02 Nov 2010

Windows Phone 7 Review Reader

Written by Tom Verhoeff on. Posted in WP7

It’s been about 2 weeks since the first Windows Phone 7 devices became available and the Windows Phone 7 Applications Marketplace officially launched. This means consumers now have access to all the applications and for us developers this means our products (apps) can actually be sold. Unfortunately Microsoft does not provide easy access to reviews on the marketplaces just yet, all you can do is fire up the Zune software and check out the ratings in your local marketplace. I discussed this issue with Matthijs Hoekstra and have been trying to find a solution during the last few days.Fortunately i found one:

I have been able to build a little Silverlight application showing just the information you need:

Average rating and total number of ratings per marketplace
Average rating and total number of ratings per marketplace since the last application update
All reviews with date, user and description

Click here to go to the application. All you need is your product/application ID which can be found on the app details page in the App Hub. This is just the very first version of this application, i will be working on new features in my spare time throughout the week. Any feedback or feature requests are highly appreciated. Contact me by leaving a comment, using the contact form or find me on Twitter. Also keep an eye on my twitter for any updates regarding the application. Update: As Jeff Brown points out in the comments the ratings are on a scale of 0-10 representing 0-5 stars in the marketplace Update 2: I just published some updates to the app. It now shows a total for “All markets”. Also review title and description are now selectable for copying. Might be usefull in combination with a service like Microsoft Translator

Tags: 7, developer, marketplace, phone, review, windows, wp7, wp7dev, wp7RR

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Comments (18)

Jeff Brown

02/11/2010 at 22:32 | #

I have 1 rating of 3 stars but it shows up as a rating of 6 in the application. Maybe something is doubling up? Just a heads up.

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Nikolai

02/11/2010 at 22:54 | #

Hey, this is awesome!

Feature suggestion: hook up to bing translate for reviews not in your selected language (eg, I have five languages for my app, but I myself only speak and read English).

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Tristan Smith

03/11/2010 at 16:50 | #

Thanks for this, we were able to see the two reviews in the US market that we hadn’t been able to access ourselves.

We had an error popup when we set the language to be EN-GB though.

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liam

06/11/2010 at 22:07 | #

Wow… this looks great… however Is this still working? I just get an error “something went wrong” when I enter my App ID.

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Pieter Voloshyn

06/11/2010 at 23:00 | #

Wow… awesome application!
Suggestion: option to select All Markets instead of selection one market at time.

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Anthony

07/11/2010 at 22:33 | #

Thanks for doing this. It’s really useful to see reviews in all markets.

Just noticed one thing.. reviews that don’t have text show up on the details (right) side, but are not counted on the summary (left) side. No biggie. Thanks again!

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peSHIr

09/11/2010 at 09:01 | #

When opening http://wp7reviews.tomverhoeff.com/AppReviews.aspx?id=c279e728-29e8-df11-9264-00237de2db9e&mp=en-US it shows a “something went wrong” messagebox, then still showed the header with correct description and icon, but no data. Is this because there have not been any reviews yet (I believe there still were none) or is the URL not working any more?

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lukas

09/11/2010 at 15:15 | #

Cool. Thx for the app.

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Jonas Stawski

19/11/2010 at 15:17 | #

@liam, make sure you don’t have any spaces in front or in the back. I had the same happened to me from copying and pasting the app id from the marketplace.

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Jonas Stawski

19/11/2010 at 15:17 | #

Great tool! Thanks!

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Francesco De Vittori

02/12/2010 at 10:13 | #

This is great and very helpful! Works great for my app!

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Francesco De Vittori

02/12/2010 at 10:14 | #

p.s. why not turn this into a WP7 app? :-)))

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Dave

10/12/2010 at 20:35 | #

Nice work! Your article sent me down a rabbit hole like ‘Alice in Wonderland’ culminating in a little spat at the moment on AppHubs forum on the lack of security.
There is a problem with you app when there are multiple versions and then feedback for different versions. No big deal! Check this to see whatI mean: http://wp7reviews.tomverhoeff.com/AppReviews.aspx?id=c5cbdbcf-5df9-df11-9264-00237de2db9e&mp=en-US

Reply
WP7 Review Reader – Status update & CSV Export | Tom Verhoeff

01/02/2011 at 01:53 | #

[…] months ago i released the Windows Phone 7 Review Reader to give WP7 developers easy access to their app reviews all over the world. It was meant to be a […]

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Get in touch with your WP7 App Reviewers | Tom Verhoeff

21/02/2011 at 21:35 | #

[…] method i am currently aware off. Therefore i decided to integrate messaging users with the existing WP7 Review Reader i built a while ago. This provides developers with an easy way of contacting their customers. […]

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vincent-b

25/05/2011 at 18:37 | #

Thank you, so much. Well done, and so useful. CSV export is just the cherry on the cake.

Again, thanks.

Reply
WP7 Review Reader: New marketplaces | Tom Verhoeff

03/08/2011 at 15:56 | #

[…] access the new marketplace and thus can leave reviews for applications. Therefore I updated the Review Reader with support for all new marketplaces. If you haven’t done so please make sure your […]

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Mike

09/07/2012 at 20:08 | #

This is awesome. Thank you!

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