How to Learn from Competitors’ App Reviews to Improve Your App (With Real Examples)

You’ve probably heard “understand your users” countless times in courses or at conferences. But here’s a question: Have you paid equal attention to your competitors’ users and what they say in Google Play or App Store reviews? Monitoring your competitors’ reviews can give you valuable insights to improve your own app and messaging. Here’s what you can gain from it – with real examples.

Spot Pain Points in Negative Reviews and Position Yourself as the Solution

Example: Scrolling through Duolingo negative reviews you can see users complain they can’t truly learn to speak a foreign language using the app.

What can competitors do about that?

The BeeSpeaker app, for instance, highlights in its description that users learn to speak from day one:

BeeSpeaker is a true revolution and the first-ever app totally devoted to learning to actually SPEAK English and Spanish.

This directly addresses a pain point visible in Duolingo reviews.

BeeSpeaker reinforces this promise not only in its Google Play description and on its website (screen below), but even in its name – which itself carries the promise of helping users become confident speakers.

Learn from Positive Feedback and Adopt What Works

Positive reviews reveal what users love. You can match those strengths, improve upon them, and use similar keywords in your app descriptions or ads to attract the same audience.

Example: AllTrails app reviews often praise features such as:

• Filtering
  
  

  

  
  

• Local trail coverage (having trails available nearby)

  
  

  

Also, note how many people mark a review as “helpful” – this can indicate which features matter most to users.

If you’re building a competing app, you should ensure your filtering is just as powerful (or better) and make sure your local coverage is robust. Both points should be emphasized in your marketing.

You can see that one of the competing apps emphasizes local trail features – while not mentioning filters. That could be a missed opportunity worth focusing on.

Understand Their Support Strategy and Outperform It

Poor review handling can be an opportunity for you to shine. If your competitors ignore negative reviews or offer generic replies, you can show a better approach that will be visible on your Google Play or the App Store app in the review section.

We’ve got an example of not following this tactic. 😉

Storytel: A quick scan shows they fail to respond to many negative reviews.

Here’s an example: a review marked as helpful by over 200 people – yet still unanswered by Storytel.

So we checked Audible and similarly, some reviews marked as helpful remain unanswered.

We also checked Audiobooks.com which seems to respond to hire number of negative reviews.

If your competitors don’t respond promptly or personally, you can use this to your advantage in your messaging — “We listen and respond to every user.”

Start monitoring your competitors' app reviews

With My App Monitor, you can track an unlimited number of competitors. Just add any app you want and get notifications about new reviews so you can react faster than your competitors. Create a free account today!