4 User Experience Issues Harming your Mobile App’s Ratings (according to our big research of angrrry reviews)
Why do some mobile apps end up being less than stellar? How can they improve? We’ve read through hundreds of angry mobile app reviews to uncover the most common issues that make mobile app users unhappy. In this two part series we list the 9 deadly sins app owners make that infuriate their users. To help you do better, we accompany each issue with useful comments. Read them and you will have a shot at reaching that sweet 5-star rating.
Almost everyone has an app now. But with more than 5 million apps in the Apple App Store and Google Play combined, having a poorly executed app can do much more harm than good.
The number 1 issue of every low-rated app out there is poor user experience (or UX in short). If your ratings are low, there’s a 40% (according to our sample) chance that it is due to an awful UX.
01.
Bad Visual Design and Poor User Flow
The problem: An app has to make a good first impression, otherwise it is doomed to fail. Best case scenario, the user simply uninstalls the unimpressive, unintuitive app. But more often than not, they get so frustrated with confusing menus, messy fonts and ugly colours, they opt to leave a ranty review, harming the app in the long run. You’ll want to avoid such a scenario. No matter how useful and practical your app is, do make sure it also looks and works the part.
The solution: Stick to what works
And by that we’re not saying you shouldn’t be innovative!
When it comes to making your app intuitive and easy to navigate, there are some proven patterns for both iOS and Android. Both ecosystems have published them under their Human interface guidelines initiatives (Android; iOS). An application built with these guidelines in mind is generally simple to understand and conveys a sense of familiarity to the average user.
Bold colors, animations and decorations make your app stand out. Or do they? The short answer is - to an extent. They work great as long as they serve a functional purpose. A good exercise is to question all your “decorations”;
Does this new color help the user discern there is an action they can take?
Is this new font size a mere eye candy, or does it convey an important piece of information?
Did we include this 5-second animation to hide a delay while loading data from servers, or are we merely trying to entertain the user?
To make things a little more complicated, there are cultural aspects you need to get right, too. Colors mean different things in different cultural backgrounds. Cultures consume information in different directions (left-to-right vs. right-to-left). Preferences and regulations about emails, location sharing, etc. may also differ.
Taking all this into account while maintaining your brand’s identity typically takes an experienced mobile designer. They will know and follow the ground rules unless there is a good reason not to, while managing to build something “special” on top of them to make your app look unique.
02.
Crashes, crashes, crashes.
The problem: Why even have an app if it’s not going to work half the time?
Log-in… Crash. Try again, scan my code for loyalty points… Crash. Restart my phone, log-in once more… Lag. Then Crash. Uninstall, move on.
Stability is vital and ties in closely with UX. Especially with loyalty apps, the customer needs to be able to get their phone out quickly, open the app, scan the code and be done with it. Poor stability just leads to frustration with the app, with your brand, and subsequently ends up in the customer looking for someone who just does it better.
The solution: Monitor your crashes
There is a wide array of crash monitoring tools out there and it takes barely any additional time to integrate them into an application. Tools such as Sentry.io (our go-to crash monitoring tool) give you a live dashboard that tells you how many crashes there are, how serious they are and to whom they happen. With a little more effort, you can drill down to specific operating systems, device models and even geography data about each crash instance. Developers can drill even deeper and get hints exactly which line of code went wrong; which in turn drastically reduces fixing times.
Why this matters? Getting objective data helps you prioritize which issues need an immediate fix. For example, you can learn there is a crash that affects your conversion path (sounds terrifying). However, once you look at the numbers you might realize it only happens to 0.1% of users who somehow managed to run your app on a phone from 2013.
Alternatively, imagine a new iOS version comes out and you get a timely warning that the early-adopters can’t even open the app. That is an actionable insight that might save you a lot of money and user loyalty if acted upon before the late-adopters arrive.
03.
Login Issues and Registration Issues
The problem: Login and user registration go hand in hand and are all about making a good first impression. Fail this test and you’ve lost your user no matter how terrific and amazing the rest of your app might be. If the authentication email takes forever to arrive, the user’s going to lose patience and give up. What’s even worse, even if they do decide to wait, they often find that, by the time it arrives, the activation code is no longer valid.
Also, be sure to pay attention to the little things. If, for example, you ask your users to set up a username during registration, make sure they can then enter the username when logging in and not hit the character limit. Even such dumb mistakes can cause a big loss of trust towards your brand.
The solution: Drop the barriers
Good user experience in this case, for instance, entails including character counters by the input fields, or hint texts in the input fields themselves. Keen on further simplification? Consider using biometry (face/fingerprint scan) to let your users log back in effortlessly. Give them a way to sign in with their existing social accounts. Or login with Apple. Or maybe give them an option to enter with a single click via magic links that arrive in their email inbox.
The “I-forgot-my-credentials” problem is real. With ever-reducing attention spans, each unnecessary second spent in the login/registration flow means lost users. Luckily, there is a wide box of techniques you can use to make these barriers disappear.
04.
A Not-So-Smart Home App
The problem: More often than not, a “smart home” app designed to connect to your washing machine, oven or fridge ends up being less than stellar. Sometimes the app takes literal days to connect to the device, other times it decides to remain disconnected forever. Come on! Days when broken bluetooth connections were acceptable are so 2010; today, consumers demand better. Even vacuum applications aren’t allowed to suck.
A robot vacuum app might decide to delete its saved flat data every week or so, leading the poor owner to frustration. Nobody enjoys having to scan their flat anew four times a month. The robot itself may be fine, but what does it matter if the app isn’t.
The solution: Bring users to the “construction site”
When building a smart home application, incorporate real-life users into the process early. Form focus groups, offer alpha-testing opportunities to the power-users and gather as much feedback as you can. You will be surprised how many valuable insights you will learn from people you are building the application for. Some of the insights might feel painful at times; they will challenge your ideas how “we imagined they would use it” - but ultimately, a well conducted user testing phase will yield optimal results in terms of user satisfaction, loyalty and willingness to refer.
Remember - if you can’t explain something to the power user, you don’t stand a change explaining it to the average user once the app hits the market.
05.
Conclusion
User experience is a broad term and incorporates many nuanced decisions. However, it can make or break the reputation of your app. No matter if your users realise it or not, it affects their attitude towards your app more than anything else. So if your ratings keep being low, it may be worth to check in with an experienced UX designer to see if there’s anything you can do better.
Go ahead and take a look at your own app. Try to step into the shoes of your average user. Or even better; hire a focus group from your target audience and listen. What’s the registration process like? Can you log into the app all right? Are the menus intuitive? You get the gist.
Building a great app is a challenge, but we hope our research has helped you gain better insight into a few things that can go wrong and what to watch out for.
Good luck! 👋🏻
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