Star Rating For Collections

[ColsCreations]

I noticed in the announcement for Collection vids, the screenshot of the Collection POD on the product page shows a star rating for the collection under the collection name. If I go to a product from that collection I can see the same thing myself so it's not just something only the designer can see. So then I went and randomly browsed collections and couldn't find another with a rating. So lots of questions:

1) Does the rating only show for certain types of collections?
2) What is the rating being based on?
3) What is the rating going to effect?
4) Will there be a place in our collections management backend to see its rating or will we be stuck having to go to a product page & scroll down to the POD to see the rating the public is seeing?

Of all the changes so far, this one of rating collections publicly and not just as backend stats to inform Creators, concerns me the most.

[Jadendreamer13]

Lots of good questions. I hope you find the answers.

[Cat]

Oh wow! I hadn't noticed that before. I only see it on some of my cross-sell wedding collections, but not all. I'm guessing that maybe it's based on customer reviews of products within that collection? Seems to hold true for mine. Collections where no products have been reviewed don't show the rating, and ones that have received the occasional negative review have lower star ratings than those that have only gotten 5 star reviews. I could be wrong, but that's my theory!

[KeegansCreation]

It isn't a rating for collections. It's for the products themselves and they get rated even if they aren't in a collection.

Here's my data points:

• 3 different products within a single collection had 3 different ratings; 4.9, 4.8 and 4.6
• a product that is in a collection and has sold many times, last selling 2 weeks ago, was 4.9
• a product that is in a collection and sold for the first time yesterday was 5.0
• a product that was made a couple days ago, is not in a collection and hadn't been viewed yet was 4.9.
• a product that was made a month ago, is not in a collection and hadn't been viewed was 4.7.
• a product that was made a month ago, was in a collection and hadn't been viewed, also 4.7.
• a product that was made 2 years ago, is in a collection, has sold a bunch of times, last sold a month ago, 4.9
• a product that was made 2 months ago, neither sold nor viewed, not in a collection, 4.9 (whut?)
• a product that was made a year ago and set to direct because it was for my husband's sports team sold to him and some team members a year ago but not since because they are the only market, 4.7
• a product that last sold in 2015 and was last viewed a year ago, 4.6
• a product that has never sold, is in a collection, last viewed a year ago, 4.8

conclusion: no freaking idea. I see no common thread that explains these ratings. None had been reviewed. There was no linear relationship between rating and sales, presence or absence of a collection or even views.  For the record even though I forgot to put it in my data points, there was also no linear relationship between presence or absence of cover photos. Fabric, which can't have a cover photo, and wasn't viewed for a year nor ever sold was 4.8. A foil Mother's Day card which had bever been viewed or sold and was a year old and ought to be deleted because it is foil and sold in lots of 5, 4.9. No cover photo. Its' neighbor in the Last Viewed sort with a cover photo but no views or sales (other than the view to download the image), 4.8. So two loser products, one with a cover photo and one without, the one without a cover photo is higher rated.

The final data point: this must be some sort of A/B test because I saw ratings on every product I've got (as well as every product I clicked on in MP) had a rating.

[Cat]

@KeegansCreationI think maybe you & I are talking about different things. The numbers that you quoted seem to be ratings for the products in general (which, I think, are an average of all the reviews that customers have given to designs by all creators on that product.) What I was noticing was a correlation between reviews of my specific designs (the ones you can see by going to your reviews section which are only in whole numbers of stars) and the star ratings on the collections that they're in. Am I making sense?

[KeegansCreation]

Oh ok. I thought the stars were for that specific product not that product type in general. Well then, never mind.🙊

[Cat]

I don't really know. Honestly, those product ratings don't make a whole lot of sense to me.

So I just created a pedestal sign for a wedding - posted it for sale and immediately went to look at it - and it's got a rating of 5.0 (607) - so the rating clearly doesn't refer to my design since I literally just published it a few seconds earlier. My assumption from those numbers is that there are 607 reviews and the average score is 5.0.... BUT if I click on the stars it shows me 44 reviews (all other people's designs.) So who knows what that means. Maybe the score on the product page is from all pedestal signs and the 44 reviews that I see are for signs in the same marketplace department as mine? Maybe?

Well anyhow, I don't understand how this could possibly be useful information for the customer since I'm pretty sure most people would assume the same thing you did - that the rating referred to that specific product, not the product type in general. 

