an article by Busayo Oyewole
If you’ve ever found yourself scrolling through reviews, you know the feeling. One listing has a sparkling 5.0 star rating, but with only three reviews. The other has a slightly lower 4.6, but with thousands of ratings. Which one would you choose?
If you’re anything like the person in the meme above, you’d probably pick the 4.6. Why? Because a perfect score with no history feels hollow. It lacks the social proof and depth that only a high volume of feedback can provide. It’s a UX problem we’ve been wanting to solve.
As the Trust & Safety team, our job is to anticipate these moments of hesitation and build a system that feels genuinely trustworthy. We realised our previous approach (i.e. only showing the total number of reviews from the past two years) was creating this exact paradox. Dealers, who had built a long history of excellent service, felt like their past accomplishments were being completely ignored, not giving them the corresponding credit for their relentless effort. And our users, the buyers, were missing the full story. They were making decisions with only a fraction of the available information, which undermined their confidence.
We knew we had to do better. So we made a simple but critical change.
We now display the total number of reviews a dealer has ever received, right next to their star rating. This one metric provides an immediate, powerful signal of a dealer’s credibility and experience. It gives dealers the credit they’ve earned over their entire history and gives buyers the complete picture they need to feel confident.
Of course, recency still matters. That’s why we still calculate the star rating based on reviews from the last two years. This dual approach gives users the best of both worlds: a comprehensive view of a dealer’s long-term reputation and a look at their recent performance.
Since we launched this feature, the feedback from our dealers has been incredible. Many have noted that they are now receiving a significant increase in reviews and feel a renewed sense of pride in their complete history.
For us, the Trust & Safety team, this project is a reminder that user trust isn’t built on a single score; it’s built on a foundation of transparency, context, and a complete picture. It’s about empowering our users to make confident decisions, one review at a time.
Special thanks to Gonzalo, Bishal & Ana for reviewing the first draft of this article.
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