A preliminary analysis of mobile app user reviews

Abstract

The advent of online software distribution channels like Apple Inc.'s App Store and Google Inc.'s Google Play has offered developers a single, low cost, and powerful distribution mechanism. These online stores help users discover apps as well as leave a review. Ratings and reviews add value to both the developer and potential new users by providing a crowd-sourced indicator of app quality. Hence, for developers it is important to get positive reviews and high ratings to ensure that an app has a viable future. But, what exactly do users say on these app stores? And more importantly, what is the experience that compels a user to leave either a positive or a negative rating? Our analysis of 8.7 million reviews from 17,330 apps shows that users tend to leave short, yet informative reviews, and the rating as well as the category influences the length of a review. In this preliminary study, we found that users will leave longer messages when they rate an app poorly, and the depth of feedback in certain categories is significantly higher than for other.