How our online rating system can become better
Rating products and services have been part of our life from a long time, it was never systemized but always been there, I mean earlier before buying any services or products we use to ask for reviews and ratings from our friends and relatives who had used those services or products before.
Then the era of the internet came in, anything and everything you can buy online, A market place to buy or sell products or services were not just restricted to a local market, Everything was global, But there was a huge gap between buyers and sellers, as both the buyers and sellers, can’t really see each other or know each other hence it was difficult to trust either one. As products and services were global, it was rare that the same product or service was used by our friends or relatives and that's how an online rating system has emerged.
In the digital era, ratings play a crucial role, helping users to trust sellers and getting a view from a person who had used the product or service.
But are these rating system working as we expect, and why we have so many rating systems? I mean why not just have a like or a dislike, why we have 5 stars or why just 5 stars why not 10 or more stars? Why different sites have a different rating system
Let’s get deep into it. Ever wondered why shopping sites don’t make it easier to review/rate a product/service, why we need to use stars?
YouTube is using like or dislike and it’s much easier right? so why our shopping sites are not following it?
The challenge with this format is, what about people who are feeling OK neither they liked or disliked the product/service, what if the buyer not just liked the product/service but loved it, or the buyer just hated the product/service, and the buyer wants to express it? To overcome these challenges shopping sites have multiple stars with an option to add a comment about how was their experience with the product/service, then why not YouTube have stars?
Like/Dislike review system
Initially, Youtube did have a 5-star rating system, But people were rarely using anything then 1-star or 5-star. YouTube Team noticed this pattern and decided to change it to like or dislike.
Percentage review system
Then there is percent reviewing system where users rate movies/products/services out of 5 stars and based on those rating average percent is displayed.
5-star rating system
The 5-star rating system is used by most of the websites especially by e-commerce sites where users rate from 1 star to 5 stars to the product/service and results are displayed like 3.5/5 stars.
Here are the general assumptions of these ratings
- 1 star is poor/ below expectations
- 2 star is average
- 3 star is as expected
- 4 star is above expectations
- 5 star is excellent
Recently I was reviewing a product on a call, and the person on the call asked me to review the product between 1-star and 5-star, 1-star stands for poor and 5-star stands for best, after reviewing out of curiosity I asked him, why he explained it, ain’t 1-star for poor and 5-star for best is common and everyone knows it, and then he explained to me, how often people miss understand these starts, they assume 1-star = best and 5-star = worst and while confirming ratings this misunderstanding was addressed and cleared.
Here is the bigger problem, Old days when we use to ask for reviews about product/services our friends/relatives use to explain things deeply on different parameters.
Here is an example of giving a review during the old days
John: Hey Lisa, how was the book you were reading last week?
Lisa: Hi John, the book was really good, I loved it how things are explained and content is so much relatable, But the quality of the book paper was poor though the seller was nice, I believe she will exchange it.
John: That’s great
In the above example, Lisa explained how the book was in terms of content and the overall quality of the book papers and the seller. what if she would have just said, 3-stars in reply to John as the review for the book. John would have assumed that the content is average hence Lisa is giving 3 stars, He would not know Lisa is saying 3 stars not because of the content of the book but because of the quality of the paper.
You must have got the problem with just showing the number of stars, viewers don’t get exact reviews, I know we do have an option to add a comment with stars. But the detailed review or you can say those comments are hidden from the people until they click on a full review, or they scroll down till the end to check the comments.
The major problem starts when users start rating products/services/places based on the things which are not directly related to the product/services/places and it’s not displayed upfront.
Here are a few examples:
Example: 01
Mack was in an urgent requirement for the product, and the product he ordered was delivered late, hence Mack ends up rating product poorly(1-star), While it has nothing to do with the quality of the product, and Mack chooses not to add a comment. Now things get more difficult for the viewers as there will be seeing only 1-star rating, without any reason, and viewers will assume the quality was poor hence there is a 1-star rating(40% of users make an opinion after reading 1 to 3 reviews)
Example: 02
John visits a restaurant and he does not like the ambiance of the restaurant, hence he decides to rate it 2-star out of 5 and ignores to add the comment, while a user who doesn’t really care about ambiance might decide not to visit the restaurant by seeing 2 stars and assuming the quality of the food is not good.
In both the scenarios, the user chooses not to add a comment may be in order to save the time, or was an introvert or just lazy to write a comment, but the person seeing review gets a completely different message.
So should we stop the 5-star rating system? Not really, there are scenarios where these ratings work well, like for a movie review user will solely rate movies based on the movie, not on theater, or food in the theater.
We can make comments compulsory, though I know some polite or introvert users might not like it or we can segregate ratings based on the type and not restrict it to just overall ratings.
Example: Amazon had noticed this and started for ratings in the segregated format for some products.
Example: OYO rooms
I know these changes make the process bit longer and add on few steps before final ratings, but this will help users to understand reviews better and will work more like real life or you can say like old days.
This was my first article on Medium, I hope you find it useful, and let me know what you think and how we can make our review/rating system better.
