20 Nov 2009

New Feature Friday - User Reviews

Whenever I'm shopping online, one of the biggest things I look at when learning about new products is what other people think about it.  Best Buy carries many different types of laptops many with similar specs, but what interests me most is how it  will perform once a get it home and put it through the paces.

As we've been developing the QuickPark site over the past few months, one thing that stuck out in my mind was a need for way for our users to leave feedback about the hundreds of parking locations listed on our site.  While this may seem like an easy problem to fix, it is actually quite complicated to design a review system that actually means something.  Recently I was reading an article about the complications YouTube has faced with their video rating system, everyone always votes either 5 stars or 1 star.  Alternatively you have the Digg system whether people either like or dislike content.  After giving it some thought I came up with what is now our user review system.

Our new review system relies heavily on the 5 star rating system across 6 main categories as outlined below:

  • Overall - This represents an individual's overall opinion of a parking location.
  • Service - The quality of service received at the location.
  • Condition - The physical condition of the location, including cleanliness and maintenance.
  • Security - How secure the location feels.
  • Neighborhood - Opinion of the area surrounding the parking location.

Additionally we also track whether a person would recommend the parking location to a friend, whether the location meets their expectations given the price they paid, and whether or not they would recommend QuickPark to a friend.  The last feature we have implemented is the ability to have a member of the QuickPark staff contact you regarding your review.  This feature can be used for both good and bad reviews and we encourage it's use.  If you have an issue with either our site or one of our parking location partners we want to know about it ASAP so we can get it resolved.  We are equally interested in knowing when we have done a superb job in your opinion.

One of the other perplexing issues with developing this feature was who we would allow to leave reviews.  Ultimately we have decided that the best use of the tool would be to open it up to all registered users of our site.  This means that anyone can review any location listed on the site.  We just ask that you don't abuse this and only make fair reviews based on your actual experiences.  If we need to revisit this policy in the future we will, but for now we think this serves the greatest good.

Please keep in mind that this is the initial version of this feature.  One thing I've learned in all my development days is you never get any feature completely right at first.  We will look at how people are using the feature and make changes as necessary.  If you have any feedback please feel free to use our feedback tool that appears on the left side of every page.  We love to hear from you!