The Customer Ratings feature is designed to achieve two goals:

• Provide merchants an easy, automated way to collect and view feedback from buyers about the customer's experience with their store.
• If the merchant is a part of Yahoo! Shopping, ratings provide a resource for shoppers to see how merchants are ranked by both visitors and customers of the store.

How Ratings Work:

1. Merchants can turn on Customer Ratings for all their orders in the Store Manager. In Checkout Manager, you can enable customer ratings on the Checkout Settings tab in the Global Settings module. To make the change live, you will need to publish your order settings.


2. Shoppers are given the option during checkout to rate the merchant. There will be an extra checkbox in the Billing section allowing shoppers to receive an email with a link to a rating form. See figure 1 for an example of this field.

1. Shoppers who select the checkbox will be sent an email a few weeks later, asking them to rate the store.
2. Shoppers then use the link to go to the rating form and select ratings from poor to excellent for the overall experience and for five aspects of their experience with the store:
   • Price
   • Shipping options
   • Delivery
   • Ease of purchase
   • Customer service
   Shoppers can also submit comments as part of their rating. When submitting the form, shoppers can choose to send a copy of their comments to the merchant, or not. View an example of the rating form.


3. If the shopper has agreed to send comments to the merchant, then the merchant will receive the comments at the address entered by the merchant when enabling ratings.

Where Rating Information Appears

Rating information appears in either the Store Manager or, both the Store Manager and Yahoo! Shopping, depending on the merchant (though the display of rating information is somewhat different between the two):

• Store Manager: If you have enabled ratings but are not part of Yahoo! Shopping, then rating information is only for merchant-purposes only. You can use this data to see how your customers rank your overall customer experience.
• Yahoo! Shopping:If you have enabled ratings, and you are listed in Yahoo! Shopping through the Yahoo! Product Submit paid-inclusion program, then ratings will appear in several locations, such as your aggregate star rating on product search results, or each individual rating and review.

The Store Manager will display two bar graphs when you have enabled and received customer ratings (see figure 2). These graphs use a different color to represent each of the five possible ratings from excellent to poor. In the top graph, the width of each colored bar indicates the relative number of customers giving you a particular rating. The bottom graph shows the relative percentages of the combined ratings given to participating merchants in Yahoo! Shopping. We provide this information so you can compare the response of your customers to that of the average merchant. Learn more about viewing customer ratings statistics.

For merchants participating in Yahoo! Shopping, stores will receive a certain number stars depending on their customer ratings. The more stars the better rated the merchant. Stores with the highest ratings also tend to show up higher in Yahoo! Shopping search results. The stores that get the highest ratings will get award symbols next to their names, to show that customers have voted them the best. These ratings are displayed in Yahoo! Shopping in several places such as price comparison pages (see A figure 3) and merchant review pages (see figure 4).

Frequently Asked Questions

Do merchants have to enable ratings?
No. Merchants are not required to enable customer ratings. However, in order to appear in Yahoo! Shopping, you must enable the customer ratings feature.

What do you ask the customers?
We try to make it as simple as possible for them. A couple of weeks after they place their order, we send them an email asking them to rate their overall experience and specific aspects of the buying experience from your store on a 5-point scale. View a sample rating form.

How do we find out how customers have rated us?
When you sign in to the Store Manager, your ratings will be displayed in a bar graph. Also, if the buyer has elected to send a copy of the rating to the merchant, you will receive an email with their comments at the email address supplied when you enabled customer ratings.

How do we see the customers' individual ratings?
When a customer completes the rating form, you will usually receive an email message with the order ID, the rating and any associated comments. Customers sometimes elect to send their rating anonymously (without the order ID) or to share their rating only with Yahoo! Shopping.

How is the average merchant rating calculated?
The Average Merchant Rating is a weighted average, based on at least 5 posted ratings for that merchant. Ratings by customers who have made an online purchase and submit a rating based on a post-transaction survey are given twice the weight of ratings submitted by others.

Just as the algorithm that determines Yahoo! Search rankings is not disclosed, the exact weighting and formula used to calculate the average rating is not made available to merchants.

What will happen if we get a bad rating?
Merchants should keep in mind the goal of ratings in Yahoo! Shopping is to help customers make better informed decisions about the customer experience with merchants. Only the customer can change their rating.

If you do not understand why your store received a lower than expected rating, you can contact the customer directly and ask why you received a certain rating from them. At times a customer may have made a mistake and is willing to resubmit an updated rating. Other times you may be able to work out a problem with a customer to their satisfaction and they may be willing to resubmit an updated rating.

In such cases, you can resend the rating request from the order page and the new rating submission will override the previous one. Other times customers may not provide feedback directly to merchants and so merchants should consider their customer's want for privacy/anonymity before contacting them. A customer could conceivably rate the merchant lower the second time.

Can merchants dispute bad ratings?
Reviews that appear abusive, off-topic, or otherwise objectionable may violate Yahoo!'s Guidelines and/or Terms of Service. To make a report, go to the review in Yahoo! Shopping and click the "Report abuse" link at the bottom of the review. Submit the form with your email address, and details about why the review should be taken down. Yahoo! Shopping Customer Care will look at the review and take appropriate action, in accordance with our Guidelines and Terms of Service. Learn more about disputing a bad rating.

What happens if a merchant tries to trick the system by placing fake orders and giving himself good ratings?
If we notice a suspicious pattern in the ratings of a store, we'll remove them from the program.

Where can I get more information about ratings in Yahoo! Shopping?
Merchants can consult the Yahoo! Shopping Merchant Ratings and Reviews Help for more information about the details of the program.

See Also

• Enabling Customer Ratings
• Why is my store listed as "Not Rated" in Yahoo! Shopping?
• Why has my store been removed from Yahoo! Shopping?
• Viewing Customer Ratings Statistics
• Why does Yahoo! Shopping send a rating form to my customer?
• Why can't I send in my own ratings for my store?
• Can I disable ratings for my store?
• Can I dispute a rating I received from one of my customers?