Come on Epic! You can make smarter decisions for the user experience AND the business.
I’m quite confident, that in an A/B test, sales will go up and refund rates will go down if you have the text-ratings and Q&A sections available again. Make your management aware, that they need to A/B test such a change in a controlled and isolated way to actually see the effects on the business of the sellers and the marketplace. Removing the text reviews whilst introducing a new marketplace is not an isolated test.
My hypothesis is, that customers are less willing to buy an asset without text-reviews since they contain info on the REAL compatibility with latest versions and known issues, solutions for certain issues and they provide the most important thing which is CONTEXT on each rating. Yes! We buyers are smart enough to distinguish between useless ratings and those that are valuable.
Ratings are an essential part of a marketplace. A big part of Amazon’s market dominance comes from having so many product ratings that you can scan & read through to help you make a dedicated buying decision. Don’t you think that they, as the most profit oriented company would have removed text ratings a looong time ago if they would financially benefit from that? Every other major marketplace uses ratings + comments in combination as well. If you think you have any evidence that it has a positive effect to get rid of the comments and only show the rating, I suggest you double and tripple check that data since everyone else on the market seems to say sth completely different.
Dear EPIC staff who is managing the forums, please make the management who made this decision, aware of this and other threads, clearly show them what the community thinks about their decision and educate them about A/B testing. They are ruining and integral part of the user experience for buyers and sellers and also affecting their sales!
Test it & bring back the text ratings & Q&A section. Thank you.