{"id":117,"date":"2018-12-30T18:54:48","date_gmt":"2018-12-30T18:54:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.londonbuspal.co.uk\/blog\/?p=117"},"modified":"2019-01-01T17:01:39","modified_gmt":"2019-01-01T17:01:39","slug":"devastation-of-bad-reviews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.londonbuspal.co.uk\/blog\/devastation-of-bad-reviews\/","title":{"rendered":"Devastation of bad reviews"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Reviews on the Google Play store since the release of London Bus Pal 4 has been disappointing (it has only been four days since release, but the reviews have been generally negative).  At least it feels that way!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I have been moping around all day and I have lost all motivation to improve things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Six reviews in and my average is 2.5 stars &#8211; the last six reviews of version 3.2.11 average 4.67 stars.  Bad reviews really hit me hard, because I spend a lot of time thinking about my users and what they would want.  I am constantly told by my advertising provider that I can make so much more money with interstitial ads, but I refuse, because I would never want to annoy a user.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As I am full-time employed, I can only work on my app in my free time.  This takes quite a lot of energy at times, especially if all I want to do is take some time out.  But when users are facing issues, I want to fix it for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There is also an unfortunate problem with the rating system.  As it stands, anything which is not a 5 star rating, takes my average down.  I don&#8217;t necessarily agree that every rating should be 5 stars, but I always think about what those 4 star ratings are doing to my average.  That said, I am thankful for those 4 star ratings!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\nBecause of the large number of apps on the Google Play store which are \nof poor quality or just plainly unusable, I feel that giving me a 1 star\n review is comparing me to those publishers.\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">How do I rate other apps?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Given that we only have 5 stars to play with, there isn&#8217;t too much scope to play with, so the difference between poor quality apps and good apps is quite small.  Here is my baseline for rating apps:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>1 star &#8211; the app does not do what it is meant to do<\/li><li>2 stars &#8211; the app is clearly missing much functionality or bugs \/ poor usability get in the way of full use<\/li><li>3 stars &#8211; the app does most of what it is meant to do, but with some missing functionality or poor usability hindering use<\/li><li>4 stars &#8211; the app does what it is meant to do but for whatever reason I couldn&#8217;t give it 5 stars (usually a crash or frustrating usability)<\/li><li>5 stars &#8211; the app does exactly what I want it to do<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Those are my baselines and I would then subtract stars for negative issues such as crashing, excessive battery usage, unneccessary permission requests, excessive advertising or deceptive practices.<br><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Reviews on the Google Play store since the release of London Bus Pal 4 has been disappointing (it has only 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