Reviews, sales and marketing
Once the app is out, your agent reads what people say in both stores, drafts the replies, follows downloads and sales, and runs the App Store's marketing tools: custom product pages, A/B tests and In-App Events. Anything people will see waits for your yes.
What to ask your agent
Show me this month's one- and two-star reviews that have no reply, and draft answers.
How many downloads did we get in the last 30 days, and which traffic source brought the most?
Make a custom product page for the running-coach campaign, from the live page, with these screenshots.
Plan an In-App Event for the cup final on June 12, with a deep link to the match screen, and send it to App Review.
The tools behind these: Every MCP tool › Reviews and sales and Marketing and In-App Events.
Who does what
| What it does | |
|---|---|
| Your agent | Reads reviews and the sales reports, drafts replies, makes product pages, tests and events, uploads their screenshots and media, and asks to send them. |
| Ploa | Reads both stores' reviews and daily reports, checks every text and file against Apple's limits before sending, sends what you approved, and keeps each step in the audit log. |
| You | Approve each reply under a review, each page, test or event sent to App Review, and starting or stopping a test. Set up the sales reports once per store (below). |
An agent you made autonomous does these at once, with no approval, and everything is still recorded under its name.
Customer reviews
Reviews from both stores come in one list, newest first: stars, title, text, the reviewer's name, the App Store country or the Google Play language, the version (Google Play only), the date, and the reply if there is one. Each store's ratings summary sits above them. Filter by store, stars or unanswered.
- A reply goes under the review, in the store, where anyone can read it. A new reply replaces the old one. The App Store takes up to 5970 characters, Google Play 350. An App Store reply can be taken back; Google Play's can't.
- From your agent, a reply waits for you, or a member with the Reviews permission, to approve it on the dashboard's Approvals page; a notification on your phone opens it. On the dashboard you confirm your own reply before it goes.
- Google Play gives only reviews with text from about the last week; older ones are in Play Console. The App Store gives the newest few hundred.
- On GitHub, Ploa can open one issue a day per store with the new one- and two-star reviews, if you turn that on: see GitHub settings.
Downloads and sales
From each store's daily reports:
- First-time downloads (Google Play: new users) and updates for the last 30 days, against the 30 before, day by day.
- Each store page's funnel: App Store impressions, product page views, downloads by source, conversion, sessions and deletions; Google Play's store listing visitors and acquisitions by traffic source.
- For owners and members with the Sales and revenue permission: Apple's proceeds and Google's earnings per currency, and RevenueCat's numbers when the app uses it. Others, and their agents, see downloads only.
The reports are daily, so Ploa keeps an answer for a few hours before asking the stores again.
Setting up the reports
The reports need a little more from each store than the rest of Ploa does. The Downloads and sales page, and your agent, say what's still missing.
- App Store: the vendor number
It's at the top left of App Store Connect › Payments and Financial Reports. Paste it on the app's Downloads and sales page.
- App Store: a key that can read sales
The App Store Connect key needs a role that can read Sales and Trends: Admin, Finance or Sales (App Manager can't), and it must be a team key. Apple doesn't change an existing key's access, so make a new one with Admin, which covers everything Ploa does, and connect it in Store connections.
- Google Play: report permissions
In Play Console › Users and permissions, open Ploa's account › Account permissions and tick "View app information and download bulk reports (read-only)", and "View financial data" for earnings. Only account-wide permissions open the reports.
- Google Play: the reports' address
Play Console › Download reports › Statistics › Copy Cloud Storage URI (
gs://pubsite_prod_…). Paste it on the app's Downloads and sales page. - The store pages' funnel
App Store: on the Downloads and sales page, start Apple's analytics reports once per app, with an Admin key; the first arrive a day or two later. Google Play: visitors and acquisitions come with the same reports, nothing more to add.
Google can take up to a day to open the reports to a newly allowed account. A month's earnings arrive early the month after.
Custom product pages and A/B tests (App Store)
- Custom product pages: other versions of your App Store page with their own screenshots, previews and promotional text (170 characters a language), each with its own link (
?ppid=) for ads and campaigns. Start one from a copy of the live page, from another custom page, or blank. To change a page App Review approved, make a new version of it. - Product page optimization: A/B tests of up to three treatments against your page (other screenshots, previews, or an alternate icon the live build carries), shown to the share of visitors you set.
Both go to App Review before anyone sees them. Sending a page or test to review, and starting or stopping a test, wait for your approval; a stopped test can't start again. Removing a page people saw, or a test that ran, is yours to do. Screenshots and previews are uploaded from the computer the agent works on (10 MB a screenshot; previews 15 to 30 seconds), only while the page's version or the test is being prepared.
Apple's API gives no test results (impressions, conversion, improvement): they're in App Store Connect › Product Page Optimization. Google Play's custom store listings and store listing experiments have no API, so they're made in Play Console.
In-App Events (App Store)
Events in your app (a live event, a challenge, a premiere, a new season) that the App Store shows on the app's page, in search and in Today, each with its own card.
- What an event has: a badge (live event, premiere, challenge, competition, new season, major update, special event), its dates per group of countries (an event runs at most 31 days and is shown at most 14 days before it starts), a deep link, its purpose and priority, and per language a name (30 characters), a short description (50) and a long one (120).
- Media: per language, an event card (16:9, 1920×1080 to 3840×2160) and a details page (9:16, 1080×1920 to 2160×3840), each a picture or a video, uploaded from the computer the agent works on.
- App Review: a ready event goes in a submission of its own, once you approve sending it. Once Apple approves it, the App Store shows it on its dates. A draft or a rejected event can be changed; deleting one before it's published is yours to do.
No prices or "#1" claims in an event's text, and no text, logos, borders or gradients in its media: App Review rejects them, and Apple adds its own frame.
On the dashboard
Each app's Store tab has a page for each: Reviews (reply from the review's row), Downloads and sales (with the report setup), Product pages and In-app events (App Store apps only). Approvals for your agent's requests are under Approvals, and as a notification on your phone. There are no CLI commands for these: use the dashboard or your agent.