When it comes to online reviews, a 3-star rating is bad

Consumers lose trust – in a big way – when a product or service doesn’t have a 4- or 5-star rating in online reviews, according to a new survey.

Why we care. Some products and services live or die by the online reviews they get. There is a massive drop in trust between a 4-star and a 3-star rating – which can result in lost revenue for those companies.

A -67% decrease in trust. The question: What is the minimum star rating (out of five) a product or service needs for consumers in the consideration stage of a purchase decision? And the results were clear:

• Having 5 stars or 4 stars comes with an extremely high level of trust, 95% and 96.3%, respectively.
• Dropping from 4 stars to 3 stars revealed a massive 67% decrease in trust.
• Products and services with 2 stars or 1 star basically have zero trust.

This is reminiscent of click curves in organic search results. The higher you rank, the bigger share of traffic you get; the lower you go, the more invisible you are to searchers. Just as trust plays a role in rankings, where you rank is a signal of trust from the search engines.

The takeaway. According to Dominique Jabbour:

• “Dropping just one star from a 4 to a 3 star rating on a product or service can drastically affect a consumer’s comfort level when it comes to making a purchasing decision. consumers value customer feedback and begin to question their decision when seeing that the overall sentiment surrounding a product or service is less than a 4 star rating.”

The data. Digital marketing agency Go Fish Digital surveyed 1,070 people about online reviews to find out how much they influence purchasing decisions. The results for this particular answer are based on 1,025 survey responses.