The strongest product roadmaps are those that incorporate user feedback. Why? Think of your users as your eyes and ears. They're the first to benefit from your app update, and the first to report an issue. If they're taking the time to write a review, they likely see the potential in your product.
But not all user reviews are created equal. After all, users can say almost anything in a review. This can be extremely frustrating when you're a data-driven PM trying to incorporate user feedback into your product roadmap. Thankfully, there are tools, like Apptopia's Review Intelligence, which help you extract only the most useful user reviews.
Review Intelligence by Apptopia
We’re taking the guesswork out of app/product development with Apptopia’s Review Intelligence. Instead of combing through thousands of reviews on your own, you can rely on our review text tool to analyze, sort, and deliver the actionable insights your team needs.
Understand which features users love or need improvement. And discover how your product compares to your competitors’, without any heavy lifting (leave that to us). Review Intelligence is your comprehensive research tool, helping you stay ahead of the curve and answer questions, like:
- How many reviews does my app typically receive?
- Are the majority positive or negative?
- What is the most common reason for a review?
- Which features do my users love?
We’ll walk through a potential use case together below, using Amazon Kindle as our example.
Get to know your product - à la user
Amazon Kindle > App Insights > Review Text Analysis
Once you’ve selected your app (in this case, Amazon Kindle), you can use Apptopia's navigation menu to bring you to Review Intelligence. The page immediately shows you a visual summary of your reviews, which you can view by Sentiment, Intent, or Keywords.
Sentiment sorts your reviews into four categories: Positive, Neutral, Mixed and Negative, calculating the percentage of each. It also provides an Overall Sentiment stat, which gives a high-level understanding of users' feelings toward your app.
Intent explains the reasons for your user reviews. We’ve split Intent into eight categories: Performance & Bugs, Design, Service, Login, Feature Requests, Support, Payment, and Notifications. See which is driving the most feedback.
Keywords are the topics or features that your users are commenting on most frequently. We provide an impact score for each Keyword, telling you how heavily the term affects Sentiment. We also show you which Keywords are commonly associated with one another, so you can understand the full context of your reviews.
While exploring these three views, you can alter the granularity of reviews (Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly) and select a pre-made or custom time period to view. Below you’ll see the view for Intent, Daily, Last 90 days.
You’ll notice a spike in reviews on April 14, mostly about Performance & Bugs and Login. Clicking directly on April 14th's bar, you'll be able to filter for those Intents. The tool will automatically take you to reviews, from that date, that match the selected Intent(s). From there, you'll discover that Amazon Kindle users were struggling to log in without the app crashing that day.
The product team caught onto this quickly and was able to resolve the issue by the next day. Using Apptopia's tools, they will know how many people were impacted or left feedback. This information can guide the next feature release.
Determine your product roadmap
You can also think of Review Intelligence as your product suggestions box. Loyal users are the ones most likely to leave reviews and request features. In your Review library at the bottom of the page, filter by the “Feature Requests” Intent to determine which areas of your app require the most attention. Or, filter by Keyword to check in on a specific feature whose performance you’re curious about.
Under Amazon Kindle’s Feature Requests, you'll notice there are several reviews asking for changes to the app’s font. Seeing as many of these users are otherwise satisfied with the app, they are most likely worth catering to. Recognizing this, the Amazon Kindle team proceeded to launch two font updates on May 1 and May 7.
Using the tooltips in the visual summary, you can see the immediate impact of these launches. Click the bars following the product update symbols, and filter for reviews from the post-launch period.
You'll learn that the May updates came with bugs, which users were quite displeased by. Diving deeper, you can see the different ways the bugs revealed themselves to users. This will help you prioritize fixes and release a new update. In doing so, user sentiment should improve dramatically. 
Benchmark against your competitors
After you've taken the time to understand the wants of your users, it's time to see how you stack up against the rest of the market. Are your users less satisfied or more satisfied than your competitors’?
Forget creeping on competitors’ reviews in the Google Play Store or making guesses solely based on performance estimates. We’ve calculated the benchmark standards for you, so all you have to do is click and digest.
This Benchmark tool is nestled under both the Sentiment and Intent page views. You can compare your app to any category and even select the type of Sentiment or Intent you’re interested in examining.
Above, we’re seeing if Amazon Kindle's Performance & Bugs reviews are in line with other iOS apps under the same category. The tool allows you to quickly see how you compare to your direct competitors, and where you stand in the app ecosystem overall.
If you’re below the benchmark, you can look at a competing app's reviews to see how they’re staying ahead. Take it one step further with our Review Explorer tool, which allows you to compare the sentiment performance of multiple apps at once.
Build better with Apptopia
We know how hard it is to build an app people love, and how critical user feedback is to your app's success. That’s why we created a comprehensive tool designed with all of your users' needs in mind. Proactively spot user trends, prioritize app features, and benchmark yourself against your competitors, all in one convenient tool. Get started with Review Intelligence today.
