Increasing user’s convertion rate through review credibility feature

13 min readDec 27, 2022

Review credibility is a feature that helps users to enhance their credibility as a trusted reviewer, it is about giving assurance for buyers to show that the products & sellers are trusted, the review doesn’t made by fake reviewers, so that it would affecting their purchase decision in leading to convertion rate.

My Role and Collaboration Process

I became the PIC (Person in charge) for the project, with these several responsibilities :

Conducting user research, in the research process i collaborate with UX Researchers in research planning and also executing the research itself to validate the user’s needs, behavior and pain point.
Strategizing the user experience of the feature, in this project i strategize the user experience of review credibility, and also the credibility’s integration itself to account page.
Exploring the visual style for the feature, not only strategizing the user experience, but also creating the UI Design for these set of credibility features.

With the scope of the projects are :

Creating review credibility feature in product detail page I collaborated with product detail page tribe’s design team to brainstorm about every process in designing this feature (Adrian Rahman Triputro, Givana Sandita, Vanessa Giovani, Alzea, and Stevanus Kurniawan). For usability testing, I collaborated with Aulia Hanafi and Satkar Ulama during the entire evaluative research process.
Collaborate with account page team to extend the feature’s exposure Here I collaborate with different team from account page tribe’s design team to extend the exposure in account page, because the credibility itself is not only shown in product detail page, but also in account page.

Every week, we always do alignment with product team (Mia Renauly and Albert) to ensure that the product we built suitable with the requirements and also if we have any recommendation we can communicate it fastly and quickly.

Problem

Most of users had a various unpleasant experience in review credibility, such as they had difficulties in finding a comprehensive review regarding the product, do not get helpful reviews and unable to ask for follow up questions to the previous buyers.
These are the reasons why most of users are hope to get more comprehensive reviews which means the review is accompanied by photos which they think will be helpful and also they need certainty in the honesty of the reviews that have been given. Some of them suspect that there are reviews made by shop owners, or even negative reviews that that might be caused by competitors.

Goals

This project had a goal to increase the number of credible reviews made by trusted reviewers of Tokopedia. The challenge was how to define what’s the credible reviews are and what’s the definition of trusted reviewers. Besides that, the goal was also to increase the number of reviewers that write credible reviews in Tokopedia.

Part 1 : User Research

A. Research Questions

Behavioral Question

How often do you online shopping in Tokopedia? Why?
Do you usually write reviews after buying products in Tokpedia? Why?
Before you buy products in Tokopedia, what do you usually do? Why?
What do you usually do to know about the quality of the product before you buy it? Why?
In the terms of reading the review, what the most important aspects that should be exist in a review? Why?
What do you think the reviews that exist in Tokopedia? Why? (Probe : trust, credibility, etc)

Motivational Question

Why are you giving reviews after buying products? (Probe : mood, incentive, give back, etc)

Pain Points and Expectation Question

What are your unpleasant experiences in reading the reviews? Why?
What’s your expectation regarding finding the right reviews? Why?

B. Research Results

Behavior

People are critical about informations that they receive, so that they most likely won’t accept informations right away before checking the credibiltiy of the reviews.
Seeking alternatives such as similar products/ services/ events or asking for different opinions from others may come as handy in this kind of situation, as people want to get clarity about the informations that they encounter.
People put important in evidence when looking for reviews. This explain why ideal review may contain evidence from videos, photos and comprehensive explanation regarding a product, service, or experience.
While friends/family is more likely to trust to get reviews, people seem to validate their review again through website or application in order to find the reviews that they perceive are most suitable to theirselves.
The reputation of reviewer and their willingness to engage with audience are important for people for judging whether a review can be trusted or not.

Motivation

Frequent reviewers
Internal drive for review creation, depends on user’s mood in reviewing something. However, they are keen to help sellers/merchant who are nice to them, and willingly do it to express their gratitude. Tendency to create HQ review, mostly create high quality review due to the rules/guideline that the online platform requires for them (ie : review guidline in Shopee or Zomato).
Expectation upon giving review, no expectation. Mostly feel obliged to repay the kindness of the seller by giving them review in the first place.
Casual reviewers
Internal drive for review creation, won’t review something if the experience/impact of the product is perceived as moderate.
Tendency to create HQ review, mostly create high quality review due to the rules/guideline that the online platform requires for them (ie : review guidline in Shopee or Zomato).
Expectation upon giving review, most of them expect to get something in return, be it the ability to express their feelings to sellers who provide them very good/bad service in public or to get benefits offered by the online platform.
Non — reviewers
Internal drive for review creation, won’t review something if the experience/impact of the product is perceived as moderate.
Tendency to create HQ review, very rarely, highly dependable on their mood and perceived extremeness of experience.
Expectation upon giving review, most of them expect to get something in return, be it the ability to express their feelings to sellers who provide them very good/bad service in public or to get benefits offered by the online platform.

