《运营能力模式地图》高清无码版本。

Are app reviews worth reading?

What I learned from reading thousands of app reviews

BY John Saito

I recently read thousands of reviews about our Dropbox app. Call me crazy, but it was the most riveting thing I’ve read all year. I laughed, I cried, I got warm fuzzies inside.

Why in the world would anyone read so many app reviews? Well, I was on a mission. I wanted to learn more about our users and what they thought about our product.

Yes, we run user studies at Dropbox, but I wanted to know more. I wanted to hear from people across the globe. I wanted to read their actual words — tirades, triumphs, and all.

Looking back at this experience, I have to say it was incredibly humbling. I learned new things about our users that I never would’ve learned otherwise.

Curious to know what I learned? Below are some of my biggest takeaways from reading these reviews.

1. People just want to be heard

The first thing that jumped out at me while reading these reviews was that people had such strong opinions about our app. As I scrolled from review to review, I noticed people using a whole lot of superlatives—words like most, best, and _worst _popped up again and again.

To give you a taste, here’s a small sample of the reviews we got:

People love us, people hate us

After crunching the numbers, I found that over 70% of our app reviews were either 5-star or 1-star reviews. Over two-thirds of reviewers either loved or hated our app.

Why is it that people tend to give extreme ratings? There are a few theories that try to explain [extreme responding](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Response_bias# Extreme_responding), but I like to think that people on the internet are just passionate about voicing their opinions.

People want to be heard, and giving a 1-star or 5-star rating adds _oomph _to your opinion.

2. People want to know what’s going on

A little over a year ago, we stopped writing release notes for our iOS and Android apps. Instead, we used a generic message about how we “regularly release updates.” Although we wanted to write release notes, there were a bunch of internal reasons that made it difficult for us to keep writing them.

You might be thinking, “Who the heck reads release notes anyway?” Well, it turns out a lot of people do. After we stopped writing release notes, 12% of reviewers complained about our generic release notes. That’s more than one in every ten reviews!

For months, we kept getting gems like this:

These were sad times :(

That’s right. Hundreds of people gave us 1-star reviews just because of our release notes.

We took this to heart. After working out some kinks in our process, I’m happy to say we now write release notes for every iOS and Android release. We wouldn’t have done this if it hadn’t been for these app reviews.

3. People use apps in novel ways

Human beings are delightfully creative, and you never know how people might use a product out in the wild.

Did you know that Play-Doh was originally designed to be a wallpaper cleaner? But then at some point, the creators discovered that some people were using the product for art projects.

The company decided to tweak the product and market it as a child’s toy. It was a genius move. Sales of Play-Doh took off, and it’s now one of the most famous toys of the 20th century.

Playin’ around with Play-Doh

Thanks to our app reviews, I learned all sorts of interesting ways people use Dropbox. For example, I found that some people use Dropbox as a music player or a note-taking app.

With this in mind, our team could design things to optimize for these use cases, like adding a shuffle button or quicker ways to jot down notes. Who knows? Some of these reviews might just inspire us to build our next big feature.

4. Feedback is motivating

Creating products is hard work. When we’re caught up in the daily grind, it’s easy to lose sight of how we’re impacting people’s lives. User reviews act as a regular reminder that what we’re building matters.

Every now and then, I see a personal note from a user that makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside:

And sometimes I see a note that makes me feel all cold and crummy inside:

Whether it’s good or bad, I find notes like this motivating. User feedback is a gift. Sure, sometimes it isn’t the gift we were hoping for, but it’s still valuable.

Feedback keeps us grounded. These notes remind us that we’re designing for real people, not just some random company goal.

5. Ratings differ a lot by country

Our Dropbox app is available in over 100 countries. Except for the UI language, the app is pretty much the same in every country.

Because it’s the same app, you’d expect the ratings to be roughly the same in every country, right? Well, it turns out our ratings are pretty different in each country.

Let’s look at our iOS app, for example. In the United States, we have roughly the same amount of 5-star reviews as 1-star reviews. But in Japan, we have almost twice as many 1-star reviews as 5-star reviews. In Brazil, it’s flipped—we have a lot more 5-star reviews than 1-star reviews.

Our ratings differ from country to country

What’s causing these differences? My best guess is that there are two things at play here:

Translation quality: Some languages are harder to translate into than others. If our text sounds less natural in those languages, people will probably give us lower ratings.
Cultural bias: Studies have shown there are cultural differences in how people fill out surveys.

A couple of years ago, Dropbox ran a survey asking users across the world to rate the quality of our UI text.

Guess which language had the lowest score? Japanese. That means our translated text might be dragging down our App Store ratings in Japan.

Brazilian Portuguese, on the other hand, had a great score—on par with English. Could it be that Brazilians tend to give higher scores in general? Possibly. The YouTube team found similar results for Brazil in a survey they ran a few years ago.

6. Android users are happier than iOS users

Okay, I admit this one baffles the heck out of me, but for some reason, Android users give us way higher ratings than iOS users.

Here, see for yourself:

Why are Android users so much happier?

I found this shocking because our iOS and Android apps aren’t that different.

So what gives? I don’t have any great theories for this yet, but it’s definitely something I want to explore further. If you have any theories, or if you know of any research on this topic, I’d love to know. Feel free to comment below!

This may be the greatest mystery of our time: Are Android users just happier people in general? Do they have lower expectations of apps? Who knows?

Do you read your app reviews?

In a casual Twitter poll, 37% of app creators said they rarely or never check their app reviews. Are you one of them?

Yeah, I know reading app reviews takes time, but I think it’s totally worth it. If you want to learn more about who’s using your app, read what they’re saying in app reviews. If a user is taking time out of their busy day to share thoughtful feedback, shouldn’t you spend time listening to them?

Oh, and in case you do want to dive into your app reviews, it might help to use a service like Appfigures. It makes it a lot easier to search and sift through your review data.

Whether you’re a developer, designer, writer, or product person, I bet you’ll learn something new from taking a closer look at your app reviews.

Hey, at the very least, it might inspire you to write a whole Medium story about it. :v:️