I’d like to make a suggestion that I think would be beneficial to both consumers and content creators. As it stands now, the ratings system is disconnected from reviews. Someone can rate something 5 stars, or 1 star and isn’t likely to explain why they chose the rating they did. The problem this presents is twofold:
As a content creator, it doesn’t allow us the potential to address any concerns consumers may have about our product. Whether you rate my product 5 stars, or 1 star, I’m going to want to know why you did that so I can either continue to provide x, or reevaluate how I provide y. I believe that is paramount in our endeavor as content creators to provide the best user experience for our customers.
As a consumer, when I’m looking at a product I look at the overall rating, and then the individual ratings to see why people rated it such. It allows me to find out the specific pros and cons, why someone rated it that way, and how it may affect me if I purchase it. Making informed purchases is paramount, and specific reviews/ratings are integral to that process.
Most sites, such as Amazon, place the rating a consumer gave alongside their review comment. An overall rating alone, as is the case with the marketplace currently, doesn’t give enough information. Individual ratings alongside reviews provide specifics that are useful for both parties.
Another suggestion is to encourage ratings and review participation. If you look at my two packs for example, you may think that only 5 people bought the first and 1 bought the second. Having the sales number on my end, I was very surprised by the amount of people who actually chose to leave a review. Using Amazon as an example again, a few days after purchasing a product they send you an email or prompt asking you how you are enjoying your new purchase. An identical system that asks consumers to rate and comment on their purchase a few days after they’ve had a chance to tinker with it can help to increase the participation in ratings and reviews. The more consumers we have providing well thought out reviews of marketplace content, the more informed people will be when they contemplate purchasing, and developers will be when evaluating how to further improve their services.
Overall I think this will serve to improve the marketplace experience. What are your thoughts? =)
I feel that the ability to leave reviews should be restricted just to those who have actually purchased the content, similar to the ability to add a rating requires that the content was purchased first.
As for the reviews, I myself have made several purchases based solely on what others have said about the content and without which I would never have spent the money on the content. Without the reviews from people who have actually purchased and used the content I don’t feel as confident on making a purchase without them. I have rated and reviewed every purchase I’ve made beyond the Epic content so that others could get an inside look from someone who has had time with the content and I have left both really good reviews and I have left some that I wouldn’t say are bad but they could be seen as helpful for both the creator and for anyone looking to purchase the content. My worst review was simply pointing out that I wouldn’t purchase the content except for purely educational reasons, because the content didn’t actually work out of the box as it was advertised to do in the video demonstration but required several long hours of tinkering to get it to function the way it did in the video.
I think the idea of an “Amazon” style rating system would be a great feature to have and with some kind of motivating force to get people to participate would be nice as well. The star system as it is leaves too much out and since not everyone uses it, it also makes it seem like no one has purchased the content before. On the consumer side I would not want to make a purchase without having the ability to give feedback that could either improve the content for everyone by giving suggestions or give gratitude to the creator for such fine work. I have never purchased through the launcher before simply because it doesn’t show reviews or the ratings, those have been hugely helpful in decision making when it comes to making purchases, same as it does on Amazon. If something has no ratings and no reviews on Amazon I would much rather look further down the line for something that has more ratings and a few reviews to get a better idea of exactly what I would be purchasing.
I agree with this as a content purchaser. I base my purchases off of the stars and comments left by others. Unfortunately right now, comments are off so I can only go by the stars. Luckily I believe the stars can only be rated by people who have purchased, but I would like more information (I like the above users Amazon style suggestion) before getting content, especially on an indie-budget.
+1 for that
I personally like the rating system from “Amazon” because you can see the overall rating + also the single ratings from the users and their comment
Another suggestion: don’t let the pack owner rate their own pack! It basically invalidates any pack that has one rating cause you assume it is the owner’s. I swear the one rating on my pack isn’t me, though
This isn’t a complicated web developer task to complete. I would have expected this to be resolved by now. Everyone knows that online reviews are the number one source of confidence in a consumers purchase. Hands down no question about it. This isn’t a comprehensive list of times either of us, or others, have brought this feedback up. This really shouldn’t be taking this long. I know there have been some more important and bigger things to implement and they are working towards getting some of the most requested features out to us.
Generally I have been quite pleased with some of the things the support team has done, but you can’t deny that seeing established content creators, like and myself, have to continually request these small things over the course of over half a year to be heard is disheartening to say the least.
To be fair the marketplace team is very small, and are inundated with a plethora of tasks. Sometimes things take a little while to be implemented, especially when quality is a major concern. I think a lot of us would rather wait for them to properly implement and test these features, no matter the length of time it takes rather than deal with a rushed product. For example the seller portal, has said at the initial launch that sales reports are still being tested to ensure 100% accuracy. I’m willing to wait if that means there won’t be discrepancies between reading the sales in the report, and receiving the official report at the beginning of the month.
The marketplace is still evolving, and the team is definitely taking and implementing feedback. We’ve come a long way from when we initially began, and we will continue to improve as time goes on. If content creators and consumers want to see an overhaul to the ratings and review system as we’ve discussed in this thread, I encourage you all to post your support and keep this discussion alive. But I also stress that we have patience. It may seem like a long time, but behind the scenes the men and women of the marketplace team are working diligently to make this the best marketplace experience possible. =)
I most certainly agree with you. I am just surprised that something as important as the rating system being polished off has taken this long. Which is how I came to the conclusion that currently other things are a higher priority and I am sure they have good reasons for the order of things.
Keep in mind that people can still rate 1 star and “It sucks” as a comment, or 5 star and “Great!”.
You could maybe end up willing that comments were not mandatory and only for people who really wanted to say something :rolleyes:
I don’t think reviews should be mandatory, but I do think they should be encouraged to some degree. There should be reviews of some kind, it makes sense to have them but seems odd to take them away. I can understand if they were removed due to spammers blasting stuff all over the place, but it would be an easy fix to make them work the way the rating stars work and only allow purchasers to leave reviews. Of course the way it was they were more like comments than an actual review of the product in most cases.
You will never be able to account for that. The beauty of the way this proposed system would work is that you will be able to look at the rating that commenters give in conjunction with the reviews. I as a consumer am not inclined to give much thought to people who say “great” with 5 stars or “sucks” with 1 star. I look for detailed reviews to go along with ratings, as that gives you a better idea of how other consumers perceive the product. Although they could get around this by implementing a minimum character count.
We aren’t advocating mandatory reviews, but tying ratings to reviews. Meaning in order to give a rating, you must write an accompanying review.
I wasn’t suggesting mandatory I was responding to someone else’s comment on them being mandatory and that we would regret it if they were.
I like the idea of tying the ratings to reviews but I also think there should be something to encourage purchasers to rate and review their purchase, even if it is something as simple as an email like: “Hey, thanks for purchasing [Insert product name]. Don’t forget to rate your purchase click here blah blah blah” that could be made into an automated email that is sent a few days after the purchase. Or some mechanism in the launcher that would promote leaving a review and rating after purchase…like on eBay when you make a purchase you get reminders to leave feedback on your purchase.
