perplexed by some customer reviews.....

[Dundridge Dreadlow]

Hi Catya and Sierra,

I read (not skim) every single one of the posts in the threads I reply to. The fact that I don't agree with all your desired solutions doesn't mean that I don't take the time to read what you wrote or that I don't care what you feel and think.

I'm not discounting the amount of work or expenses outside Kitely it takes to list items here, especially when you are one of the first people to do so and thus can't buy the components you need in Kitely Market yet. That said, this situation will improve over time as the number of components available in Kitely Market increases so please don't consider that to be a permanent negative.

The reason that you don't see a lot of points-based ratings (such as the system Sierra suggested that adds stars based on a selection of questions the user must answer) is that research has shown those systems result in lower sales volumes for the ecommerce sites that use them (and thus the sales volumes of the merchants). Amazon, Apple, Google, and others do a lot of business analysis and have chosen to stick with the imperfect star rating plus comments system despite all its known limitations. They didn't do this because there is something magical about that system or because it's the easiest to implement, they do this because their research showed that switching would hurt their marketplace and the merchants who rely on it for their sales.

Even if we were to go with Sierra's suggested points-based rating, and even took it a step further and removed the ability to include comments, or added a 30 day delay until reviews are posted publicly, that wouldn't prevent people from giving unjustified bad reviews (especially when they are written by people who intend to sabotage the merchant's sales). There is really nothing that can be done against that but to try to mitigate the effect of those few bad reviews on future sales of that item. Kitely provides merchants with the ability to have their reply show up directly bellow the user review. The buyers reply to the reply will require the reader to view the comments section about his or her original review - a section where anyone can comment as well, supporting either the merchant or the buyer. We use a popular weighted rating algorithm to reduce the effect of a few lower ratings on otherwise highly-ranked popular items. Finally, we'll be adding a histogram of rating distributions so people will be able to get a better feel for what the buyers opinion is for the item they're considering buying.

Regrading the effect of ratings and reviews on future sales, see some of the most popular Apps, books, and other real world items in various appstores and marketplaces. Even the best selling items sometimes have a significant number of 1 star ratings and bad reviews. That is the nature of social ecommerce. As the number of rated items increases the distribution of bad reviews will become better dispersed and the system will stabilize around values that reflect the wisdom of the crowds. As it currently stands, the low number of votes creates ratings which have more to do with the buyers than the rated products. Looking at the marketplace sales transaction log I can say that popular items continue to be popular with new users even when there are other items with better rating and reviews. The thing that is causing the biggest reduction in sales of popular items is the addition of alternative high quality items in the marketplace (when those new items are bought instead of the older ones). It seems that many people are aware of this and are sorting by Best Selling more than they are sorting by Best Rating.

[Please read without any cynicism implied as none is intended] you make it sound like everyone behaves differently in SL Marketplace and are always giving objective reviews and ratings. If that's truly the case then that is an anomaly in ecommerce sites which I'd sure love to know how to duplicate here. Why do you think the behavior there is different?

[Sierra Jakob]

As the number of rated items increases the distribution of bad reviews will become better dispersed and the system will stabilize around values that reflect the wisdom of the crowds. As it currently stands, the low number of votes creates ratings which have more to do with the buyers than the rated products.

I think you may be under a misconception about how many ratings any one product is likely to get. It is actually very rare for customers to voluntarily rate a product in the SL Marketplace.** Let me give you an example, which is quite typical. I have listed hundreds of products in the SL MP. My most popular item was created in 2011. In the first few months I had to literally beg several acquaintances to please buy the product and put in an honest review. That's the way I got 4 reviews. Since then, I've sold this item 1235 times--currently averaging over a dozen a week. People loooove this item. They contact me in-world about it. And yet... not a single individual has placed a review of the item or rated it since those first 4 review/ratings I had to solicit myself. Not one. And I've found that this is the same with everyone of my products.

**Now you will see some items in SL that seem to have been reviewed many times. From what I've been able to tell by rubbing elbows with fellow marketers there--those merchants are offering people gifts, coupons, and other treats for reviewing their products--something that is actually against SL rules (at least last time I checked).

So, I expect it would literally be years if not never before any one of my products in Kitely would ever be able to recover from a lower rating.
You say it shouldn't affect sales. But for me, the proof is in the pudding. I can tell you for a fact that within my own store, a less-than-five rating immediately halts sales to a trickle or most often to zero in the SL marketplace.

