The highest isn’t always the best

Last year I shared some data that showed that a rating on Amazon of between 4.2–4.5 stars was generally considered more trustworthy than a product with full five-star reviews. Some bad reviews mixed in (ideally with reasonable responses from the owner) tend to make users trust the great reviews even more.

It reminded me today of a funny part of the show “ The Good Place “, where Jason Mendoza shares his scale for rating dancers on a scale of 1–13, with 8 being the highest. Check it out here:

If you’ve watched the show, you know that taking any advice from Jason is likely a bad idea, but I thought this was a fun way to look at reviews.

Not unlike Jason’s idea, Amazon and Google reviews go on a scale from 1–5 with 4.5 being the highest. It’s weird, but generally holds true.

Originally published at https://www.mickmel.com on August 11, 2021.