User experience better if prompt is launched when app closing than at startup

[hamishwillee]

Blog here from Matt Lacey makes good point that people start an app to perform a task, not to be hit by a prompt, however much we might like them to: http://t.co/ikBHbJWDwt

If possible, encouraging users to pipe this into the app exit code would be better - if the app did what they wanted then they are more likely to be in a good mood at rating time.

Another approach which is also less obtrusive is to use a toast-like notification that does not prevent operation of the app - if the user selects the toast they can be redirected to rate the app.

My 2 bits!

[jaaura]

Valid point.

Feel though that exit may have problems too, just from different angle. I might, when exiting, be in a hurry for something else so I am likely to discard. Also there is complexity where if I exit using the Start key then I can not show the dialog - do I then increase count or not - and should the app remember if it did not execute?

True, toast like notification, would be less intrusive.

What I think we could probably rather easily do, is to add more versatile parameters to the component for the app to control when the dialog is actually shown.

Another and more generic thing is that imo the apps generally should have the rating enabled also outside the prompted dialog.

[hamishwillee]

I don't see the problems when exiting the app as significant. If someone chooses to discard that is absolutely fine - we're encouraging them to rate, not mandating. If they exit via the start key, same deal - eventually they will exit via the back key and we'll offer it then. Overall, I see "on start" as most intrusive, "toast" as least intrusive, and "on exit" as somewhere in between.

Adding more versatile parameters to allow different approaches would be good.

Another and more generic thing is that imo the apps generally should have the rating enabled also outside the prompted dialog.

Yes, this is what is proposed in How_to_integrate_store_review_into_an_app_on_Windows_Phone - as part of the about dialog. Problem I see is that About dialog is quiet "personal" and likely to contain other useful things like "sharing" etc. Unless you can provide this in a very generic way then perhaps better to have "how to" docs rather than actual component.

[ltomuta]

I see the point and we should definitely try someday to test both prompt on exit and toasts (we'd need a custom implementation or create a dependency to a toolkit which has it). But not going to happen any time soon I'm afraid.