And yet we simultaneously know that they’re unreliable and subjective at best and scammy fakes at worst.
Meanwhile, Amazon iscurrently testing new ways to display the stars, making the system even harder to use.
Why can’t we ditch stars, and why are they so important?
Star ratings.oatawa / Getty
“Star ratings can offer a general idea of the overall sentiment and satisfaction of previous customers.
Star Power
Star ratings are unreliable for many reasons.
On one end, they’re subjective.
Please Rate Us.Twenty47studio / Getty Images
Some people never give five stars.
Some give one or five, but nothing in between.
And then there are the outright scams.
Star ratings can offer a general idea of the overall sentiment and satisfaction of previous customers.
And even if all those ratings were totally subjective and scam-free, they’d still be misleading.
“In my view, the star rating does an alright job, even if imperfect.
What might be more worth removing is the count of the number of reviews.
That very strongly favors products that have been on Amazon longer.
What’s left are often useful real-world opinions of these products.
As a former professional gadget reviewer and reviews editor, I’m no fan of ratings.
But most of my writers wanted five-star or even percentage ratings, which is an absurd idea.
What’s the difference between 77 and 78 percent?
Or even between 70 and 80 percent?
Twenty47studio / Getty Images
It might be a good idea toget rid of stars altogether, then.
But whatever Amazon does, it should stop with its weird experimentation.
It’s glanceable, familiar, and it works.
What does not work is one star with the rating as a number written beside it.
Keep the stars, Amazon, or whatever.
Just don’t do this.
It’s the worst of all possible worlds.
