How to improve reviews on the App Store and Google Play

How many times have you checked, dissatisfied, the rating users have given your app on the App Store or Google Play, wondering why that number never seems to go up? Ratings are not just a marketing metric, but a sign of the trust users place in your application.

At Mabiloft, we have often seen this situation. We know how the rating mechanism works, and we have learned to understand the user’s point of view.

Thanks to our experience, we have developed an effective method to bring an app to a rating above four stars. For this reason, we want to guide you through the steps needed to improve your reviews and make your users happier.

The real causes of negative reviews on the App Store and Google Play

To understand how to improve your reviews, you first need to understand what is not working with your application. When do users actually leave a one-star review?

The most common cases are the following:

If it is not clear which of these is your main issue, you can contact us to help you analyze your reviews and extract insights about the real problems your users are experiencing.

Reviews do not always depend on app quality

Of course, if an app works poorly, is slow, or unintuitive, it is natural for users to be unhappy and leave one-star ratings. Often, however, users are not complaining about the UI itself, but about disappointed expectations.

Users reach your application through different channels:

• Paid ads on social media
• After discovering you through your social profiles
• After visiting your landing page
• When they find you directly on the store

All of these touchpoints are critical for explaining what your application does, who it is for, and how it works. In short, users download and use your product after already forming an idea of what it offers and how it should behave.

For this reason, transparency is essential. Clearly explaining key points such as available features, which features are only available through payment, and the cost of a subscription helps users find exactly what they expect.

But how can you improve ratings if, in the past, your communication was weak, and now that you have improved it, you struggle to recover? Do not worry. App stores help you in two very different ways:

• On the App Store, when you release a major version, the average rating of your app is hidden until new ratings are submitted. If past reviews no longer reflect your current app, genuinely improving your product allows you to start fresh and rebuild user trust.
• Google Play, on the other hand, does not display a simple arithmetic average. It uses a strategy that gives more weight to recent reviews. As a result, improvements in communication and product quality are reflected more quickly in the overall rating compared to the App Store.

How to handle negative reviews on app stores

Even the best app will receive negative reviews. This is natural: when an app works well, users enjoy it and rarely think about leaving five stars. But when something goes wrong, they are quick to make their voice heard, sometimes in strong terms (“I’m leaving one star only because I can’t leave zero!”).

If the team behind the app simply ignores negative reviews, the result is not only disappointed existing users, but also discouraged potential users who decide not to install the app.

The best way to respond to a negative review is instead the following:

• Take responsibility. There is no point in denying a problem or making excuses. If a user is unhappy, they likely have valid reasons. Acknowledging mistakes is just as important as fixing them.
• Solve the issue. Reports cannot remain unresolved forever. Admitting shortcomings must be followed by concrete action.
• Notify users when bugs are fixed. This is not only about encouraging users to change their rating, but about making them feel heard and showing that the app is actively maintained, reviewed, and improved.

Two-way communication with users is essential to build a strong community around your app, one that grows through word of mouth and not only through paid marketing.

For this reason, it is always advisable to provide thoughtful, human responses rather than relying on recycled, robotic templates, which users perceive as distant.

How to increase positive reviews on Google Play and the App Store

When evaluating your app, it is not enough to reduce the number of negative reviews. You also need to increase the number of positive ones. After all, a single negative review compared to zero positive ones can severely impact your average rating.

Waiting for five-star reviews to appear on their own is not effective. As mentioned earlier, users are more likely to leave negative feedback because there is a triggering event, whereas positive reviews rarely happen spontaneously. So how do you get positive reviews? The answer is simple: by creating the right opportunity.

How to ask users for a review

Watch out: it is not allowed to ask users to leave a positive review. Both Google Play and the App Store allow apps to request feedback, but not to direct users toward a specific rating.

This means you can say something like, “Your opinion matters to us. Help us improve,” but you cannot say something like, “Do you like the app? Leave a five-star review!”

So how do we achieve a high rating? In two ways:

• The first is to request internal feedback within the app. This feedback will not be published in the store rating, but it helps identify dissatisfied users. This allows you to invite unhappy users to explain what can be improved instead of sending them directly to the store review page.
• The second method is choosing the right moment. This is especially crucial for iOS apps, which allow you to ask for an App Store review only three times per year. If you choose the wrong moment, you waste one third of your opportunities.

