Website Rating Systems: Does this earn a 3 or a 4-star rating?

Surveys and ratings are always weird. I am always stuck trying to interpret ratings, especially when I see things that normally are not supposed to be rated good or bad, like news stories, but I will get into that a bit later. We have all seen the numerous ways that different websites ask you to rate everything from restaurants, pink furry socks to your friend’s latest status update. But which ratings system is best? They all have their strengths and weaknesses so the better question to one’s self should be, “what do I want to accomplish, and which one fits best?” I chose two main types of rating systems that I am familiar with to talk about, but there are always more so fell free to let me know of any good ones.

The 5-Star Standard

This is the standard. In theory it presents users with enough choices to make an accurate rating, but still keeps it simple enough for other users to interpret the rating. It is a decent system that people are familiar with and instantly recognize it as a rating system, but it has its faults and a few I have seen are explained below.

Can five choices be too much? Maybe I am just a bit crazy, but yes I do think five choices can cause some problems. What is the difference between the three middle stars? What makes a 4-star different from a 3-star (other than an extra star)? Peoples’ limits for each of these ratings are different, but we hope that the low graders cancel out the high graders and we get a nice average of the real rating somewhere in between.

Another problem with 5-star ratings, which appears more frequently with younger web communities, is the lack of variety in ratings. When communities are getting started with their rating system, everything tends to receive a 4 or 5 star rating. If everything is rated the same, there is no way for a user to mentally create a hierarchy of the rated products or locations. Nothing is better or worse than the other and the rating system completely loses any importance or significance. There are many other things that contribute to this other than the rating system, but this could be limited with a different system.

Another example of something that could also cause similar ratings in a younger community could be: If users have to submit something to review it, why would they want to go through all the work to rate something mediocre or slightly bad, people will probably only have the motivation to do it for things they like or extremely dislike, early on.

But I still stand by my statement earlier, this system is decent. When you visit a site you have never seen and you glance at 5 stars listed side by side, you will know exactly what that means. You have seen it before and most likely have used a similar system. You may even develop a quick mental picture of the quality of the item or restaurant by the amount of stars it has received. You can also quickly compare that item to the other items on the page.

Good Implementation Tips:

There are a few things I try to remember and include with a 5-star rating system

• Include amount of reviews close by. Knowing how many people rated it gives more credibility to the rating.
• Show the missing stars as inactive not missing. Users will expect there to be 5 stars, but I have seen 4 stars sometimes as well, so just clarify how many the rating is out of.
• Be nice and link the ratings directly to the reviews of the product, not just the product page.

Examples:

http://www.rei.com

http://www.amazon.com

http://www.yelp.com

The “Thumbs Up/Like” System

I won’t hide my bias; this is becoming my favorite method of “rating”, but it still has its flaws. I lean toward this method because of its simplicity. You either recommend it and like it or do not, and when you don’t, it takes zero effort. This system also shows off popularity more successfully since it portrays the connection between amount of users and the rating directly.

The first problem with this system is the lack of detail. Someone may “thumbs up” something, but how much do they like it? It was enough for them to click the “thumbs up” button, but their favorite item and one that barely made the cut are now equal.

Along the same lines as lack of detail, you cannot submit a negative review. Sometimes places just need a smack in the face. I have definitely been to places or bought items that need a warning sign at the entrance or a warning tag sewed to the inside.

Good Implementation Tips:

• Having a unique icon, but still recognizable and clickable helps show off the ratings feature. This system can be overlooked if it is kept too small or hidden.
• Show off the number of people who have “Liked” the entry. That’s the whole system.
• Show a difference between the entries a user has “liked” and the entries a user has not.

Example:

http://hypem.com

http://www.behance.net

http://www.inkd.com

A Future Idea

Some quick babble and ideas for a rating system…

Could a system exist where a series of questions is asked and the website determines the star rating from the users’ responses? The system would never ask the user to directly rate the entry, but ask them a set of questions and combine them to create a rating. It would always be consistent, but could end up being difficult to understand, confusing, and require much work to decide the questions for the different categories. The question creator would also have to be careful not to let the problem of “is it this or that” appear in the questions like it does with the 5-star system. It is also important to remember a review is personal and subjective. Can that ever be removed? Should it?

Side Note: Things that should not be rated

A few months ago I noticed news agencies having a ratings system or an “I Like” button at the top of all of their articles. These days, it seems that many of them have caught on and changed the wording of these or implemented recommendation systems instead. My problem with these was: how do you rate an article about an F5 tornado ripping through and leveling a city? It was well written with amazing photography, so I gave it a 4 and a half star rating out of five, but 10 people died, how am I supposed to click the “Like” button?