SL Marketplace-Featured Items & Reviews

[SyndraJade]

Hi everyone,

Can someone tell me what the difference is between the Featured Items and a five star item on Marketplace? Sometimes the Featured Items have have ratings that are lower (or sometimes not rated at all).Are they "better" than the five star items? Shouldn't the five star items (that have say over 20 reviews) be the Featured Items?

 

Also,How do I read all the reviews,I cant seem to figure it out..I click review and only see like 1 or 2..

 

Thanks,

Syndra Jade :womanwink:

[Aili Panthar]

The featured items can sometimes be low rated because it's just sellers paying to have their item featured. The rating has nothing to do whether something is featured or not. If something has 5 stars it has a lot of positive reviews and no or very few negative ones. So I always look at ratings and reviews, not featured status.

[Ishtara Rothschild]

Many reviews are merely ratings ratings that have no written review attached. Ratings were converted from XStreet to the new Marketplace platform in this way. That's why there is often a higher review count than actual reviews.

In general, ratings don't really mean anything. Some sellers play the alt game and rate their own items, or downrate the items of competitors. And most customers don't rate at all anymore, because the new Marketplace doesn't remind them to do so and makes it pretty hard to find this feature in the first place. Many newer items sell quite well but are still unrated for that reason.

On other items, the ratings are skewed since only disgruntled customers make the effort to find out how to rate content. I've recently bought a newer item from one of my favorite designers, a sculpted vest. There was nothing wrong with it, but it still had a 1 star rating and a review that read "I paid but I didn't receive it". Typical Marketplace error, not the merchant's fault, but some people don't make the effort to contact the merchant and instead leave a negative review. This means that ratings are utterly meaningless either way.

[Ciaran Laval]

Ratings lack consistency, one man's 3 is another man's 5. Featured items on the marketplace are paid for adverts.

[SyndraJade]

I agree,I dont belive the reviews unless theres a certain amount like 20 or 30 or something like that.And isn't "Featured Items" a bit misleading for some,why not just call it "Paid Advertisements?"

 

And can someone answer my second question..how do you see ALL the reviews for a item? I click on read reviews and I see like 1 or 2..

[Erwin Solo]

The featured items are paid advertisements.

The reviews without words, are from an older system called XLStreet.  If there are many good reviews without words, and no reviews with words, that means that the reviews are really old. 

The reviews with words are from the new Marketplace System.

In both cases, please be aware that Sellers often use their ALTs to post glowing reviews.  Also, competitors use their ALTs to post negative reviews. 

So, bottom line, the review system is generally untrustworthy.  I don't mean the review system is worthless; I just mean "buyer beware."  Occasionally, you will see a product with hundreds of positive reviews, many of which are recent; and hundreds of reviews are meaningful.  If I only see a few reviews, I generally read them, but I factor in the fact that the positives may be by Seller ALTs and the negatives may be by Competitor ALTs. 

[Erwin Solo]

P.S. Seller ALT reviews are much more prevalent than competitor ALT reviews. One has to buy the product through Marketplace to review it.  The Seller may do this cheaply buying it at full price with an ALT, in which case the true cost is the 5% commission that Marketplace takes.  Moreover, the Seller may mark the product down to L$0 for a few seconds, and then buy it with their ALT, and then give a positive review with the ALT--and in that case no commission is paid.  So, the Seller may post ALT reviews for free.  Competitors will often buy just one copy with their ALTs for competitive assessment, but that cost real L$--so they don’t repeat it to drive down the reviews.

[WADE1 Jya]

Then there's always the people that think 1 star = best.

Really!

Believe it or not, the 5 star rating system is not universally understood among all the world cultures!

I love the new system of customer must post written review along with star ranking. For example, I see somebody ranks my item with 4 stars, saying item is awesome except for something about feature X wasn't top notch.

Generally, I can quickly drop a slightly modified item to them that fits their needs exactly, & then see this review change to 5 stars (if they remember to go back & change the rating) :matte-motes-grin:

With the old Xstreet system, we could just get an anonymous 1-star & be powerless to help resolve with customer --- because we had no clue who even left the review! :matte-motes-stress: The new set up is much improved!

[Erwin Solo]

I got a one star over the doors on the L$1 castle I had for sale not opening, and it quit selling.  So, I dropped it to L$0 and now its selling fine.  Well over a hundred sold.  No one else has had any problem.  The doors do open.  One must actually have rights to run scripts on the land.  I guess it wasn't good for squatters. 

I didn't know they could change their ratings.  Silly me.  It just seemed so absurd: "doors don't work."  Ha! I'll never miss the forgone Linden. 

[Ishtara Rothschild]

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SyndraJade wrote:

And can someone answer my second question..how do you see ALL the reviews for a item? I click on read reviews and I see like 1 or 2..

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Ishtara Rothschild wrote:

Many reviews are merely ratings ratings that have no written review attached. Ratings were converted from XStreet to the new Marketplace platform in this way. That's why there is often a higher review count than actual reviews.

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[Jaylin Wytchwood]

i would not mind getting the rating-system abandoned, as its obviously not fulfilling its intended use, but rather gets used as an advert-seller and flame-other - Tool.