How do you encourage ratings and reviews? My request for reviews at the end of the recording, or the Voicemap app prompt gets very very few reviews, lucky if there is a rating.
Since we don’t know when the tours are actually taken, even the follow up email strategy would not work for website sales, so not sure if there is anything else I can do?
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I have the same problem.
Customers tell me they now have to search to a different section of App (the About Section?) to leave a review or rating.
In earlier versions of the App it seemed to be easier to do as those options came up automatically at the end of the tour.
It’s great to hear you’re both asking for ratings and reviews – and thinking about how you can get more. It’s a useful prompt for me to spend more time looking at this.
The user interface for this hasn’t actually changed @djjdouglas. We ask for ratings when users end a tour manually, before the tour is actually finished, and also when they do reach the end and the audio plays to completion. The former just asks for a quick rating in case they’re frustrated and giving up the tour, because we obviously want to know why, and then at the end there’s a more detailed prompt with an audio message from me asking them to rate the tour, share it with friends, and review the app.
It looks like this:
I do wonder if there’s a distinction between the rate at which you can expect reviews for a guided tour, which I guess you’re both comparing this to, and the rate for a self-guided tour. In one case you obviously meet somebody and interact with them in person. In the other, you might expect something more like Youtube, where a video is apparently doing well if it gets 5 comments and 4 likes per 1,000 views!
I suspect that some tours get a lot more ratings than others. I haven’t looked at the data so I’m not sure. I’ll need to do that. If there’s a wide gap, I’ll see if I can figure out why. And there definitely is more we can do to encourage ratings and reviews, including automated emails after users complete a tour. We’d particularly like to use this to get more reviews on Tripadvisor. You can expect improvements to this in summer this year.
Hi Iain,
The feedback I had received from friends testing the French tour was that they missed the first options to leave a view or rating and then found it difficult to go back and find the right screen.Perhaps there is a language issue here ?
Yes I would definitely suggest the automated e-mails approach for sales through Viator/Trip Advisor. My real tours through Airbnb Experiences get an almost 100% review as they send an e-mail 15 mins after the tour ends.
When Trip Advisor did the same, it got a high response too but now that they have stopped doing this, response is only about 20%.
The easier we can make it for people to rate and comment, the greater the response will be.
David - Derrie Danders
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My friends who tested also had the same experience, oops missed it and then don’t know how to find it, so I had to personally show them where to rate and comment.
could the app send a notification out a few minutes after the tour ends? I think this would be easier than email for the user but not sure regarding permissions.
I of course understand that the level of connection is not the same as with live guides, but personally, when I tested other voicemaps and liked the content and voice, I felt eager to leave a comment (maybe because I identify with the creators)
Anyway, good to know it is on your radar, curious to know what your research will bring up.
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Can I make an update to this post.
I have recently been teaching some classes on tour guiding and I gave a number of my students codes to do some of my tours for free. I also asked them to rate the tours and leave comments. Quite a few said they had, but none seemed to be coming through. I have recently discovered that they were actually rating the App and not my tour by following the review button at the end, so it would be great if perhaps there could be more clarification for them ? I tried it myself recently, and even I ended up in the rate the App rather than Tour section - obviously best that customers would do both.
Also comments made on VoiceMap, it would be helpful if there was some mechanism that they could somehow be added automatically to the TripAdvisor review section for the audio tours. This is something that VoiceMap as the publisher control, and I think it would definitely help to sell future tours if more reviews were coming through on Trip Advisor.
David - Derrie Danders
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I’ve noted your comment about reviewing the app @djjdouglas, thanks. I think you’re referring to an app review dialogue on the iPhone that Apple controls, not us. We can only choose when it displays, not what it says or looks like.
App reviews help an enormous amount for a few reasons:
- Actually installing VoiceMap is a point of friction between discovering a tour and doing one. Large numbers of positive reviews convince people to tap the Get button.
- They add keywords that we can’t ourselves – so when a user references Derry in an App Store review, for example, searches there for Derry will surface VoiceMap. We can’t include every destination with a tour in our own descriptions of the app.
- Large numbers of positive reviews give us some leverage with the App Store and this is part of how we’ve been the Editor’s Choice and App of the Day in more than 50 countries.
That said, we are redesigning what happens when users finish a tour and I’ll keep this in mind.
Regarding adding reviews to Tripadvisor, do you know of a way to post reviews on behalf of other people? Surely the user needs a Tripadvisor account so that the review can appear alongside their profile. We could look at sending them to Tripadvisor after the tour, but this is more complicated that it looks because we need to send them to the right place – and only do this if the tour is actually on Tripadvisor.
Hi Iain,
Thanks for your response.
I certainly would be encouraging users to review the App for the benefit of all authors but there is something not right if quite a no of users have given me feedback to say they have reviewed my tour, and actually being re-directing to review the App instead, and these users are tourism students so should be literate enough to know the difference.
In previous versions of the App it seemed to be easier for users to rate tours and leave comments, and the number of people doing this recently has for me at least fallen quite considerably.
I’ve tried to attach a photo of the screen that users seem to be misunderstanding. I know it says Review the App but many think this is reviewing the tour, but the VoiceMap Forum wont accept.
It is good that you are looking into improving this.
