Ways to legitimately improve your rating on Google Play Store

User ratings on Google Play Store are... hard to read sometimes. It really hurts to see how people seemingly did not care to understand what your app actually does and then complain about it by leaving a bad rating. However, there is a big opportunity for you as developer to turn some of those heart-breaking-swear-ratings into something that does not drag down your average rating shown to future users.

By replying to reviews in a very polite way you can turn at least some of those - 50% in my case into something that is at least a little more positive. I had cases where people (accidentally?) rated the app with one star, but turned it into the full five stars after I had replied to their rating.

Again, it's important to not let your feelings take over and reply in a mean or emotional way. Stay professional, stay classy 😎. My opening phrase is usually "Thanks for your feedback" - even if the feedback was non-existent or not constructive at all. This is how you make some people aware of how stupid their review was in the first place. Next, I ask along the lines of "what exactly went wrong" or "how can we improve the app" to get a discussion going. Last but not least I often end with "contact me via email at [email protected]" in order to make it obvious for less technically versed people how to continue the discussion (if I'm not mistaken, there is a big button saying "REPLY" in the email that Google is sending to users, but still...).

Long story short: Keep an eye on your reviews, reply to them in a polite and professional manner and give the user concrete actions to take.

If your problem is not receiving enough ratings in the first place, I highly suggest to include a dialog that asks users to review your app. If you do this in a way that does not annoy users you'll see many more reviews for your app soon. In my case the conversion rate is very low - only 2% of users asked to leave a rating agree to do so.