In an app market flooded with millions of options, standing out often comes down to one thing: your rating. A 5-star app rating is not just a vanity metric; it is a powerful signal that drives downloads, builds trust among your user base, and has a direct impact on your revenue.
But creating a standout app requires more than just good intentions. App testing and dev teams need a clear strategy to deliver exceptional user experiences, reliable functionality, and continuous quality.
In this blog, I delve into the importance of 5-star app ratings and unpack what it takes to build them.
Related Reading: Weathering the Storm: How Retail & Ecommerce Companies Prepare Their Apps for Peak Traffic Events
What Are Some 5-Star App Examples?
Current 5-star apps in the Apple App Store in 2025 include:
- TikTok
- CapCut
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Renowned Bank Achieves 5-Star App Experience With Perfecto
With Perfecto, a leading UK bank is testing their app continuously at scale to ensure nothing less than a five-star experience.
The Challenge: Supporting 10 Million App Users
One of the UK's oldest banks needed a high-performing app that not only processes transactions for over ten million people but also represents the bank in place of brick-and-mortar. Due to the app's level of intricacy and security, manual test methods are insufficient to ensure the quality of the app. The bank needed a product that delivers scalable and automated testing solutions so they can focus on what is important--their customer experience. The solution? Perfecto.
The Results: Daily Test Releases
The bank turned to Perfecto to automate their test cases across a variety of device models with a focus on mobile iOS and Android. With the speed that Perfecto affords to fuel their app development, the bank delivers daily test releases with confidence and performs 300,000 test cases each quarter with a high pass rate. Moreover, Perfecto seamlessly integrates with tools the bank was already using, like Appium. The holistic offering from Perfecto positions the bank to present their best self to their customers and propel them into the future of banking.
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Why 5-Star App Ratings Are Important
A 5-star app rating is important for many reasons.
Mobile app developers and their brands are experiencing a chicken or the egg scenario: Popular apps that top charts are downloaded the most, but apps can only become popular if they are downloaded to begin with. This means that businesses need to find a way to become popular with fewer downloads.
Enter the 5-star review. Developers get carpal tunnel trying to achieve it. And users search the ends of the earth looking for apps that are reviewed well. But, what does a 5-star review even mean? Does it actually help a mobile app get more installs?
In short, a high rating attracts users, and yes, great reviews contribute to the number of times an app is downloaded.
5-Star Apps Rank Higher on Store Lists
The better the reviews, the more likely it is for a mobile app to top the charts on Google Play and the App Store.
According to Alchemer, the opportunity cost of an app moving up or down a star ranking is enormous. Just moving from a 3-star app to a 4-star app can lead to an 89% increase in conversion.
This has to do with the algorithms being used. So, the more stars, the higher apps will chart.
Venturebeat contributor Michael Silverwood explained Apple's App Store's system for ranking mobile apps. Keep in mind that Apple never disclosed the actual algorithm, and therefore, this should be taken with a grain of salt.
Regardless, Silverwood wrote:
"Ranking = (# of installs weighted for the past few hours) + (# of installs weighted for the past few days) + REVIEWS (star rating + number of reviews) + Engagement (# of times app opened etc.) + Sales ($)."
This means that reviews are — by Silverwood's estimation — worth 25% of list ranking placements.
Users Search For 5-Star Apps
Of course, top lists are the only way that mobile device users find new and interesting apps. According to a Google survey conducted on 8,470 smartphone users over the age of 18, 40% of these individuals discover mobiles by simply browsing through app stores.
Additionally, Google researchers noted that 25% of mobile apps are found through search engines, as users typically look for opinions on apps before committing to downloading them.
Many highly-rated apps tend to be mobile games. That makes reviews on productivity, shopping, and social apps more important — as they stick out in a sea of freemium games.
Good Reviews Equal Downloads
Brand interactions drive the need to create mobile apps. So, at the end of the day, 5-star ratings should contribute to installs.
The good news is that there is a correlation between high ratings and downloads, according to Robi Ganguly, CEO of Apptentive. In a contribution to The Huffington Post, Ganguly wrote that apps with two stars are downloaded approximately 50,000 times, while those with four-star reviews are installed an average of 270,000 times.
It's clear that good reviews directly impact user engagement, downloads, and general interest in mobile apps.
Why Superior Apps Come from Perfecto Mobile App Testing
So, what does it take to get 5-star app ratings?
Back to topEnsure your app is the best it can be. Using Perfecto's unrivaled mobile app testing platform is the best way to get to a 5-star app rating. Try Perfecto's 14-day Free Trial to see what you have been missing.
My How-To Guide to Achieving 5-Star App Ratings
Here are some things you'll need to do when building and testing an app to make sure you get 5-star ratings.
Make Sure Your App Works
This may seem obvious. But it is advice every enterprise mobile team would agree with:
Make sure your app works before you send it to the app store — especially if you want a 5-star app rating.
But what does having the "app work" really mean? And is it enough to get a 5-star app rating?
Go Beyond Functional Tests
Of course an app needs to pass all functional tests and deliver a solid user experience. But are you doing rigorous performance testing on real devices against all network and end-user conditions, and monitoring app usage once it's live?
Test Automation Strategy For Beginners >>
If glitches are discovered in production, is there a fast feedback loop to developers so they can do fixes for the next release? Are you doing unattended automated testing or manual tests? Are you using a cloud-based smart testing lab or is your testing still a device-in-hand process?
The answers to these questions will determine whether your mobile app works on every possible device and operating system when it hits the app store — which is key for 5-star apps.
Leverage Test Automation
According to Perforce's State of Continuous Testing Report, test automation remains central to quality assurance, with 87% of respondents identifying it as a critical focus area.
To keep up with mobile market demands, dev and test teams need to be agile. You cannot be agile and do only manual testing. There is simply not enough time.
Automation is a MUST HAVE if your company does app releases every few weeks. Automated tests can be done quickly and be repeated at no additional cost. Test automation also allows a company to test many devices and platforms simultaneously through one script. Overall, test automation benefits are numerous.
As a result, this boost in test coverage means your team will get more tests executed earlier and prevent app defects from making it into production. Oh, and your chances of becoming a 5-star app just went up.
In the end, if your team wants to avoid the brand-damaging two-star reviews and angry customer tweets that have afflicted major airlines, banks, and retail chains, it'll take a strategy that uses at least 75% automated testing and challenges the app with performance testing on real devices with real user simulation on an always-on, cloud-based lab.
Back to topRelated Reading: State of Continuous Testing Report
Bottom Line
Test automation is key to building 5-star apps. And Perfecto can help you do it.
When you partner with Perfecto to develop your shift-left strategy, you will experience:
With Perfecto, you'll experience:
- AI-powered testing tools and capabilities.
- Unified testing for web and mobile apps.
- Advanced automation.
- Full toolchain integration.
- All results in one place.
- Shift left testing.
- And more!
Shift your testing strategy left by signing up for a free 14-day trial of Perfecto today.
This blog was originally published on September 19, 2018 and has been updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.