Jolla Store: ideas to improve quality of app comments

asked 2014-02-12 13:35:41 +0300

tokaru gravatar image

updated 2014-10-23 16:52:52 +0300

eric gravatar image

App comments in the store are often more of a communicative nature than that of a review, which they shouldn't be IMO. App developers should (be able to) provide a website / mail address for this kind of dialog (basically for anything which is more, like, CRM).

Of course I am interested whether an app works for other users or not, and whether they're happy with it, but having bug reports and feature requests in there (often plus responses from the developer) is hiding the information that is actually useful and clogging up the start view of the Jolla store.

Ideas for improvement:

  • Rename "comments" to "reviews"
  • Additional functionality "discussions" for open discussion with developer and other users
  • Additional functionality "Contact developer with problems or suggestions" (could target developer-configured URL or email address)
  • Short note what is expected to be written down here, like "Let other users know whether you like this application and why."
  • Let others vote about helpful-ness of comments and sort comments accordingly.
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Comments

2

I would love to choose the language of the comments/reviews/rants (whatever you want to call them). To me it is not much of help if the there are only three comments, two in finish, one in russian.

Venty ( 2014-02-12 13:58:24 +0300 )edit
2

alternatively there could be option to "discuss" or "review". I have provided an email address and some other contact info in my app description, but not a single mail has come. Why? because it's much simpler to comment on the app page. So it should be possible to discuss with the app creator in the store, rather than force people to use email or other means.

Acce ( 2014-02-12 14:14:59 +0300 )edit

@Acce that's exactly what I meant with the second item on the list. Currently, commenting is just so much easier than anything else :-/

tokaru ( 2014-02-12 14:28:50 +0300 )edit
1

Please don't force users into writing reviews.
(Leave that to e.g. Google Play. I've never felt tempted to add anything there - good or bad.)

I think the present "Your comment" is fine.
It encourages me to communicate, both with other users of the same app, and with the app developer.
If I've ran into a problem with an app, then usually I'm not the only one. Other people's feedback may contain solutions to my problem, just as the feedback I may get if I describe my problem may solve others as well.

The area could be refined, though:
Comments from the app developer could be highlighted.
The app developer could be given the option of adding intended one-level-replies.

phle ( 2014-02-12 17:20:49 +0300 )edit

@phle don't worry, I do not suggest to force anybody to do anything ;-) I see multiple problems with this kind of communication in the comments-section. Comments like "I need decimal number input, plz" are clogging up the start view of the store, way too prominent. And I am sure app developers are not happy about this either: a) no matter how mature the app is, there will always be feature requests and bug reports in the store, which may leave an impression of prematurity and frighten off less-technical users. b) most developers prefer detailed reports/requests in their ticketing system (e.g. on github), it is really painful to keep track of issues in those comments. Maybe this works with a few thousand Jolla users, but I predict it will grow too chaotic for some to handle it with rising number of users.

tokaru ( 2014-02-13 09:40:04 +0300 )edit