How do you prompt the user to rate your iphone app without waiting for them to delete the app?

Question

I am referring to the popup window that asks the user to submit a review/rating.

I know it can be done since the Aardark app does it...it asks several times in fact! (Almost too spammy.) But there has to be an API to trigger the rating request? Google is giving me no love on this one.

Solution 1

I would check out the Appirater project that Arash Payan has put together.

Pretty much handles the checking and displaying of the "rate my app" prompt, and brings the user right into the review portion of your app on the App Store.

It's a very clean, and elegant way to provide that minimum barrier so that your users are more likely to submit reviews of your app.

Hope this helps...

Solution 2

I have written about a way to open right into the review panel of the App Store.

http://www.memention.com/blog/2009/09/03/Open-Reviews.html

The actual code part if called through a button press could look like below

- (IBAction)gotoReviews:(id)sender
{
    NSString *str = @"itms-apps://ax.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa";
    str = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@/wa/viewContentsUserReviews?", str]; 
    str = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@type=Purple+Software&id=", str];

    // Here is the app id from itunesconnect
    str = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@289382458", str]; 

    [[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:[NSURL URLWithString:str]];
}

Solution 3

I wrote a library to do this - similar to Appirater but a bit more configurable and with Mac App Store support:

https://github.com/nicklockwood/iRate

Solution 4

I have discovered the most subtle value of S.O. (already obvious to all elementary school teachers) --- often by simply forming your question, your neurons rearrange and you are more successful at answering it yourself! (Either that or Google optimized my search after spying on my keystrokes and indexing my question on S.O.)

Answer found after more productive googling: http://www.mobileorchard.com/fighting-back-against-the-app-stores-negative-rating-bias/

Solution 5

this may not be what youre looking for EXACTLY but what i would do is just prompt them in the app somehow and somewhere not too annoying with a button or alert view and have that button link them to app url in safari which opens the appstore to your app. you can use the url http://www.itunes/apps/ (your app) as i believe is the synthax. i cant remember the exact code but i can get it for you if need it.

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Comments

[AlexVogel]

great answer. just what I've searched for.

[Ali Raees]

How can I get my app url? I tried hardcoding yours and not shared application opens... Thanks

[Jitendra Vyas]

The value "289382458" is a value I received when I uploaded the app to itunesconnect. You should find it there when you have filled in all info they want and submitted it. You can then edit your app and then revoke the binary and upload a new one to itunesconnect.

[jki]

Unfortunately it seems that due to some changes in iTunes/AppStore this approach doesn't work anymore- iphone redirects from app to appstore but drops "Unable to connect" prompt.

[Jitendra Vyas]

@Jurgis Kirsakmens I did test with a verbatim copy of the example in the blog an it did open into the review page, also tried with another app id. So, I'm not sure what problem you where experiencing.

[jki]

@epatel - My fault! Everything works fine, if keep "Purple Software" part and use my own appid. I tried to replace "Purple Software" with my company name and then i got "Cannot connect to iTunes Store".

[ma11hew28]

You could set up your own URL that returns the app ID. Then, call that URL to get the app ID. Then, just update the URL with the correct app ID once you know it.

[Ben Call]

I wondered if something like that could be a reason for apple to reject the app though... link doesn't go anywhere... or where it should...

[Ben Call]

I just waited for it to get accepted and submitted an update.

[IQpierce]

A note: links to iTunes or the App Store won't work correctly in the iPhone simulator, and will lead to "unable to connect..." error messages. I would be sure to test features like this on the device.

[freespace]

+1. This library is nicer than Appirater's because customising it doesn't involve modifying the library.

[Kostiantyn Sokolinskyi]

worked perfect for me! But what does "type=Purple+Software" stand for?

[Tibidabo]

Appirater the last commit is in May 2011, there are a lot of pull requests but nothing is merged. I guess the original developer does not spend time on that, so it's pretty much dead! iRate on the other hand is pretty good.

[Tibidabo]

1+ iRate is very good. It supports Mac app store and it is regularly updated.

[Nick Lockwood]

You can get the app ID before you submit the app, it can be found in iTunes connect once you've set up the app but before you submit the binary. Of course the ID won't actually work, but if you want to test the mechanism, you can always try it with a different app ID and then swap it once you know that the code works.

[Nick Lockwood]

You don't have to upload and revoke a binary - the app ID is available in iTunes connect as soon as the app details (description, screenshot, etc) are set up. Purple was an Apple code name for the iPhone that got left behind in the system, it's not a placeholder for your company name.

[Ivan Nikitin]

Appirater works pretty well. And here you can find a MonoTouch port of it: github.com/chebum/Appirater-for-MonoTouch

[Tom Pace]

I love this answer by raf, very concise! Had to tweet it (abridged, unfortunately)

[Abduliam Rehmanius]

I would say iRate is "the best" library option, highly customisable and flexible.

[OMA]

Apparently, "Purple" was the iPhone platform's development code name

[Bhavesh Nayi]

@Nick Thank you very much