How our ratings moved up in google play – ConfirmTkt

By Dinesh Kumar Kotha on July 19, 2015 10 Comments / 5295 views

Want to share few updates with the team.

Let me start with some of our stats.

Currently we are having an average of 15k daily active users,45k monthly active users on mobile with more than 300k sessions weekly out of which only 5% are new.

Last time when I have written the post .We were (Me and Sripad) still working at other firms and now we have quit our jobs .And some good news-We are funded(Got angel funding from Pravin Agarwala and other investor)..And we also got through google launchpad scale stage program where we got cloud credits worth $100k to get us started.

Coming to the title .It definitely has something to do with the post.Il share it in the end.

Want to share few product updates.We launched a new version in android with new design,alternates in same train,alternates with PNR result .

With this we are able to give 15-20% users with confirmed tickets.Our problem still remains.We don’t want anyone to postpone their journey just because they did not get a ticket.We started with only waiting list prediction but as we moved we found out that it is not enough to solve the problem.We should do lot more to solve this.More than a crore people travel in trains and with online travel segment holding more than 61% share of over all Ecommerce in India last year no doubt that it is going to be challenging. More people come online to search and discover tickets and we are trying to solve it.Wish us good luck.

Coming to the title.

Our ratings were going down.And we had no clue why are they going down.All the comments were good but the ratings were bad.Our ratings almost came down to 4.2 which was bad.We were looking at all possibilities if one of the features is causing this.But found out something interesting.

This was the text we were displaying for ratings prompt.

“Love the app? Please rate it in google play.”

And the text now .

“Love the app? Please give us 5 stars.”

I think you got the point.This might sound stupid for some but it worked for us and is proven.

Will share more in my next post

Update:10/05/2015:

Now we are rated 4.4 in google play.

Also adding one more tip to increase number of rating /reviews.

Android Devs will understand below code.

Our previous code:

String uri = “https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.confirmtkt.lite”;
Intent intent;

intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW, Uri.parse(uri));

Current Code:

String uri = “https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.confirmtkt.lite”;
Intent intent;

try {
intent = new Intent(
Intent.ACTION_VIEW,
Uri.parse(“market://details?id=com.confirmtkt.lite”));
} catch (android.content.ActivityNotFoundException anfe) {
intent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW, Uri
.parse(uri));
}

What first variant does is it asks user to choose the app browser/google play where as second one directly takes him to play store.We have observed lot of people dropping at the point of app selection and were not rating.After we made this change our number of daily rating moved by 100%.

Feel free to reach out to me dinesh@confirmtkt.com

Thanks
–
Dinesh
ConfirmTkt.com

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Comments

Dinesh Kumar Kotha

10 Comments

asha chaudhry July 21, 2015, 6:48 am

hey dinesh,

what an interesting, yet super simple hack! thanks for sharing 🙂

am happy to see that you guys are moving steadily with constant improvements! i recently met pranav (your team member based in goa) and am looking fwd to hearing more from you, soon!

ps: HAPPY B’DAY!! KEEP ROCKING!
Dinesh Kumar Kotha July 21, 2015, 8:58 am

Thanks Asha.

Yes Pranav told about the meeting.
Alok Rodinhood Kejriwal July 26, 2015, 2:21 pm

🙂

Apple frowns at the prompt of 5 stars. They will reject the app if they see it. So will Google Play soon.

Point being – You’ve made a great app – but that’s us telling you so right?

Ps – Have you been in touch with the Google Play Team in India? They SHOULD promote you guys!!!
Alok Rodinhood Kejriwal July 26, 2015, 2:24 pm

Tip – Can you keep changing the icon and check? I find it boring

Are you using the A/B testing feature now?

Do you PNS often? Google Play sign in activated?
Dinesh Kumar Kotha July 26, 2015, 2:31 pm

Thanks Alok for suggestion.

Did not talk to Play team.Will get in touch with them.Can you please help.Fwd some contact to my id dinesh@confirmtkt.com
asha chaudhry July 26, 2015, 2:37 pm

errr dinesh… wouldn’t it be more appropriate for you to send your request to alok@rodinhood.com?
Dinesh Kumar Kotha July 26, 2015, 2:46 pm

sure .I will do.Thanks for the Email Asha.

Glad that Alok commented on my post. 🙂
Dinesh Kumar Kotha July 26, 2015, 3:16 pm

Thanks Alok,

We will change it .

Haven’t started using that yet.Will send you an email.
Dinesh Kumar Kotha July 27, 2015, 5:15 am

Also adding to that.One of the main reasons to think of this is that many users were rating 1* with reviews like Excellent,Very good etc..This clearly states that users were unintentionally giving 1 star ratings.
Dinesh Kumar Kotha October 5, 2015, 4:20 am

Added an update to the post.How to increase number of ratings/reviews.