BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--uTest, the world’s leading provider of in-the-wild app testing services, today unveiled Applause, a mobile app analytics product. Applause analyzes more than 50 million app reviews across 1 million iOS and Android apps. It then synthesizes this data into an easy-to-consume 0-100 Applause Score for each app and grades it across ten Applause Attributes. This data enables brands to improve mobile app quality, increase user satisfaction, and measure how their app stacks up from version to version, and against the competition.
Applause is the latest product from uTest Labs, the forward-looking research arm of uTest. Applause is available today free of charge, and will be spun out of uTest as an independent brand.
From marketers and product managers, to developers and agencies, Applause is the only app analytics tool that enables companies to:
- Consolidate all their app store ratings and reviews into a single place
- Analyze mountains of explicit user feedback about features, performance and usability
- Understand what users are saying about their app – why they’re cheering and why they’re not
- Compare their apps against competitors to see how they stack up, and how they can earn more applause from users
Mobile apps play an increasingly vital role in how users consume content, conduct commerce and interact with companies. Existing analytics tools can help brands infer what users think based upon usage patterns, which is both valid and valuable. But when it comes to understanding what users are truly saying about how to make an app better, brands haven’t had the tools they need to listen effectively or efficiently.
“The apps economy is growing so rapidly, spawning new upstarts and challenging incumbents -- and it’s time we enter a new phase of maturity in how companies measure their mobile efforts,” said Doron Reuveni, CEO and co-founder of uTest. “Users simply expect apps to perform flawlessly – the first time, every time. With Applause, we’re enabling companies to go well beyond simple download counts and star ratings to understand app quality in a deeper way, which is why we’ve had such tremendous feedback from early users.”
How it Works
Applause was built by a team of engineers and data scientists with experience tackling some of the world’s toughest big data problems. It crawls millions of reviews and ratings to provide each app with an “Applause Score” on a scale of 1-100. (fig.1). Applause further breaks down each app across ten key Applause Attributes:
- Content – relevance of an app’s content across locations and cultures
- Elegance – how attractive, cool or slick an app’s design is
- Interoperability – how well an app integrates with other services or hardware
- Performance – how fast and responsive an app is in standard usage
- Pricing – how an app’s perceived value compares with its cost
- Privacy – comfort with an app’s terms of service and handling of PII
- Satisfaction – how well an app satisfies users’ core expectations
- Security – perceived risk to logins, passwords or other sensitive information
- Stability – how often the app crashes, hangs or freezes
- Usability – ease of navigation and discoverability among an app’s features
This paints a much clearer picture of how an app is – or isn’t – performing in the eyes of users. Such diagnostic data enables a company’s marketing, business and technical leaders to make informed decisions about how to most dramatically improve user satisfaction and app quality. This helps them win more users, achieve greater repeat usage and earn stronger loyalty.
“This type of actionable, explicit app analytics fills an enormous blind spot for brands,” said Yvonne Genovese, Managing Vice President at Gartner. “Until now, companies merely knew how many stars their app had received, occasionally read reviews, or looked at implicit analytics to infer how users felt about their apps. Now, brands can see results of deep data analysis and make informed decisions about where to best direct resources so apps perform as intended, delight their users and, in the process, maintain an edge on the competition.”
“Imagine if you could predict which changes to your app would most delight users – whether you’d see more impact from adding a new feature, redesigning your UI, or changing your pricing,” added uTest CMO Matt Johnston. “Imagine if investors could understand which markets are underserved, or which categories were ripe for disruption. Imagine if journalists could see how an app’s latest version is perceived by users in real time, or how a group of competitors stack up. Applause raises everyone’s game – and we’re just getting started.”
Applause is available immediately for free at www.applause.com.
About Applause
Applause is a mobile app analytics tool that enables companies to monitor, measure and improve their app quality and user satisfaction. By analyzing more than 50 million reviews from over 1 million apps in the Apple App Store and Google Play, Applause provides the deep app intelligence that brands need in order to win more users, earn greater loyalty and beat the competition. To learn how better data means better apps, visit www.applause.com and follow @Applause on Twitter.
About uTest
uTest provides in-the-wild testing services that span the entire software development lifecycle – including functional, security, load, localization and usability testing. The company’s community of 70,000+ professional testers from 190 countries put web, mobile and desktop applications through their paces by testing on real devices under real-world conditions. Thousands of companies – including Google, USA Today, Amazon, Virgin, Sony, Box and Trulia – rely on uTest as a critical component of their testing processes for fast, reliable and effective testing results. Visit uTest at www.utest.com and keep tabs on @uTest via Twitter.
About uTest Labs
uTest Labs is the forward-looking research arm of uTest. This group is comprised of equal parts delusional visionaries and digital vagabonds, who are focused on discovering the future of app quality – from the development to testing to monitoring to measurement of apps that delight users. For more information on uTest Labs, visit www.utest.com/labs.