I certainly never said that everyone in the SL marketplace reviews or rates products fairly. And that's not what Catya said either. I think for the most part, SL shoppers are just more cautious about putting in a review/rating. I don't know why exactly. I think maybe people are not shy about contacting the creator to try to get a resolution, when there is an issue. And... maybe they are just more experienced shoppers at this point.

[Ozwell Wayfarer]

I think Sierra has a valid point there. What works for other e-commerce sites may in fact not work for Kitely or SL because of scale. Someone selling on amazon can expect to get a dozen or so reviews per year on an item at bare minimum. In a year in SL you will be lucky to get a handful of reviews scattered over a wide range of products. Therefore, the lower rating has a much more significant impact. Though Kitely is smaller, review frequency is higher, but still on a scale of magnitude much smaller than amazon, ebay etc.

[Ilan Tochner]

Sierra and Ozwell,

Our system used to get very little reviews until we started using the notices that caused people a certain amount of annoyance if they didn't rate bought items. Since then the percentage of transactions that result in a rating has grown to be a lot better than what you reported inSL. Now that we made the system less annoying (by allowing the permanent dismissal of the reminder to rate a particular item) this will likely result in a lower percentage of sales resulting in ratings. That said, the existence of a per-item reminder should help keep a certain percentage of reviews being added over time.

The size of the SL Marketplace and the amount of alternatives it includes for each sold item make it very hard to make good predictions for how people will behave in Kitely Market until we get a substantial number of items listed. As it currently stands, people have very little choice outside Kitely Market and a few choices within it. If they rule out items based on a bad review then they may be left with no viable alternative. One way to mitigate the hesitation people may feel is to include good images, videos and/or demo items that people can use to get their own idea of how good the product is. I can tell you for a fact that items with several high quality pictures do better than items with a few ones. People use whatever data they can when making a decision, most of that data (in our current state of development) is provided by the merchant so you have a lot of effect on how people view your items. I'm not saying ratings don't matter it's just that with the current supply in the marketplace, they matter a lot less than they do in SL.

[Dundridge Dreadlow]

I've not had many reviews myself, but I'm not getting anywhere near the number of sales other people are. If I was on my more expensive items, I'd be pulling a full time real world income out - a good one too I don't really consider myself a merchant - I just develop, build, make, model, record, create, texture or script stuff myself. It takes a huge amount of time !

Unfortunately it is unlikely that my sales will reach high enough numbers for a negative rating to balance out, but fortunately I don't need to worry about it as of yet. With large, popular downloads (say twitter on android) they get about one in a hundred reviews, and generally only if someone has something particularly good or bad to say. Customers can be vicious and rate harshly without paying a moments thought to the seller/developer who may have spent months or more working on a product. They are equally harsh to free and paid items. Youtube is full of people wanting their 30 seconds back, and many spend huge quantities of time complaining(or worse) about something they didn't even need to watch in the first place !

Reviews may balance out in sales, but I'd guess that many products are unlikely to ever see that balance restored if they don't sell enough for whatever reason.

I would ask people who are thinking of going to stay - please don't deprive people of the chance to see your talent because of something someone else said. I've heard that any publicity is good publicity.

Unlike in other places Kitely does give the opportunity for a merchant to rebuke a written review, I would hope that any potential purchasers would read both, but that might be tricky with the stars being much more prominent and on the search results page.

[Danko Whitfield]

Ok, here's a dumb question..

Is it absolutely necessary to have a ratings system and reviews?

Does it cause more trouble than it is worth?

I never read reviews, never write them, and i have never rated any items i have purchased on Amazon or SL MP or the two items I have bought on Kitely MP. To be honest, I didn't even realize there was a rating system on SL MP until I started reading this thread. I only knew there was a rating system on Kitely MP because I kept getting a constant reminder to review my purchase. (That has stopped as of yesterday. THANK YOU!)

I ignore reviews because years ago, I did read some. I thought they were a waste of my time.

After reading this thread, I wouldn't dare write a review or rate a product. Now, it's out of fear.

[Constance Peregrine]

Be skeered, Danko, be very, very skeered!!



Not really sure why this caused me to think of "The Raven" but Chris sure did a good reading of it, so it's all good, right????

[Marstol Nitely]

You sure have a knack for lightening things up Minethere.

