Recently I posted about the success of our iPhone app Veg Garden (Veg Garden reaches Top 40 in Reference Category UK) over the Xmas and New Year period. Since then we have experienced the trial and tribulations of what is the App Store.

In the first week of January Veg Garden peaked at 39th in the UK Reference Category. Then came along one bad customer rating and review emphasising that the app lacked enough content for the price of it. Following that we found Veg Garden dropping each day in the rankings before eventually dropping out of the Top 100 in this category.

Seeing this trend and respecting our customer review we were busy working on an update which introduced more produce and growing tips for all our new and existing produce (This is one of many updates planned over the course of the coming weeks). So, after few days of hard work and a two-day turnaround from the Apple Approval Team we pushed out an update to the App Store on the 13th January.

Over the next few days, we saw the majority of our existing customers download the update which was encouraging to know that we didn’t have to many disgruntled customers who decided to part ways with Veg Garden. To coincide with this, the daily sales started to creep up as we entered back into the Top 100 for this category.

Then came along a couple of good reviews from new and existing customers with the average rating of the current version getting a 4 out of 5 stars. There has seen a surge in its ranking since then with the app now sitting at 29th as I write this.

How long will this last? Will it go higher? God knows! It is a learning experience and elements of good decisions, luck and timing all play a part.

So points to take away from this -

  1. Customers Reviews and Ratings really do matter and it is something that potential customers won’t ignore.
  2. Continually analyse your apps rankings and don’t ignore trends.
  3. Be very reactive to negative feedback and address the issues as soon as possible by rolling out updates.
  4. Call out to your customers and encourage them to give you feedback so you can steer the future of the app towards what the customers really want.