Monitor App Reviews Over Time & Compare With Competitors

Reviews and ratings show you how well your app is perceived over time. For example, your customers’ perception of your app may change after a feature update; this will directly impact your reviews and ratings. Thanks to AppTweak’s new Reviews & Ratings section, you will be able to monitor any change in your reviews and ratings and benchmark your app with its competitors. As part of the Reviews & Ratings series, this second blog will focus on our Reviews section!

Analyze your app reviews over time

In the second section of our Reviews & Ratings feature, we analyze your number of new reviews as well as the average rating left with reviews only (in the Ratings section, we consider both ratings from reviews and ratings left without reviews).

Discover our new and improved Ratings feature!

In My reviews, we analyze by default the reviews received over the last 90 days (you can change the date range if you want to analyze a specific period). First, you will see a set of KPIs highlighting the total number, the star distribution, and the average rating of all the new reviews your app received over the date range selected. The growth indicated next to each number is based on the previous equivalent period (for example, the 90 days immediately before your 90-day date range).

In the example below, over the last 3 months, the app Among Us (iOS, US) received new reviews with an average rating of 2.9 – this corresponds to a rating increase of 4% compared to the previous equivalent period. However, the total number of new reviews decreased by 71% – people left fewer reviews over the past 90 days compared to the period before. Based on all the reviews posted over this date range, we can also see that the star distribution was not very well distributed: There were many 1 star reviews as well as many 5 stars reviews.

The graph below this KPI section shows how many reviews your app received per day, week or month. For every day, week, or month, we also show you the average rating of new reviews (represented by the blue line).

The Among Us app recently implemented a big update that completely changed its chat system. Here we see that over the past 3 months, the app received way more 1-star reviews, indicating that users strongly disliked the last update.

To dig further into this analysis, we can use the ‘filter’ option and type the word “chat” to specifically see the ratings for reviews that contained the word “chat”. In the screenshot below, we notice that the average rating for these filtered reviews was 0.3 lower than the average rating of all reviews. The star distribution also shows that negative ratings are often linked to reviews including the word “chat”. Finally, the summary table shows that, proportionally, there were way more 1-star reviews when only looking at reviews including the word “chat”.

Read the reviews left on your app page

If you want to read what users thought of your app, you will find all the reviews left over the date range selected at the bottom of the My reviews section.

Don’t forget that if you integrate your app, you can reply to your app reviews directly on AppTweak! It is very important to take the time to answer reviews (especially negative ones) as this shows your users that you care about their opinion.

Read this article to understand how and why you should reply to your app reviews!

Moreover, with our filters, you can decide to analyze the average rating of reviews that have been replied to. The entire view will be filtered based on the option selected.

Compare your app reviews with your competitors’ reviews

When analyzing your reviews, it is always best to contextualize your results. In particular, you need to compare and benchmark the state of your reviews with your competition. You may find that users are as harsh with them as they are with your app!

The second tab in the Reviews section is the ‘Competitor comparison’ view. First, you get a quick overview of the competition and their current average ratings and total ratings for reviews left over the last 3 months:

As you can see in the screenshot above, the Among Us app doesn’t have the worst average rating among its peers and its star distribution is quite similar to the group selected. However, you might think that this view is biased because an app with more reviews has a higher chance of having a well-distributed star distribution. This is why we give you the ability to switch to the “Total” view – here, you see the total number of reviews for each app instead of a percentage. When we switch to this view, it is clear that the Among Us app receives more reviews compared to the group. As a result, its average rating can be considered as way more representative of the general opinions of users.

Below this section, we show 2 graphs. The first shows the average rating of new reviews over time; the second tab allows you to analyze the total number of new reviews over time.

On a daily basis, our gaming app doesn’t perform much worse or better than the competition – it looks like they all get daily reviews with ratings varying between 2.9 and 3.2.

On the other hand, when looking at the total number of new reviews, Among Us receives a lot of reviews (600 vs. 150 reviews) on a weekly basis! Nevertheless, it seems like this high number is due to a huge increase at the beginning of the time period that fades away at the end of the period.

Go check it out!

In conclusion, this new Ratings feature is here to help you understand how users perceive your app. Thanks to AppTweak’s ASO tool, you can monitor your app reviews and compare your results with your competitors.

After each update, you can also check how your reviews are doing so you can learn and adapt in response to this valuable feedback.

This blog is the second in a series of 3 blogs highlighting our improved Reviews & Ratings tool. The next will be about our upgraded Sentiment and Phone View sections – stay tuned!

Learn how you can monitor your app reviews and compare your results with your competitors on AppTweak.