When to ask users to rate the app

Il momento migliore per chiedere all’utente di valutare l’applicazione è quando sappiamo che la sua soddisfazione è al culmine. I momenti che rendono l’utente soddisfatto sono, ad esempio:

• All’esito positivo di un’azione centrale. Ad esempio, in un’applicazione per il food delivery il momento giusto potrebbe essere l’esito positivo di un’ordinazione.
• Quando l’utente ha terminato più volte con successo un compito previsto dall’app, come l’inserimento di una spesa nel caso di un’app per il tracciamento delle finanze o il completamento di un allenamento in un’applicazione di training.
• Dopo aver risolto una segnalazione. Se l’utente ha segnalato un bug e questo è stato debellato, possiamo sperare che scelga di valutare positivamente l’applicazione.

Sono invece da evitare i momenti in cui l’utente ha urgenza di compiere altre azioni, come il momento in cui apre l’app. Anche se è un pattern tipico, in quel momento l’interesse dell’utente è volto a portare ad altro (ad esempio, vorrebbe ordinare quanto prima una pizza o è pronto a iniziare una corsa), ed è molto probabile che ignorerà il suggerimento, facendoci sprecare un’occasione di ottenere un feedback, o persino generando stizza per il flusso interrotto.

The best time to ask users to rate your app is when their satisfaction is at its peak. Moments that typically generate satisfaction include:

• The successful completion of a core action. For example, in a food delivery app, the right moment might be after an order is successfully placed.
• When users have successfully completed a task multiple times, such as logging expenses in a finance tracking app or finishing workouts in a training app.
• After resolving a reported issue. If a user reported a bug and it has been fixed, they may be more inclined to leave a positive review.

On the other hand, moments when users are in a hurry to perform other actions should be avoided, such as when the app is first opened. Even though this is a common pattern, users’ attention at that moment is focused elsewhere, and they are likely to ignore the prompt or feel annoyed by the interruption.

Improving store reviews in just 30 days:? It's possible!

If your app has an overall rating below four stars and is not appealing to users, you can fix this in just 30 days. No magic formulas or growth-hacker tricks, but simple steps based on our experience at Mabiloft.

Days 1–3: turn reviews into data

The goal of the first three days is to stop analyzing reviews emotionally and start organizing them into structured data. Identify recurring themes: are users unhappy with payments? Do they not understand how to use the app? Are they frustrated by crashes?

Identify 5–8 core issues and organize them by severity and frequency. This process will be the foundation for the next steps.

Days 4–7: improve communication

Review every channel through which you communicate with users: social media, ads, website, store pages. Also consider the communication inside the app itself, especially in sensitive areas such as onboarding and paywalls.

Do all touchpoints convey the same message? Is there consistency, or are you communicating different things in different places to different users? Be ruthless in your evaluation, and consider asking someone unfamiliar with the product to identify potential communication gaps.

Days 8–14: fix the problems

Now it is time to roll up your sleeves and actually fix the issues. But the order matters.

From working with many different types of apps, we have learned that ratings tend to improve when issues are addressed in this order:

• First, problems that cause crashes or poor performance, such as very slow loading times.
• Then issues related to passwords, permissions, and login difficulties.
• Once these are resolved, clarify pricing and make payments easier to understand.
• Next, fix bugs in the main user flows.
• Finally, improve visible user support, especially issues reported directly by users or in store reviews.

This way, when users see that the problem they reported has been fixed, they are not immediately confronted with all the other issues the app previously had.

Days 15–30: collect what you have sown

It is time to see the results of your work. Allow users enough time to experience the improvements, which may take more or fewer days depending on whether the app is used daily or only occasionally.

Then, start collecting feedback. Focus especially on users who have benefited from the improvements, such as those who completed a flow that was fixed in the latest release.

Again, pay attention to timing and ask for reviews when you believe users will have a better opinion of your app.

By following this process, we have improved the App Store and Google Play ratings of many of the applications we have developed. Not through any magic formula, but by focusing first and foremost on improving the product itself. As a result:

• Negative reviews decrease
• Positive reviews increase

The final outcome is a rating above four stars, which inspires trust in new users and reflects the satisfaction of active users.

If you want to replicate our method for your product, you can ask for our assistance, with no obligation.