3 Case Studies on Factors Influencing App Reviews

We all know that Reviews are a goldmine in terms of customer feedback. We’ve written a series of blogs on how to get the most out of your app reviews and turn them into actionable guidelines for your product team. However, reviews go way beyond the context of the App Store and the Play Store. They are a great way to better understand how your users interact with your mobile game and what external elements such as social media content, special events, influencers, computer gaming, etc. drive them. Discover our case studies below.

It is generally known that reviews are a great source of user feedback and can be used to gauge how well your latest app update was received by users, or what are the most valued features your users would like to see in your app. However, reviews are also a great means to grasp the context in which your users are playing. Users don’t only interact with mobile games through the App or Play Store, in fact, there are many external factors that can influence their behaviors. Reviews are a great way to capture and understand these factors. We ran our Reviews Sentiment Analysis Tool on various gaming apps to show you very practical examples of how you can rapidly identify circumstances that influence your users’ behavior and measure the impact they have on your game’s performance.

Minecraft: The influence of computer gaming on mobile games

On August 23rd, Minecraft added new animals to its computer version of the game. The update came with new animals: foxes and bees. These new characters were highly appreciated by Minecraft gamers, in fact, if we look at the reviews the mobile game received in August, we can see that there is a peak in positive reviews on Aug 24th, although there is no update of the mobile game.

Peak in reviews for Minecraft’s mobile game although the app had no update on the Store. The peak is due to an update of the computer game.

Using our Reviews Sentiment Analysis, we found that the most repeated keywords within the reviews left by users on August 24th included the words “foxes” and “bees”. Both words are associated with positive ratings.

“bees” and “foxes” appear among the top 12 most repeated keywords of Minecraft’s reviews in August 2019 (iOS US).

We then had a look at the reviews that contained these words to better understand what users were saying about “foxes” and “bees”. As you can see below, users were leaving positive reviews, saying that they really enjoyed the game, but pleading to add foxes and bees to the mobile version. This is a great example of how reviews can help plan your product roadmap and align it to users’ needs.

How to use App Reviews to make Product Decisions

Minecraft reviews containing “bees” and “foxes” (iOS US)

EXPERT TIP: Did you know that you can now filter reviews that contain *multiple words?
*In our filter, you can search for reviews that contain one or several keywords. Use a space to search for phrases, but separate words by a comma to search for reviews containing multiple words.

Lords Mobile: The importance of YouTube influencers

Lords Mobile gave us another example that shows the value of measuring what your users are talking about in the reviews they leave on your app. We had a look at the most repeated keywords across the game’s reviews in September and were surprised to find the word “PewDiePie”.

The keyword “pewdiepie” appears among Lords Mobile Most repeated keywords in the game’s September Reviews

Looking at the trend chart of this word, we saw that the occurrence of the word PewDiePie peaked for a few days only around September 9th. We did some further research and found that the famous YouTuber showcased the game in one of his videos beginning of September. Knowing that the reviews containing the word “PewDiePie” had an average rating of 4.8, we can conclude that this sponsorship was well perceived by Lords Mobile’s users. The video also drove extra traffic to the game.

Looking into our download estimates of the game, we can see that the video resulted in a peak of downloads for the mobile game, up to 5 times its usual average traffic.

Peak in downloads of Lords Mobile as a result of a featuring by YouTuber PewDiePie

What other external factor influence apps? Check out our Seasonality Trends Analysis

EXPERT TIP: Did you know that you can use our quick filters within the Sentiment Analysis to immediately pinpoint Most Positive Keywords, Most Negative Keywords, and Most Trending Keywords. This will help you rapidly catch any new topics your users are talking about, or spot the main sources of frustrations and joy.

On September 7th the words “pewdiepie” and “pewds” were among Lords Mobile most trending keywords (iOS US)

Angry Birds 2: The impact of special charity events

Similarly, MrBeast – another famous YouTuber – did a video sponsored by Angry Birds where he promoted their #BringTheAnger Event. Users were encouraged to pop pigs in the Angry Birds 2 game, Rovio would donate $100k to Unicef if 10 billion pigs were popped worldwide.

Again, if we just look at the reviews of the game, we can see a peak in positive reviews on November 24th, just after MrBeast’s video went live. This peak wasn’t associated with any app update, but a direct consequence of the video.

Peak in positive reviews for the Angry Birds 2 game (iOS US) after MrBeast video promoting the game.

When we look at the most Trending Keywords in Reviews, the words “beast” and “mrbeast” were among the top 5 at that time. Nearly all the reviews left by users containing these words were 5-star reviews (average rating above 4.8), revealing that this special event was very well perceived by users.

Angry Birds 2 Reviews containing “beast” – iOS US

2019’s most Trending Searches on the Apple App Store

Reviews help capture the full context of your mobile gamers

In short, reviews are a great way to better grasp how your users interact with your game and what elements beyond the App and Play Store influence them. The examples above are only a small spectrum of all the factors that drive gamers to your mobile game. By analyzing your reviews you can better understand what drives your users and the context in which they came upon your game: are they experienced computer gamers? Did they come across your game by an influencer video? Are they total newbies, just wanting to participate in a special event? Make sure to capture these circumstances and measure their impact.