Ratings matter more than indie devs like to admit. In a small niche your position against other apps depends on a bunch of things, and ratings are a big one, and I felt it directly — after my rating count went up I saw a real bump in installs and how often the app showed up. I only have nine of them. Each one is worth a lot. So here's how I got them, and the one change that basically doubled them.
The common mistake is asking for the review when someone opens the app, or after some timer. They haven't gotten anything from you yet, so why would they rate it. The better advice I read somewhere and it stuck — ask right after the app actually did something useful for them, the moment it paid off. For my app that moment is obvious, it's when an item gets marked as sold. They bought something, tracked it, and just closed the loop with a sale, so they've seen the whole point of the app work. That's when you ask. It feels like "nice, this helped me" instead of "why is this popup in my face".
But here's what I got wrong at first — I asked once. Someone sells an item, gets the prompt, taps not now because they're in the middle of something, and I never ask again. Gone. Then I realised Apple actually lets you ask a few times a year, so I changed it to ask again roughly every week until the system stops showing it. And that caught my core users, the ones who use the app constantly and had said not now the first time simply because they were busy. A week later they're mid-flow again after another sale, the ask comes back, and this time they do it. About half my ratings came from that one change. These weren't new people, they were my most loyal users I'd have lost to a single dismissed popup.
And it doesn't feel spammy, for two reasons. One, Apple caps how many times you can ask, so you physically can't nag even if you wanted to. Two, every ask is tied to the user just succeeding at the thing they came for, so it lands as a good moment, not an interruption. Your best users are usually your busiest, they'll wave away the first prompt not because they dislike the app but because they're using it, so give them a second and third chance at good moments and a chunk of them say yes.
So tie the review prompt to your app's payoff moment, whatever that is for you, and then actually use your full allowance instead of burning your one shot. For me that turned a handful of ratings into double, and the visibility that came after was worth far more than nine little stars sounds like it should be.
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