WHY Do 5-Star Ratings Need
REAL-WORLD IMPACT METRICS?

BOTTOM LINE: 5-Star Ratings & Reviews Have Limits.

🔶 Consumers are becoming increasingly skeptical and suspicious of ratings and reviews.

🔶 Harvard research showed ratings have shortcomings and selection biases.

🔶 There’s never been an option for providing ongoing, long-term proof of the efficacy and impact of products and services—until now.

Learn more…

Open your inbox and you’ll likely find at least one request for a 5-Star Rating.

Delete it and it will appear in your texts — over and over and over again.

Unsubscribe and you’ll receive the autoreply that says…

Please rate your experience.

🤪 🤨 🙄

Why do organizations request 5-Star Ratings?

Organizations have come to view 5-Star Ratings as PROOF that users love their product or service and would recommend it to others.

Five-Star Ratings are used to provide SOCIAL PROOF and build CUSTOMER LOYALTY in a recognizable, easily available, quick experience.

We’re not suggesting you ditch your 5-Star Ratings, but be aware:

Buyers are growing skeptical, untrusting, and suspicious
of 5-Star Ratings.

According to Harvard Business Review contributors, Josh Breinlinger, Andrei Haglu and Julian Write,
“…five-star rating systems suffer from several shortcomings. Lacking incentives for providing truthful feedback, users who have extreme experiences (either very bad or very good) are much more likely to leave feedback than users who have average experiences, thus creating selection biases. Ratings are also prone to “grade” inflation, so that in some marketplaces having a 4.8-star average, or 96% positive feedback, does not mean that the supplier is particularly exceptional. And on some marketplaces, the difference between 4.5 stars and 4.8 stars could be massive, making it hard for users to differentiate OK suppliers from very good ones.”³

Clearly, Five-Star Ratings have limits.

Why do we continue to use something so common, limited, and potentially undependable?

Because people largely make buying decisions based on others’ experiences with products and services. Their opinions matter and getting buyers to write (or read) long, detailed reviews is becoming more and more difficult.

Unfortunately, we’ve never had a better option.

Until now.

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