Part of writing a review on ProductReview.com.au is choosing a rating. It's important to understand how our rating system works and what it means for your business.
Read through the guide below to learn more about review rating systems.
Overview
Ratings help reviewers sum up how happy they are with a product or service. They're great for looking at, at a glance, to determine whether a review is positive or negative.
Overall ratings are calculated as the average of all the ratings your listing has received.
For example, if you have 5 x 5-star reviews and 4 x 2-star reviews the average rating is calculated as:
(no. of reviews x rating) + (no. of reviews x rating) + ... / total no. of reviews
((5 x 5) + (4 x 2)) / (5 + 4)
(25 + 8) / 9 = 3.67 (to 2 decimal places)
Overall ratings are updated every time a review is published.
Simple calculator
You can input the numbers from your listing and adjust to see how many reviews you would need to change your average rating.
Average rating: 2.9
Weighing up the positives and the negatives
While ratings are shown prominently at the top of listing pages, it's important to remember that consumers don't just focus on overall ratings.
Below is a list of things that consumers focus on when looking at your review base:
- Overall rating
- Rating distribution
- Review numbers
- A selection of 5-star and 1-star reviews
- Brand Manager responses to 5-star and 1-star reviews.
It's easy to be taken aback by negative feedback. You want to know that your customers are having the best service possible and you want to show this to future potential customers.
Too often, people think the solution is to remove negative reviews wherever possible to improve their rating. Of course, being an independent consumer review company, ProductReview.com.au does not remove negative reviews that meet our Posting Guidelines. In the end, focusing too much on removing negative reviews won't help in the long run.
Consumers want to see the pros and cons and they do this by looking at reviews on either end of the scale. In other words, consumers often go out of their way to read through peoples' negative experiences as part of their purchasing decisions. Consumers are easily suspicious of listings that contain only positive reviews.
What can I do about negative reviews?
When building a review base for your brand, you need to keep in mind that you can't always avoid negative reviews. However, there is a lot you can do if you do receive a negative review.
It's important to respond to negative reviews on a basic level publicly, if possible. It may be the case that you will try to come to a resolution privately, but consumers want to see that you are addressing criticisms that you receive. How you respond to a negative review shows potential customers the quality of your customer service. Even if a reviewer is being unreasonable, consumers will be able to see that you've put in effort regardless.
If a negative review has come up because of a misunderstanding or another issue that is easily fixed, you can help turn the negative into a positive. If a reviewer is happy with a resolution, they are often happy to post an updated review and rating.
The biggest strategy that businesses miss when dealing with negative reviews is not reaching out to their other customers. Having 10 reviews on your listing that are all negative seems bad at first, but it's important to focus on all of your other customers who have yet to write a review. Happy customers may not think of writing reviews on their own but if you reach out to them, they're often happy to share their feedback.