Marketplace Product Review needs to be better!

[Ashtyn Ninetails]

(I don't know if there's already a version of this subject out there, so if there is, I apologize for the repeat. If there isn't, here it is then!  :smileytongue:  )

 

Am I the only one to think the current Product Review system is complicated and inefficient?

I often get IMs like these:

[17:57] Customer: Hi! I just bought some sculpties of yours in the marketplace and wanted to say thank you, they are awesome!
[17:58] Ashtyn Ninetails: Thank you, that's very kind of you!
[17:58] Customer: Nice houses too! I'm gonna tell my friend to check out your store!
[17:59] Ashtyn Ninetails: Cool, thank you! Would you be so kind to leave a simple review on the item in the Marketplace?
[17:59] Customer: I don't know how to do that.

 

It used to be that you bought something at the then SLX / XStreetSL, now Marketplace, and you had options to review the product right away. You could also very easily access the list of what you had recently purchased, with pictures, and very simply organized, and either leave a review in the form of stars, from 1 to 5, or you could write a full product review if you felt like something needed to be said about a product.

Currently, when you buy an item in the Marketplace, you don't get any of those options right away. You have to dig for your order history, find the items in a crude non-pictured list, then you get the option to review the product, but you can't just do a quick "yeah I like this, I'll give it 5 stars", you have to write something to go along with the stars.

You can also go back to the item's page, click on the Reviews tab, and click the 'write a review' button, but still, you can't just give it stars, which is a quick and simple way to give a product the thumbs up without taking the time to write about it!

 

I think that's too many steps for something that the customers do out of kindess for a seller, and let's face it, reviews, even if they are just stars, help with sales!

 

My suggestion/request to LL is to make accessing  your order history and leaving reviews in the Marketplace at least more intuitive than it is now, and if nothing else, let us leave simple star reviews to items we buy!

Thanks!

 

-Ashtyn Ninetails

 

SculptyWorks

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Lismore/72/107/3507 

[Pamela Galli]

I agree that there is much that can be done to make it easier to leave reviews, all that you mentioned. Before, reviews and ratings were rare enough, but now less than one in 100.

Still I prefer the actual reviews to stars. Anyone can leave one star for any reason, and there is nothing you can do about it. Now, if they leave one star because something did not get delivered, you can get it removed. 

[Relm Foxdale]

I've been hoping they'd sort this out for ages--like, since the SLM opened. I'm not holding my breath, but it'd still be nice if they did.

[Paladin Pinion]

I haven't received a single review since the new marketplace opened, though I do get compliments in IM. I see competing products with hundreds of reviews that were transferred from XStreet. Their reviews are largely static too now, but they always look better because they are displaying the old totals.

[Medhue Simoni]

The more topics on this, the better.:smileywink:

The current system is (forgive me) moronic. I get 1 star reviews because of bad deliveries. Matter of fact, since this new website was implemented. I've gotten about 5 "great products" reviews of 4 or 5 stars, and now about 8, 1 star reviews because of bad deliveries. Comparably, on Xstreet, for the same amount of time, I would have gotten hundreds of ratings, with a couple 2-3 stars ones from customers and I really don't think many of my 1 star ratings are actually customers.

What LL has designed is definitely the worst rating and review system i have ever seen. I don't know how it could be worse.

Yeah, on Xstreet, any1 could throw a 1 star at you, even your competition, but who cares if you end up getting 100 ratings on the product. Now, we are lucky to get any reviews at all, and if we do, there is a very good chance that it will be bad because of a bad delivery. The customer has no way to contact us from the website, so we are screwed.

[Myra Wildmist]

i don't think you can review something unless it was bought from the marketplace, so that's a disadvantage since a lot of sales are in-world.

[ab Vanmoer]

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Paladin Pinion wrote:

I haven't received a single review since the new marketplace opened, though I do get compliments in IM. I see competing products with hundreds of reviews that were transferred from XStreet. Their reviews are largely static too now, but they always look better because they are displaying the old totals.

---

One of the many arguments that I had with Brodesky was about importing star ratings and reviews from xstreet, thus giving established products an unfair advantage over newer products that would be unable to garner reviews via the convoluted marketplace system. Although many merchants seem to think that ratings are meaningless as they can be gamed, yet from a customer perspective, psychologically, a bevy of red stars does promote a feeling of confidence in a product.

@Ashtyn

The poor implementation of ratings and reviews was raised over 5 months ago  https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/WEB-2650 unfortunately this has now been assigned to Grant Linden who has long since moved on to greener (or should that be other) pastures. Somehow I doubt that Brooke and her team have actually taken the trouble to go through the Jiras that so many merchants wasted countless hours compiling and commenting on. Actually I wonder if the current commerce team have even taken the trouble to do a proper appraisal of xstreet which functionality wise, is still streets ahead of the marketplace.

 

 

[Catwise Yoshikawa]

 

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Medhue Simoni wrote:

The more topics on this, the better.:smileywink:

The current system is (forgive me) moronic. I get 1 star reviews because of bad deliveries. Matter of fact, since this new website was implemented. I've gotten about 5 "great products" reviews of 4 or 5 stars, and now about 8, 1 star reviews because of bad deliveries. Comparably, on Xstreet, for the same amount of time, I would have gotten hundreds of ratings, with a couple 2-3 stars ones from customers and I really don't think many of my 1 star ratings are actually customers.