With regard to Trip Advisor, no I dont know of any way to do this.
I recently tried to upload a VoiceMap Review to TripAdvisor for one of my VoiceMap tours but it was rejected as they said I was the owner of the product and not independent, even though I fully disclosed that this was a genuine review from an external party.
I know many tour guests on my real tours do rely heavily on Trip Advisor Reviews for selecting me and it definitely would be helpful if there more Trip Advisor Reviews on audio tours to boost sales. However, I understand if that’s not possible technically, but it is a frustration.
David
I am finding this an interesting topic as I see some issues especially with the Viator review system. (I know its out of Voicemaps control).
Just looking at the reviews I have for my Ronda audio tour on Viator the last review was September 2022… This is an awful long time ago especially as sales have been made since then at Viator. I find this very odd especially as the reviews there are two 5 stars and one 4 with excellent positive comments. They should be promoting sales and more comments?
Get Your Guide are selling far more copies and I put this down in part to the reviews… (all positive) and the most recent April 15th. https://www.getyourguide.com/ronda-l838/ronda-audio-guide-walking-tour-with-puente-nuevo-and-viejo-t425095
It seems that someone leaving a review provokes others to leave reviews and if the reviews are recent that then promotes the sale of the guide? GYG are performing far better than Viator which seems to validate my idea. GYG also sells the different language options of my guide so I have reviews in both German and English (and a French person who bought the English version but left the review in French.
Of course its much easier on Voicemap because we can see the reviews and also answer them saying thanks or clearing up any questions or observations about the tours which helps the next visitor make up their mind whether to buy or not.
Have a great day all!
I just noticed that someone left a 2 star rating for my German language guide for Ronda on the app… (A while ago, someone left a 1 star on the English version).
The majority of votes for my tours are 5’s and 4’s but my question is… Is there not a way to oblige people to also leave a comment if they vote below a 3? Obviously something has gone wrong with their experience and I am sure it is most likely user error or something with the gps on their phone not triggering or something like that but it would be good to know when a really negative vote comes in like a 1 or a 2?
To be honest, someone hitting a 1 and then not leaving further feedback makes their vote a nonsense but, of course, it does affect the overall rating for the tour which then will affect future sales.
We email every user who leaves a one or two star rating and ask for feedback @clive. If they reply and share information that is useful to the publisher, we pass it on to them. We really do love it when we find out something that helps us improve the tech, manage expectations better, or finesse the content.
You’re definitely selling more copies of your German tour through GetYourGuide. They’re a German company so this makes sense. We also don’t have many German-speaking users yet. But this is growing quite quickly.
Sales of the English version of your tour are split almost equally between direct – so VoiceMap’s website and apps – and OTA sales. This is unusual. We typically see more direct sales than OTA sales. But the OTA sales do include a wide variety of resellers, not just GetYourGuide. Here’s Evendo, for instance, which is whitelabelling Viator.
I don’t think the odd one star review affects sales. The English version of your tour has a solitary one star rating so far out of 46 ratings. In fact nothing but five star ratings might seem a little too good to be true, to people in a mood to knitpick, and might also hurt sales.
Thanks for this extra info @iain I had no idea that there were white label sites selling in this way… I also see that they have sold copies and also there are reviews on that site as well… These reviews are important as one mentions the maintenece work (finishes this month sigh!) at the start of my tour.
Is there a way to find a complete list of white labels such as Evendo?
I know I haven’t sold any via my promo page at Ronda Today yet as I have set them via my TravelPayouts affiliate and they direct to both Viator and GYG and I can follow those stats closely.
I’m afraid they don’t provide this @clive. Where is your promo page? I’d like to take a look.
We have implemented deep linking and are just about ready with a solution that will allow us to work with affiliates directly, FYI. Did you see my update here?
Hi Iain… My promo page at Ronda Today is here: The VoiceMap GPS Audio Guide for Ronda - Ronda Today Interesting that it gets a lot of clicks from relatively few impressions at G search… maybe a 1000 a month but upwards of 100 clicks…
So far no one has bought the guide either via the Viator or the GYG links as that would show in my Travel Payouts dashboard… I would assume a fair amount go directly to the Voicemap website…
The deeplinking topic is interesting 
Hi Iain,
Is there a way for a customer to go back and rate the tour if they missed (or skipped over) the rating screen at the end of the tour?
I had one person try to go back and asked how to leave a review after the fact and I wasn’t able to figure out how.
Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Thanks.
Raeann
Yes this would be great for me as well, I think people sometimes miss or skip the rating screen at the the end.
This was changed from VoiceMap 11. You can now edit your rating, but it’s the different user interface at the end of the tour that seems to have made the biggest difference. Take a look when you get a chance:
We’re seeing fewer reviews on the App Store, but that’s okay.
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Hello there. We are just trying to upload a review onto the TripAdvisor site where the tour was bought, but clicking on the Review on App Store link doesn’t react. How can this be done please? Regards Annette
Hi @annette welcome to posting on the VoiceMap forum!
The “Review on App Store” link is usually for the VoiceMap app. The fastest way to rate a specific tour would be to scroll down to the Review section near the bottom of the tour page and click on “Write a review”.
We also appreciate app reviews if you get a chance since this helps with our rating on the app store.
Let me know if this helps.
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