The sun has set, the kids are in bed, and you've made yourself a hot cup of tea. Time to curl up on the couch to play that new game everyone's been talking about. You're about to get the high score and...
The App crashes.
Nothing ruins an App experience like a crash; abruptly leaving users staring at their home screen. As a mobile developer, crashes are just a fact of life. Sometimes they aren't even your fault and exist in a 3rd party library or the iOS framework, but the user doesn't really care. When a crash happens it can sometimes result in a ★☆☆☆☆ review.
Since the crash has already happened the only thing you can do is make sure the user doesn't feel left out in the cold. I do this by sending students who experience a crash in the Treehouse iPad App a personal email.
Hey John!
My name is Marshall and I'm the developer of the Treehouse iPad App. I saw you just got a crash, sorry about that! I just wanted to let you know I'm on it.
Please let me know if you need anything else.
The results have been amazing.
Marshall-
Wow! Thanks for the personal follow up. I’m continually blown away with how on top of everything the Treehouse team is.
I’m loving the app. It makes learning so easy to be able to have the video playing on the iPad while I code on my laptop.
Thanks, •• jb
Some users don't even believe it's me.
hehe, if this is not a canned answer I'm pretty impressed :-)
-Thomas
To accomplish this we use the amazing free crash reporting service Crashlytics. Using their SDK you are able to associate user information with the reports so you can contact the affected users.
[Crashlytics setUserIdentifier:[user.remoteID stringValue]];
[Crashlytics setUserName:user.profileName];
[Crashlytics setUserEmail:user.email];Here are some other great responses I've gotten back from our students.
Wow, quick response!
I like the new iPad app, keep up the good work
-Rick
Hi Marshall,
I'm impressed! I didn't expect any kind of response from that. I really appreciate it.
Thank you for your promptness!
-Ben
While emailing users might not prevent negative reviews, it will at least open a dialogue. It goes a long way in showing your users that you care.
photo credit: Peter Werkman (www.peterwerkman.nl) via photopin cc