I've found something a bit different. Yes, you'll always get 1 star sucks comments on a widget, but what i've done is driven users to contact me or consult a help page i set up and explain exactly how to use a widget. This "exactly" is still relative to the user, but from past experiences there are often complaints that "The widget is small and doesn't update", which after several email conversations with users i realised, means that they dragged the app to the home screen thinking it'd become a widget. Maybe Google should consider adding an option when you drag a launcher from a widget to the homescreen to ask if you want the widget or the shortcut, especially considering the occasional "Sucks" on their Buzz widget - amongst other issues. My ongoing contact with users about what they want and how to improve the existing widget is what's kept my ratings high. That 1 star user base won't stay so i tried to focus on looking after the people who would stay and give 5 stars. Seems to work well, some of them even bought the donate version of my widget after i had helped them. Another big issue that i find gets in the way, is the 325 character limit. That really hurts, because most of my explanation is compensating for platform problems:
"Problems? Help on dev site! Didn't help? EMAIL ME, i'll fix it! IF STOPS UPDATING, CHECK IF A TASK MANAGER IS KILLING IT! Cyanogen Mod may kill it aggressively. USE: LONG PRESS HOMESCREEN, SELECT WIDGET" The biggest thing that still gets to me, is the users who refund a $1 donate version of something when the free version is also in the market. Why not just install the free version if you're too cheap to pay $1, at least my ratings will stay up. I like the refund system, but sometimes i question the mentality of the users. On Mar 22, 9:48 pm, kanatacrude <garnet.ulr...@gmail.com> wrote: > I agree Greg. And that is why I chased down a few of the "Sucks" > posters to find out in what way my widget sucked. Several of them > didn't even know what a widget was or was supposed to do yet felt > qualified to pronounce it as worthy of the "Sucks" label. So I went > back and was much more careful in my 375 characters in the market how > to install a widget. I made sure that upon install, it popped up and > explained how to install a widget. And surprise. It makes no > difference to the number of "Sucks" comments that can be traced back > to a user that just bought an Android phone, has no clue and just gets > trigger happy on the 1 star. And this is not speculation on my part > because I actually conversed with many of these users. > > So while my initial instinct was to just roll up my sleeves and make > my widget "Suck" less, I would advice that once you get it fully > functional, you'll get diminishing returns on your rating from > continued efforts to make it not suck. This applies for Widgets. I > can't comment on other apps because I only have one non-widget on the > market. > > The other interesting part I'll note is that all my stuff on the > market is free! So if it does exactly what it claims to and costs > nothing, does it deserve 1 star ratings because of things it doesn't > do? "Would be better if it swept my laneway" (1 star) > > Garnet Ulrich > > On Mar 22, 4:35 pm, Greg Donald <gdon...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > > On Mon, Mar 22, 2010 at 2:10 PM, kanatacrude <garnet.ulr...@gmail.com> > > wrote: > > > Oh yah, "Sucks" is my favourite comment to receive on my widgets. > > > Maybe Google could just use a blacklist of words which cause the > > > rating to be ignored from the average. > > > I wouldn't want this. > > > Why not try harder to build apps that don't suck :) > > > -- > > Greg Donald > > destiney.com | gregdonald.com -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscribegooglegroups.com or reply to this email with the words "REMOVE ME" as the subject.
