Want more reviews of your iPhone app? Try this.
One ‘aha’ from our recent developer survey was the power of blog reviews to drive app visibility and sales. When asked what one area they’d most like to have some marketing help in, several developers mentioned getting more reviews as their top pick.
This got our wheels turning, so we did a little looking around at what had worked in other markets and came across Urbanspoon’s “Spoonback” strategy. Urbanspoon made it possible for any blogger to get their restaurant reviews featured on Urbanspoon just by including a little widget they called a “Spoonback”. The presence of a Spoonback allowed Urbanspoon to sift through the sea of food-related blog content and zero in on just those posts relevant to the restaurant in question. Urbanspoon got the benefit of including the freshest and most original review content on their site, while participating bloggers got exposure, traffic and links from one of the hottest restaurant review sites on the web.
We figure, if it’s good enough for Urbanspoon, it’s good enough for us, so we’ve put together our own version of the idea. We don’t yet have a clever name for them (any suggestions?) but our “blog review badges” work just like Spoonbacks: ask your favorite blogger to review your app, make sure they include our review badge, and we’ll find the post and include it in our rankings automagically. As a result, your app will get more views, the blogger will get more visits and (assuming the reviewers aren’t dragging your name through the mud) you’ll get more downloads. Everybody wins!
Every app on AppStoreHQ now has widget code available for it - just look for the link on the app detail page that reads “Add your review of [your app here] to AppStoreHQ.” You can see an example of the widget in action at the bottom of this post, and the Urbanspoon badge page can be found here.
Give it a shot and let us know what you think!
