Ratings and reviews in the Microsoft Store

The Microsoft Store on Windows enables users to rate and review products that they've purchased or installed on their devices.

This feedback helps other customers decide which products to get next as users often cite ratings and reviews are crucial as they often check them before downloading an app. Additionally, reviews provide valuable feedback to developers, enabling them to improve their apps. Ratings and reviews also influence a product's discoverability, potentially boosting its downloads in the Microsoft Store.

Users can rate and review products directly in the Microsoft Store via the detail page for a product or from the Library. In addition, apps and games can ask users to rating and review from directly in their experience. Integrating rating and review prompts into your application enable you to get feedback from a larger and more representative audience beyond only those users who come back to the detail page in the Microsoft Store to review your product.

This article provides recommendations for how to integrate Store ratings and reviews directly into your application.

Ratings

The Microsoft Store provides users with the ability to rate an app, game, movie, or TV show on a scale of one to five stars.

The rating score displayed in the Store has an affinity towards the product's recent ratings to give users a more informed insight to the current experience. This means that newer ratings and reviews have a greater impact on the overall score displayed for your product. The total lifetime count of ratings includes all ratings submitted since the app was published to the Microsoft Store.

Note: the ratings score and total count of ratings displayed in the Microsoft Store are specific to a user's country or region to reflect more relevant feedback.

Reviews

Reviews are a great way for users to share their experience with a product. Reviews are visible to everyone on the product page along with the user's name. If a review is edited, the latest review is shown on the product page. Reviews don't directly impact the rating score or the visibility of a product in the Microsoft Store but provides more context for a rating score.

Asking users for ratings and reviews

You can add in-app rating prompts or custom popups to solicit feedback at optimal moments. These prompts can help collect feedback representative of your user’s experience. This approach can significantly increase the volume and quality of the feedback and may improve your ratings score in the Store.

Microsoft Store provides an API to trigger an in-app rating prompt in the context of your app. We recommend you use this API to actively seek feedback from your users. To learn more about how to programmatically prompt your users to rate or review your app using this API, refer to Request ratings and reviews for your app for instructions on using the API.

Strategic usage of ratings and reviews prompts

It's important to time the prompts strategically to reach users when they're engaging in a positive way with your app, such as completing an important task or reaching a milestone. Avoid interrupting the user’s flow or current task. Some considerations to be mindful of:

• After completing a significant task or achieving a milestone (such as finishing a level in a game, completing a purchase).
• After using a valuable feature or a unique value proposition of your app.
• After a major app update. This allows users to experience the new features and provide feedback.
• During a seasonal event or promotion, to capitalize on the excitement and engagement of users during these times.

Try to avoid repeated requests for ratings as users may get frustrated, leading to negative reviews.

Prompting the user

Before launching the ratings and reviews dialog, you should check with the user if it’s a good time for them to provide feedback. It can also be sent when you determine that the user is having a negative experience, giving you an opportunity to collect details of the issues or bugs they're facing.

This image is an example dialog to ask the user if it's a good time to provide feedback.

Based on the user’s choice in the first dialog, your app, or game should invoke the Microsoft Store ratings and review dialog.

Optionally, you can create an experience in your application to collect feedback on issues and bugs. In the first dialog, when the user indicates they're having a poor experience, you can present a dialog like this and provide a way for users to give you the details needed to troubleshoot problems.

Discoverable feedback link

In addition to proactively prompting users, you can also include a discoverable link to provide feedback within your application, for example within a settings window or natural place in your application. This link can be less intrusive and annoying than prompting users, but still gives the option to provide feedback.

Store policy

When you implement a rating function within your app, all reviews must send the user to the Store's rating mechanism, regardless of star rating chosen. If you collect feedback or comments from users, you must make it clear that these comments don't feed in to the app rating or reviews in the Store but is sent directly to the app developer. The Developer Code of Conduct contains more information related to Fraudulent or Dishonest Activities.

Analyzing ratings and reviews

You can analyze ratings and reviews with the Reviews report in Partner Center. This report helps developers monitor the performance of their app over time. For more details, developers can also analyze ratings and reviews by country or region, app package, device type, OS, and more.

When you receive reviews or feedback, promptly responding demonstrates care for user experiences and builds trust. Additionally, it can encourage users to update their ratings if they feel their concerns are acknowledged or addressed.