Retail app reviews report: what app reviews say about top retail apps

We analyzed the top complaints, compliments, requests, and questions from customers reviews across top retail apps: Amazon, BestBuy, Chewy, Costco, Etsy, Overstock, Target, Sam’s Club, Walmart, and Wayfair.

Our technology easily sorts through thousands of reviews—50,000+ in this case—and does the following in an automated way:

• Filters out noise (reviews that didn’t have much substance)
• Categorizes each review as either a complaint, compliment, request, or question
• Groups together reviews with similar themes
• Analyzes each theme and writes findings in plain language
  

We found that most reviews are about the app user experience being either frustrating or magical for specific reasons. That includes app updates that break the experience, removal of favorite features, confusing navigation…and on the positive side, compliments about convenience, delivery and curbside pick up options, and good customer service.

The full results are available in our 20-page report. Below are a few highlights.

Our AI system identified a complaint theme around the latest update of one retailer’s app and wrote the following analysis:

The new app is a mess, users say. They hate the new format, find it clunky, confusing, and frustrating. They can't open it on their phones, and when they do, it crashes. They're also unhappy that the barcode scanner doesn't work.

This kind of analysis can help product teams immediately identify and track complaints specifically related to app updates. (We frequently apply this type of analysis to other datasets beyond app reviews so business teams can easily identify areas that may be hindering growth.)

On the positive end of the spectrum, when users are happy with a retail app, they’ll rave about it—even if it’s about the user experience outside of the app. Here’s how our AI models describe user compliments about Overstock overall, including specifics details:

Customers are pleased with the quality and price of the items they receive from Overstock. They like the deals, and the easy tracking and shipping.

Our AI models are particularly good at finding insights from small groups of feedback hidden among large datasets. In one example, our AI wrote the following analysis:

The Target app is a mom's best friend. It makes shopping easy and convenient, especially with small children, and is especially helpful for single moms.

Why this is impressive: our AI was able to find this specific theme in a dozen reviews out of more than 7,000+ total Target app reviews. That’s a lot of sorting that most business teams don’t have time to do. Our AI did it in minutes. Imagine being able to use insights like this to create specific campaigns, store layout designs, or promotions.

Curious to know which app had the most compliments and what else our AI found?

Get the detailed report.

‍