I'm not going to suggest that people who prefer not to rate items do or that those who don't read ratings start reading them. I read reviews often, and they are a part of my decision. A review like Duece's or Sherrie's never would have dissuaded me from buying a product. Mainly because they gave the items 4 stars, which I consider very good. Also because the stores and products (I did figure out Catya's store, but won't write it because she didn't) in all three instances were presented very well. I also like to write good reviews. I wrote lots of them for SL merchants back when I spent time there. I never received anything for those reviews other than the satisfaction of knowing I'd recommended a merchant I admired. That's not to say that others should or shouldn't write reviews. I just think we can all find a way to agree on a lot more than we disagree on.

[Catya Smith]

Ilan, I was finished commenting on this, but I do have to say something that I think is very important. You keep comparing Kitely MP to Amazon, but you cannot do this. When you purchase from Amazon, you have a "real" product that is tangible. When you order from a virtual world, you have a digital product. In both of these situations the customers are not the same. When someone buys from Amazon, they have different expectations than a person buying from Marketplace. You need to compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges.

You seem to focus on the big picture and not the brush strokes of the artist. You are looking at the larger function of Kitely Mp and not the individual merchant and even smaller individual item. Bad reviews with high stars and a single solitary bad comment can totally torpedo a product . Your fancy algorithm's will bring your negatively commented on product randomly back up to the top in the first page and also in the search engine. Even though it does this it still shuts the product down due to the undeserved negative comment.

As I have said before, I have been in SL Marketplace, which is the best comparison you can use for Kitely, since it is an actual virtual product MP. I know how it works, due to experience. You can throw numbers out there, but unless you have your own MP you cannot actually see the process, or totally understand it.

If you want products in here than you need to make sure the merchants that actually have stores are happy and not brought down. Maybe when coming up with ideas to improve things in Kitely, it would be a good idea to scrap the mentors group and open up the decisions to everyone in the game by perhaps sending out a survey to see what people would like to do. You go over the survey and you and Oren make the final decision, instead of a core group that may or may not even have stores in Kitley.

Sierra was totally right in her posts, when she said in SL people don't even comment often or leave reviews and I find the people that do are almost always positive. I think a thumbs up and thumbs down, without comments in here might work better in a community where people love to make comments that are not even needed.

On a final note, in response to this:
"One way to mitigate the hesitation people may feel is to include good images, videos and/or demo items that people can use to get their own idea of how good the product is. I can tell you for a fact that items with several high quality pictures do better than items with a few ones. People use whatever data they can when making a decision.."

Ilan I don't believe in demos, there is to much abuse of demos, not to mention there were glitches in here in the beginning and I'm sure if I did include demos, for example with my hair and they went onto peoples hands, instead of their head, I would have had lots of bad response and no sale from that product.

Videos-I do make virtual videos for other things, but again, it is a long process to make the video and upload it for a dollar item that I have already spent a lot of time on. I was also concerned how a video might play, since everything is so new.

Pictures and ads-I usually spend more time on my pictures and ads than I do creating the actual product, because I want it to be appealing to customers and grab their attention. I always show the product exactly as is, but some people photoshop their images to make the product look better than it is, so you cannot rely on this.

I think people need to be realistic and actually become a seller before they make comments about things they don't really even know about from experience. Experience is the only way to see the whole picture!

[Constance Peregrine]

Maybe when coming up with ideas to improve things in Kitely, it would be a good idea to scrap the mentors group and open up the decisions to everyone in the game by perhaps sending out a survey to see what people would like to do. You go over the survey and you and Oren make the final decision, instead of a core group that may or may not even have stores in Kitley.

[sneaks back in-head covered with shrapnel army type stuffs]

Just a fyi, the Mentors group is open to everyone, it is not really an official-type mentors group, but more just folks who have the time, or make the time, to go to the Wednesday meetings and either just listen, listen and sometimes comment, comment too much [that's me!!], or explode and make a serious mess [ok, that last part is not really true...I think].

So, for example, though I make time quite often to go to those meetings, I would never consider myself a Mentor 'cause I don't care for such things, personally. [not to disparage Mentor type folx who do, of course]

The title "Mentor's Group" is, for me anyways, just a title, it could be named other things too, I would imagine, and serve the same purpose, that being just a loose meeting of interested folks.

Anyone can come to those meetings, and more and more do...I recommend it, actually.

[removes shrapnel protection gear and goes somewhere else, or other]