---

Same thing happened to me. When you want to make a review is so hidden that you just don't want to waste your time searching how to do it, and only people angry enough after having any problem would keep searching. So I ended up with lot of 1 star reviews for non deliveries.
At least right now, we can see who is rating 1 star and try to fix their problem. And would be better if they send notice when someone write there, cause I have some that did notice 2 weeks before ^^'

 

[LuckyCreations1488303085]

I would like to see more than 2 reviews per page. When I click reviews, it will only show 2 before you have to click the next page.

[Blot Brickworks]

I agree the rating system is flawed. I used to get rated all the time but now I only seem to get them when there has been a mistake,failed delivery etc. That only brings poor reviews.

I also think it is a bad idea to expect people to write a review on each rating, just a simple click star system would invite more.

The way it is now makes it so hard for a good item to recover from a bad rating given because of a delivery failure..

[Catwise Yoshikawa]

 

---

Blot Brickworks wrote:

The way it is now makes it so hard for a good item to recover from a bad rating given because of a delivery failure..

---

You know you can flag a bad rating given because of a delivery failure, right? LL will remove all ratings about deliverys, when is a marketplace error and not yours, of course.

 

[Chelsea Malibu]

I like the old style where they had what you have not reviewed up front when you logged in.  The new review process isn't complex at all, it's just not obvious as to where it is.  This is also unfortunate in the these reviews also help the consumer make better buying decisions and if they cannot find them they can read them.

[LarryLow Kappler]

Yes this rating system is a real pain. The badest i have seen worldwide. But i think LL is not willing to change it. They think its not so important but they are completely wrong! A good rating system is a very powerful "weapon" in e-commerce. Actually it plays a major part for buyers and It will definitely help the merchants with sales and future sales. And a feedback or constructive criticism could always help to improve items and/or services for the next time. Im talking to many merchants every day (doing advertising for them and other marketing stuff) and yesterday a merchant told me that he has sold an item over 2500 times on the marketplace. And he got laughable 4 reviews so far.  Well, the fact that such a disastrous rate is possible should be alarming! 4 of 2500 possible ratings... Less than 1 %. Not bad :-) . Even if it were 40 of 2500 it would be a farce. Comparable with migrated XstreetSL items with their hundreds or thousands ratings it's just unfair.  

 

My suggestions to the LL:

1. Allow star ratings without leaving a review again. Why only written reviews ? You are not ebay!

and / or

2. Make the review option more visible (also for newbies). The keyword is: User friendliness !

and / or

3. Include a little reminder which pops up when there are 10 unrated items in the order history!

 

4. <<< Edited to avoid misunderstanding >>>

[Robert Galland]

It may not be so dire, Larry.

I do not have specifics, but at the last merchant's meeting with Brooke Linden, we were led to believe they are taking a hard look at the ratings system among other things. Search issues were discussed as well.

I particularly like your first three suggestions.

[Fornicola Butuzova]

You should never give any reward for leaving a reveiw.  There are merchants who have a system in plce that pays customers for them.  Where you are placed in the listings is based part, if not heavily on the average and number of ratings, so paying or rewarding customers for them is gaming.   There are some houses now with close to 500 ratings becuase the merchant pays for them.

But yeah, it sucks now, I used to get 5% return on reveiws, but now when when i remind customers that is really helps us to leave a rating, half can't figure out how to do it, and teh other half say "Oh, i dopnt really want to write anything"

Lucky to get 1% on new items

 

[VonGklugelstein Alter]

I brought this up a few times in the past but they should only require reviews for ratings of less than 3 and let people rate without review from 3 up. Unfortunately since there are too many merchants who use armies of alts to leave reviews this will then become even more blatantly abused like in the past.

 

A solution would be to allow the merchant to see who rated and how, even though the info is not displayed public. Then What we really need is a 2 way rating system that rates the buyer as well coupled with the ability to block a buyer from future purchases. I have had people drop 1 bombs on several pages of my top rated products.  If a buyer rating drops below a certain point they should be blocked from the Marketplace Forrrevahhhh..!

[Saberwind Saarinen]

Are all of the posted written reviews even showing up to begin with?

I tossed up a couple of useful reviews for products I rather liked, but they don't seem to show up.  Is there a review process for reviews before they go public?  Can a user not see their own reviews on a product's page?

Or is this borked?  At least the "Review" counter incremented correctly. 

[Rya Nitely]

I just reviewed an item and it shows up straight away when you refresh the listing page. But when I go back to order history the item still says 'Review Product'. This is a fault. Once you have reviewed a product that link should disappear or it should say 'Product has been reviewed'. The only way to know you have already reviewed a product is to click on the link again. So you don't know which items you have aleady reviewed when looking at your order history. In Xstreet it showed you a list of items that still needed reviewing.

I haven't found that the lack of ratings has had any impact on my sales. Customers don't seem to care about the lack of ratings when they choose to buy something. I don't mind the system the way it is. I used to find it all a bit stressful, not knowing when the next bad rating would be dumped on my item and drag it down - just when you're feeling good about all those 5 stars someone dumps a 1 star on you. :smileysad: