Transaction Rating and Seller Rating

A Trusted Shops Buyer Feedback is comprised of two parts: the Transaction Rating and the Seller Rating.
The Transaction Rating captures how the specific online purchase turned out: positive, neutral or negative. The buyer can also leave a brief comment to explain its choice. With the Seller Rating, the buyer can additionally rate the seller in 4 categories : website, delivery, goods and customer service. A star rating with a scale of 1 to 5 is used for each criterion, with 5 stars being the best rating.

Fig 1. Rating form for the online buyer

Buyer Feedbacks in the Trusted Shops System

Buyer feedbacks are currently displayed in the private member area of the Trusted Shops system only, i.e. online merchants view only their own buyer feedbacks and online buyers can view only their own feedbacks via the Trusted Shops system. None of these feedbacks are made public. This will be possible upon explicit request by the online merchant at a later stage.
Online merchants can identify transaction ratings quickly with the smiley icons displayed in the list of their guaranteed transactions (green for positive, yellow for neutral and red for negative rating) in the Trusted Shops system.
Online merchants can also view their seller ratings including the buyer comments as well as the average seller rating which aggregates all seller ratings of the last 12 months. Shopkeepers have the possibility to leave their own comment on a buyer feedback.

Fig 2. List of seller ratings
The Feedback Profile gives an overview of Transaction Ratings and Seller Ratings.
The positive transaction percentage is calculated as the ratio between the number of positive ratings against the sum of positive and negative ratings in the last 12 months. The transaction rating table provides also the breakdown of the transaction ratings of the last 1, 6 and 12 months.
The average seller rating is calculated as the average of all seller ratings in the last 12 months.

Fig 3. Rating profile: summary of ratings provided

Are you Trusted Shops member?

If you are Trusted Shops member, log into the system today and view the ratings of your online shop!

What’s next? The Buyer Feedback Widget

A special a buyer feedback widget will provide the ability to display shop ratings and buyer feedbacks. The Trusted Shops Buyer Feedback package will be available as upgrade to the Trusted Shops membership soon.
Unbiased buyer feedbacks help both online buyers and sellers to increase customer confidence and shopping experience and therefore complement ideally the Trusted Shops Quality Seal.

Fig 4. Example of Buyer Feedback Widget integration

This is an adaptation of an article written by Frank Lord for e-commerceinsights.com:

In this post, he presents five basic steps that all e-tailers should be taking to get the most out of their e-commerce Web sites.

1. Deploy product-comparison tools.

If shoppers are being drawn to the web because they are looking for bargains, comparison tools can be especially useful – particularly in the case of products with many different specifications such as consumer electronics. At a time when people are watching their wallets, comparison tools can be vital in helping shoppers consider how much to spend and, ultimately, in justifying a purchase.

2. Create customer ratings and reviews facilities.

Although it can take some time to get a reviews system furnished with a large amount of user generated content, it is time extremely well spent. Any content created by your customers can help win over other shoppers.

3. Personalise.

An old principle, but an important one. When customers enter a site, they want to see highly relevant information. Online merchants need to embrace technology that will help them build up sophisticated consumer profiles so that they can match web content and promotional offers to specific customer interests and previous spend threshold. Interconnectivity is the key to any multi-channel strategy and by sharing information captured online with other commerce channels, it is possible to build up an in-depth profile of customers which can be effective right across the business.

4. Co-ordinate on- and off-line marketing initiatives.

Retailers should coordinate marketing strategy with merchandising. By integrating e-mail campaigns, for example, with website content, companies will be able to attract new and repeat business. Customers need to be able to relate to a brand and solutions across the full purchase lifecycle.

5. Searchandise.

When consumers look for a good deal, they will make the most of a website’s search function. Searchandising can produce search results that are based on the customer’s personal profile and the merchandiser’s strategy. Product catalogue changes should be automatically updated in the search function so shoppers are not offered items that are out of stock. Searchandising can also suggest additional purchases that complement what a customer has searched for, presenting items the customer did not even realise they wanted.

Here are this weeks 5 tips from selected blog authors:

1. E-Mail Subject: 8 Dos & 4 Don’ts from Marketing Case Studies

2. XML Sitemaps, guidelines on their use from SEOmoz

3. Amazon Checkout: Pros and Cons from Get Elastic

4. 5 steps to maximize online sales from ecommerce insights

5. Handling poor performing Keywords von Get Elastic