Yes, developer are „real human people“ that read reviews of their apps. 🙂 I am very happy when I get good reviews and I try to help people when they have problems using my app.
I also understand when one of my apps gets not that good reviews and the reason it that a user found bugs in it. Of course it’s more helpful, if users tell me about problems via the support email address so I can try to reproduce and fix it. 😉 (Some people are really awesome about this, sending me detailed problem descriptions with screen shots)
What I do not understand: Bad reviews that are based on lack of understading and most time have nothing to do with my apps.
Why share this?
Maybe a mixture of „frustration coping“ for myself but also for other developer to tell them „you are not alone!“ 😉 …and of course also for all readers of my blog that want to see, what wonderful reviews are posted.
Some examples of these „very helpful“ reviews
„App does not synchronize correctly and has other issues“ (1 star rating)
Aha. Which issues? The user left no reply email address in his review. So I will never be able to respond to the review and do not know what these issues are (in the user’s opinion). Additionally synchronization in windows phone is done by the windows phone OS, never by an app. So if the google calendar is not configured on the phone (!) it will never sync in Week View, the WP built in calendar or any calendar app.
„I would like to enter recurring events for 14 days or 4 weeks“ (1 star rating)
Yes, I would like this option too. Unfortunately the windows phone programing interface provided by MS does not allow this. Times for recurring events cannot be added/changed/configured by developers. Is something that is technically impossible really a reason for a 1-star rating?
„Calendar is good but tasks are missing“ (1 star rating)
MS does not provide a programing interface for tasks. Really sad and I hope, this will come some day and I will add this feature to week view but why a 1 star rating for one missing feature that is not even possible at the moment?
„Really good app but I would like to see appointments from week view on the lock screen“ (3-star rating)
A really good app but a 3 star (average) rating? I tried to add lockscreen integration and the only reason why I did not do it: The MS programing interface has a major design flaw for locksreen text support. In order to show a text on the lockscreen, it must be assigned as a text for the live tile background.
BUT Week View already uses the live tile background for showing additional appointments or a graphical week representation. Why did MS not simply add a „locksreen text“ field that can be set by developers to show it on the lockscreen? I do not know. Thanks MS, for making a great feature useless since it cannot be integrated with apps that use a live tile background.
„Passed appointment is shown on the lock screen“ (1 star rating)
As you can see from the comment above: Week View has absolutely nothing to do with the lockscreen text. It does not provide lockscreen integration for the mentioned reasons above. (If you like, this, you may check out my app lockscreen calendar).
„Need credit card to buy the app“ (1 star rating)
One of the best in the „useless“ category. 😉 This has nothing to do with the app (any app) itself. Also it has nothing to do with anything under my control. Selling apps is completely done by MS marketplace (MS takes 30% revenue for this „service“), even I have to buy my own app, when I want to install it from marketplace.
There are more of this kind of „ratings“ but the good thing is: most ratings are positive and I also get much good feedback.
In fact my app Week View has 2000 ratings in the german marketplace with an average rating of 4.5 stars (out of 5) and has been features by MS many times…so I guess it’s not all that bad 🙂
Thanks to everybody that is writing really helpful reviews and contacting me via the support email address, if there are any problems.