GUMTREE / RATINGS REVAMP
Stars to smiles
Revamping of the Gumtree ratings system in an attempt to promote safer trading and increase buyer/seller trust.
The “star rating” was a solution adopted by the Global Connectivity Guild to tackle the problem of lack of trust between users and to promote a more positive behaviour on the platform. Unfortunately, it quickly became unpopular with users and the solution did not improve user trust on the platform.
Thanks to data collected after the initial release in Australia, we learnt that this first iteration had room for improvements. We used the opportunity to customise this solution and continue to roll it out on all platforms.
My involvement was to provide an end-to-end front-end solution to improve buyer/seller trust, reduce customer complaints regarding negative ratings while increasing user ratings and active user engagement.
Responsibility
- Design strategy
- Research including user testing planning & synth
- Product design (end to end)
- Engineer handover & testing
- Accessibility compliance
Revamping of the Gumtree ratings system, quickly became the gold-standard for rating users on marketplaces world-wide.
How will it solve Gumtree rating problems?
Rewarding good Gummies
If a user receives at least 3 ratings with an average score of 4 or more (4x Smiles), they’ll be rewarded with a “Highly Rated” badge next to their username. A Highly Rated badge will help communicating a sense of trust to potential buyers and increase leads.
Rate interactions > not transactions
Using human-centred trust markers and more suitable UI to rate interactions > not transactions. Rating interactions enables us to collect more data while empowering our users to flag bad user behaviour before a transaction happens.
Educate… Not punish
Educating users negatively rated and rewarding users positively rated.
The new approach is more aligned to the objective of promoting a positive behaviour through an incentive system: good users get rewarded (with the use of a Highly Rated badge, promo codes, also boosting their ads…)
Bad users can be educated (emails with tips) rather than punished showing a one star score next to their username.
Stars to Smiles ⭐ > 🙂
Users can rate the experience with their counterpart choosing between a sad (1★), neutral (3★) and happy (5★) emoticon. Users can also choose to select one or more hard coded tags to further describe their experience.
More opportunities to rate
The key to capturing more ratings, was to increase the opportunities for users to provide a rating. We introduced opportunities to rate after three buyer/seller message exchanges within the message centre.
Trust me! I’m legit…
Users with a rating score below that or with insufficient ratings received, will always display the “Gummie since” label.
A quick look at a profile can reassure buyers before interacting with sellers. Profiles now display username and Highly Rated badge, trust markers and registration date, Community feedback, items currently selling, items recently sold (last 12 months).
Results
Enhgagement metrics
- Approx. 9000 ratings per day.
- 1’200 ratings / day blocked by ThreatMetrix
- Global adoption of Gumtree Ratings 2.0
- Facebook adopting smiles instead of stars (post release)
- 78% of the ratings are positive.
- 15% are negative
- 7% are neutral
- Buyers tend to rate more positively sellers (main tags: friendly, helpful, polite)
- Sellers tend to rate buyers more negatively (main reasons include: unresponsiveness and rude behaviour)
- Total of 15’000 users with a Highly Rated badge
- Growing at 350 new badges / day
user complaints
*From 22 to 5 complaints per month.
How I got there…
PROBLEM DEFINITION /
Implications of the 5 Star rating
Reviewing Top Detractors from NPS, Brand Tracker and User Testing, the issue of Gumtree being an untrustworthy platform and direct negative feedback to ratings – led to an investigation of the ratings system in Australia.
The results from available insights suggested there was no value in the existing ratings system and there was no incentive for users to rate other users fairly. While unfair 1 star ratings (eg. buyers retaliating against sellers who refused a low ball offer) would eventually appear on a seller profile page damaging their reputation on Gumtree and generating too many complaints for Customer Service.
My objective was to:
- reduce the amount of negative feedback related to ratings
- add value to user profiles
- reward good characters (not punish)
- increase buyer/seller ratings and trust metrics for Gumtree
- have a positive impact on NPS trust scores
40% of 1 star ratings was unfair and shown directly on the user profile page. Customers would request for removal of these.
Only 10% of total ratings were in between 1 to 5 stars, suggesting that there’s no need to have so much granularity.
Ratings was the top ranked detractor on Gumtree from multiple sources including NPS, Brand Tracker and User Testing.
concepts could only be implemented as a front-end solution… there were restraints on what could be achieved via the back-end due to global code dependencies.
SOLVING THE PROBLEM /
Not just stars…
While understanding customer trust concerns were a priority, this initiative was met with complexities as any concept could only be implemented as a front-end solution.
Path to ratings success
Our discovery started with a review of the inner back-end workings of the existing ratings system. Several workshops involving PMs and engineers provided insight into what was feasible from an implementation standpoint, to set parameters on the design. The guidelines were provided by engineers which helped with design parameters.
A review of data and insights from multiple sources provided a foundation for our discovery. Ratings usage data, feedback from web and app etc. gave us a backbone for why we should review the existing ratings system – while future testing would provide insights into any assumptions and cover gaps in our findings.
User testing was conducted face to face in a user-testing lab. 12 participants were interviewed and the topics covered ranged from their latest experiences on Gumtree, their pain-points relating to buying and selling through Gumtree (and online in general) what their experience and expectations was with user ratings online and on Gumtree.
Key insights from testing
Mapping feedback
We created a customer journey map to help process the excess amount of quant. data, user insights and verbatim – by plotting it on a typical customer experience. It also enabled us to plot opportunities to introduce product changes and features to solve core functional and user problems. This helped with our requirements mapping and to ensure concepts met user needs across the customer journey.
SUMMARY /
Key decisions
1.
Understand the mechanics of the current “Star” rating system with engineers and determine the parameters of what was permitted to reverse engineer our solution. This set the goal up-front early and created boundaries for providing any solutions moving forward.
2.
Gumtree had A LOT of data, mostly quant and global customer sentiment. However, talking to and reviewing verbatim from Australian users gave us insight into “our” cohort and we were able to understand local pain-points and what customers valued the most. This heavily influenced our user-centric approach.
3.
Our approach… Scrapping what was done! Keeping an open mind! Not taking “no” as an answer! Ratings was taken on by myself and Mauro Ferrante as a challenge and having a sound relationship and collaborative, positive approach with my PM and engineers paid off.
‘I am thankful to Gumtree that recently I discovered I have a “high rating” as a seller and buyers can select feedback options to best describe their transaction with me. Besides me having my regular buyers, these new settings have made way for more trusting buyers, and the feeling is reciprocated. So thanks again! We recently moved downsizing our home with the hope to spend more time with my kids too, and I think we’re off to a good start so far to a minimalistic and wholesome approach. Cheers, Sarah’