Today we’d like to announce an exciting new feature -- Star Ratings! 🤩 The new Star Rating feature, which allows readers to rate content from one to five stars, is now available to all of our Pro and Business publishers. Ratings provide another opportunity for audience engagement, giving readers an easy means of actively participating in the conversation. On average, engaged readers consume about 4 times as much content compared to passive readers. Focusing on converting more passive readers into active participants will result in more time on site, direct traffic, and audience loyalty.
This new feature can be used for plenty of categories like product reviews, entertainment, travel, and cooking sites. Our hopes are that the ratings will help inform readers and guide their decision-making process.
Moreover, we’re excited to provide readers with an additional way of engaging with great content. As shown in the example below, readers submit a rating with their comment (you cannot submit a star rating without attaching a comment to it), and that rating is then aggregated at the top. Commenters are able to revisit their comment and edit their rating if they made a mistake or changed their mind.
Audience feedback can also help publishers understand how valuable the content is and improve content offerings over time. The more commenters rate, the more knowledge publishers will have in adapting to their taste and creating future content. We also offer a breakdown of the overall rating-- simply hover over the total and we’ll show you a summary of different user responses:
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Pro Tip: Try to stay on top of your ratings as they will allow you to measure user sentiment and provide valuable data that your business can use to make experience and service improvements. Lastly, remember to respond to your audience. Responding to reviews and ratings drives engagement and demonstrates that you value customer feedback -- good or bad.
And now, on to the logistics. If you’re a Pro or Business publisher and would like to turn on Star Ratings, you can easily enable the feature in your settings under the community tab. Once enabled, ratings will be active on all new comment threads by default, or you have the option to turn off by individual thread if you don’t want ratings on particular articles.
What do you think? Test out the new feature now and be sure to let us know your thoughts. We’re reading and listening! Submit your rating below ⭐