Defining Ratings vs Reviews

Customer ratings and reviews are our daily bread and sometimes we assume that understanding of these concepts is common to everyone. The more customers we have a pleasure to work with, the clearer it becomes that there is a variety of words used to refer to these two, not to mention, that ratings and reviews are sometimes used interchangably, as if they were synonyms.

To make your communication with customers (and with us!) easier, we prepared a simple dictionary of terms that we at Lipscore, operate with.

Rating vs Review

Rating

Rating is the number of stars customer gave to your product or service on the scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is worst and 5 is best. Rating is not a written comment and Lipscore system allows leaving only the rating, without any text to it.

Ratings are saved automatically on the landing page – shoppers do not have to click the Publish button for the ratings to be saved in your Lipscore accout and displayed on your website. Ratings are published on your website as a part of the Rating score which is a collective result calculated from all ratings a product or service received.

There is no customer data visible on the website when only a rating without a written comment is left.

Review

Review is a written comment that customer leaves as an addition to rating, if they want to. Lipscore system does not allow leaving only the review, without a rating.

Reviews are not saved automatically on the landing page – shoppers  have to click the Publish button for the review to be saved in your Lipscore accout and displayed on your website.

Reviews are published on your website in reviews lists, with customer’s full name visible next to review. It is possible to shorten the second name to its initial letter or completely anonymize it upon shopper’s request. It can also be a default setting for all reviews, we do not recommend it though – the level of reviews credibility is much higher with full names on them. It also has a disciplinary effect on how people formulate their opinions, especially those negative ones.

Which is which on review landing page

Which is which on a product page