Best Practices for App Store Reviews

The app store review system is a mystery to a great many developers and application owners, and has been a moving target for some time. No, I am not talking about the process of getting your application itself approved, but dealing with and working with the review system in place for your live applications.
 
A very quick history - application reviews were there we all launched our first apps on the store. In essence, its the same system that is in place for music, movies and TV. I find that when speaking on this subject the fact the system is borrowed comes as a surprise. Application developers suffer from a compulsive focus on the App Store portion of iTunes that has the front page of iTunes as a flittering thought on the way to the App Store to check new competition, reviews and who has moved in the stats. At the start of the App Store, the system in place was open to reviews, even if it were just to say that they did not like the idea of your application, never having actually downloaded it.
 
Here are some of my more favorite reviews, culled from various apps we completed:
 

• "I can't wait to get an iPhone" 5 Stars
• "I can't afford an iPhone" 1 Star
• "asdf, this is cool" 1 Star
• "I don't have a credit card" 1 Star
• "The iPhone is the best!!!!" 3 Stars

 
The theme of the app store launch was users posting not so much about your application, but about the iPhone and the App Store in general. As the app owner you suffered these reviews, be it five star or one. Then we started noticing something. Competitors were spiking the reviews. To give it some definition, 50-60 reviews with very much the same kind of language, all one star, all posted to your application in rapid succession and at the same time a similar number of reviews posted as 5 star reviews to a competitor app. It really wasn't even very subtle.
 
Fast forward a few months, and a change rolls through the store. Application reviews tied to an account that did not download the app when the left a review were purged from the app store database. Over those few days, various apps had significant gains in star value including the New York Times, and a kind of democracy swept through as the spikes were cleaned, at least to some degree.
Who was still suffering? Free applications since they still held no barrier to entry to download and post a review. At that point, paid applications presented the barrier of at least having to pay $.99 to get spiked. Hardly a big barrier, as $60 is a trivial sum to inflict damage onto your competitor - but one thing is true, its that app developers are either cheap and that $60 was a real barrier or the fact that from a marketing perspective its nothing was lost on the people whom were taking such skulduggery tactics.
 
Fast forward again, to today. In-app purchase means so many more apps are again free, providing little monetary barrier to competitors spiking your app. I really want to emphasize that the amount of money to spike most applications is still a very trivial amount of money so paid app developers, listen up. Recently Molinker had all of their apps removed, all 1000 of them for just these spiking tactics. As that has been well covered elsewhere what is really important is laying down some best practices for the real world of today's app store reviews.
 
App Store Review Policy, for Atimi Software:

• Absolutely, you can have everyone you know review your application. This 'friends and family' round should be expected anyway - you do have friends that know about the app right? And they would be writing a review for you anyway. Giving them a heads up and some prodding to do so doesn't hurt anybody.
• Do not in any way encourage negative reviews of competitive applications, you are above that.
• Employees at your company can leave reviews. Why not. If your company is anything like Atimi our people are opinionated and you are not going to get all 5 star reviews. Do not provide a script for your friends and family or your employees. At Atimi, we have people who may never have interacted in a significant with the team that created the application and there is no reason to deny such reviewers.
• Do not take revenge. If you get spiked sit back and realize that someone out there really considers you a threat. However, do the homework and if you are able to put together details on your spike, provide that to Apple for further review and potential takedown of the reviews, or the apps themselves.
• Never, hire, pay for, engage a firm or compensate anyone for reviewing your application.
• Do not create multiple iTunes connect accounts and review your app or others more than once.
• If you don't have anything nice to say about a competitor app, say nothing at all - no one review is worth being investigated on by Apple and putting all your hard work at risk.