Thanks, Apple. But we need more.

Apple now allows developers to respond to user reviews on both the Mac and iOS App Stores. I’ve always been an advocate of this — you can read my interview on Macworld on What developers want from iOS 10, or my guest post on Cult of Mac — To Apple: A developer’s wish list.

There are few things more frustrating than seeing a review of your app that points out a simple problem and not being able to respond. Even worse, a user leaves a one-star unaware of the feature that you already support. After the recent iOS 10.3 update, we need not deal with such nuisances.

Thanks, Apple. Better late than never.

How it works

You can publicly respond to customer reviews of your app on the App Store for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. When you respond, the customer is notified and has the option to update their feedback.

To respond to the reviews, log in to iTunes Connect, under ‘My Apps’ click on ‘Activity’ tab and navigate to ‘Ratings and Reviews’ section.

While it all sounds great, we’ve observed a small annoyance. When you respond to a review, the customer gets notified, but Apple says it might take up to 24 hours for the response to show publicly. In the meanwhile, the negative review will continue to leave a bad taste for those who visit your store listing. Not an ideal scenario, I believe. It’ll be great if the response becomes public instantly.

Responding to reviews on the App Store is new and can be overwhelming at times. At Newton, we’ve been replying to Play Store reviews for a couple of years and have some learnings on how to respond to store reviews.

But, we need more

Of late, Apple is showing a keen interest in providing better tools for developers. It encourages more serious developers to build apps for the platform and keeps existing developers happy. It’s a great thing for both the users and developers.

The App Store Analytics is useful. We welcomed the 85/15 revenue share on subscriptions from the second year. And the recently added option to respond to user reviews is great. But, we need more.

@Apple: Now that you’ve started listening to us, I’d request a few more App Store features that’ll make our lives easy:

• Do not reset reviews after every update
• Better Mac App Store — provide App Analytics and TestFlight which are available on iOS
• Free trials for paid apps
• Option to change screenshots and App Previews without having to wait for a new update
• More power to App Analytics: search analytics -­ what keywords were used to download the app, A/B test description, screenshots, Preview Videos, etc.

Do you have more to add? Feel free to share your list in the comments. Also, tell us how you like the new option to respond to reviews.