At any rate - that's all I know! 😁

[ColsCreations]

I'm very confused. I'm not sure we are talking about the same rating? I was referring to this one

which to me is unquestionably for the collection as a whole and not any individual product within it and I'm sure that's how customers would interpret it, too. I can go to the paper napkins in this collection for example and on that product page, see that product type has a rating of 4.8. Scroll below that to the collection POD and you see the 5.0 rating. I don't see any way this rating could be a rating for anything but the collection as a whole and thus my concern.

[Cat]

Ha! Well, I'm not entirely sure who's referring to what at this point. But here's my theory. (Sorry that the pictures make this comment so long!) I think that this collection rating - the one that appears in the collection Pod:

is calculated by averaging together any customer reviews for products within that collection - meaning just reviews of my designs, not the rating for the product in general (so NOT the rating that appears on the product page):

That's the only review I've received for any products in that pink rose collection.

But this Christmas collection only has a rating of 3.7. It's had 3 products reviewed, and one was a negative review:

There were 2 five-star reviews, and one 1-star review which averages to 3.6666 or rounded up it comes to 3.7 which is the rating that appears for the collection.

I could be completely wrong, but that's my theory!

[KeegansCreation]

It was my mistake. I had the product rating (product in general) confused with the collection rating. I thought the stars under the product were what you were referring to and that they were for the specific product. But Cat explained how they are for the product in general.

[KC]

It's quite concerning if our collections as a whole are being "judged" with stars that are quite often based on nothing to do with the quality of our designs. Someone receiving a mis-print, or raging about shipping or having not read dimensions, etc, should not be shown next to our designer photos, store name, or collection names. 

I understand reviews shown under individual products, but gathering them and showing that to a customer before they can even assess a design or specific product doesn't seem quite right. 

[Cat]

Bingo! Like the example of the Christmas collection that I provided before. There was one negative review that had NOTHING to do with my design - and the whole collection takes a ding for it! I'm thankful that there were 2 other positive reviews to counterbalance it but still... it doesn't seem right to me!

[ColsCreations]

A customer will be turned off seeing a low rating.

Exactly my concern. It does not actually matter how Zazzle is calculating this rating, it's a deterrent to sales. I absolutely cannot fathom why Zazzle or any other company would voluntarily introduce something that will serve no purpose other than to dissuade sales.

Displaying the average ratings for an individual product is one thing. When I search Amazon for something I use the filter to narrow it down to only results with at least a 4-star rating. This just so I have less to sort through, not so much because I put stock in the rating. I've seen enough ratings/reviews in general to know how people are. The product itself may be great but they give it a negative review because it arrived late or because they picked a size that didn't fit or because they didn't read the product description or because they did read the product description but still thought 2" x 3" would be bigger ... It goes on and on. It is regretfully all too common for people to give a low rating to something for reasons that have nothing to do with the quality of the product itself. With Zazzle it's especially messy because people are judging 1) the product itself 2) the print quality and 3) the independent design.

If Collection ratings are an average of the ratings of products within it which themselves are just averages ... it's just a totally meaningless number/graphic. Zazzle might explain to us what the rating represents but shoppers aren't going to know or care; they're going to see a less-than 5 rating and have reservations about proceeding. Again, I can't comprehend implementing something that will deter sales. If that space has to be used for something, I think a line like "100% satisfaction guaranteed" (hot linked to the Zazzle Promise page) would go a lot further in encouraging sales.

[Deb]

Came here looking for one thing and got sidetracked to this thread.. where is everyone seeing these things?
I've tried for 20 minutes trying to see what you all are talking about, for the life of me, not seeing it anywhere.  Are we looking at a pc or phone?  front end (customer view) or back end (our private view)? I've tried all and not seeing it - thanks for any insight 

[Cat]

The ratings appear at the top of the collection pod on the product page. But ONLY if products within that collection (meaning your designs NOT the product in general) have been reviewed by customers. Scroll down to one of my other comments to see pictures and a more detailed explanation.

[Deb]

AH! Thank you.. I see it now. thanks !

[SandyMDesigns]

Thanks for redirecting me to this page. As you know I had the same thing happen to me and posted it to a different thread. Below are 2 stars. None of the reviews were rated that. I ended up redoing the collection. Now it has 5 stars.