Amazon are testing a one click star rating for product reviews which removes the requirement to write a comment. The aim appears to be to collect reviews from the thousands of purchases for which a consumer currently wouldn’t bother to review or write about.
Reviews are huge on Amazon, but Amazon are under pressure from the news of fake reviews and so the one click star rating will only be available for verified purchases. It will appear, for those in the test group, in various places on the site such as your Amazon orders page, the product page and in some cases on your Amazon home page for items which you’ve recently purchased. You may also receive emails or pop-ups encouraging you to leave reviews.
Fake reviews are the scourge of the Internet and Amazon have been accused of having their fair share – generally they’re easy to spot as multiple short reviews will have been left within a short space of time, often on the same day. They’ll be generic comments and at times have even been spotted referring to totally different products to those they’re purporting to be reviewing.
“We are testing a feature that allows customers to leave feedback easily while also helping shoppers get authentic customer ratings on products from a broader set of shoppers.”
– Amazon Spokesperson via Techcrunch
The one click star rating will count towards a products total reviews and consumers will have the option to go back and add a written review, photos or video at a later point in time if they’d like to expand on their star ratings.
Currently this is an experiment so it’s not certain that it will become available for all consumers or roll out world wide. If you do spot some reviews on your products which are just a star rating but with no comment you’ll know it’s part of this testing.