Paint Points

The most common unpleasant experience faced by respondents is they had difficulties in finding a comprehensive review regarding the product, do not get helpful reviews, and unable to ask to follow up questions to the previous buyers.

Expectation

People expect they can get complete informations in a review. This indicates in general, people are lazy and don’t want to put too much efforts in finding other reviews regardign the same topic. Therefore, providing suggestions for what reviews to look and also showing indicators for trustability in reviews may solve user’s pain points in finding reviews that are ideal for them.

C. Key Insights From Quantitative Data

Paint Points from Business Side

Like x Review Low review content engagement, only less than 2% reviews being liked and no infrastructure to support interaction between reviewers and readers. Most of reviews (87.01%), have a low click rate (only 1 like), this indicate that our like feature has a low engagement rate.
Review x User The percentage of users who submit > 10 reviews with images quite significantly decreasing in 30 days, from 50.671 to 20.230 users who submit more than 10 reviews with images. While the trend of users who don’t give feedback is increasing within 30 days, from 73.06% to 77.08%.

Part 2 : Define

User Persona

User Journey

Problem Statement — 1
The trend in giving complete reviews with images keep decreasing. The more reviews, the more decreasing in writing complete review with images habit. People are lazy and don’t want to put much effort in giving complete reviews, such as reviews aren’t detailed, too short and lazy to upload evidences.
From this problem statement, I created how might we and ideation below :

Problem Statement — 2
There are several big credibility issues in our platform such as no reviews from the expert, need certainty in honest review and don’t know the credibility of review’s sources. Many Tokopedia’s users instead look up to reviews from external, influencers, such as on youtube, instagram and shopee haul, which are perceived to be credible. From this problem statement, I created how might we and ideation below :

Problem Statement — 3
Users are unable to ask follow up questions and interact to the previous buyers. From this problem statement, I created how might we and ideation below :

Part 3 : Define

A. Action Priority Matrix
In the define stage, there are several considerations of prioritization :

The difficulties level the ideas to be implemented especially from the tech side.
Probability to be implemented soon.
The urgency between business needs and user insights
The impact of the ideas

In the define stage, there are several considerations of prioritization :

B. User Flow

C. Information Architecture

Part 3 : Wireframing

After do the feature prioritization, I made wireframe to translate the ideation into the visual cue then test the wireframe. You can also try the prototype here :

You can also try the prototype here :

Part 4 : Usability Testing

A. Usability Testing Objective
To explore user’s motivation towards credibility of review sources, including behavior towards finding the credible review sources, and how it affects their purchase decision as buyers on how it affects their motivation as a reviewer in giving review.

B. Scope to be Explored

To understand user’s perception on the label concept
To understand user’s associations towards perception of the label name in review page
Indentify the “Intuitive-ness” of the statistic page
To understand user’s perception of credibility statistics and FAQ Page

C. Research Participant Criterias

Participants in this study are Tokopedia buyers who have made a purchase in the past 1 month, include :

Frequent buyer but also non-reviewer, it’s a segment of participant who always buy in Tokopedia for > 5 times/month but never do review.
Frequent buyer and also frequent reviewer, it’s a segment of participant who always buy in Tokopedia for > 5 times/month and frequently give reviews.
Casual buyer and also casual reviewer, it’s a segment of partiipant who have made 1–2 times/month purchase in Tokopedia and not often to give review.

D. Usability Testing Findings and Recommendations
1st Finding : General User’s Behavior

2nd Finding : Reviewer’s Common Behavior

People may have more tendencies to looking for references in other platforms before buying stuff in e-commerce for products that needs lots of purchase consideration because they want to ensure the product quality, how the product spesification suits their needs, how it helps them to determine which brand they have to choose, and thet want to see how to use the products. After that, finally they decided to buy online rather than buying in other places because marketplace provides lots of discounts, promo and free delivery cost.
When find reviews outside e-commerce (e.g. blog, youtube) they tend to focus on the content. Certain reviewers are perceived more trusted/credible because of the way they deliver their content (detailed).

3rd Finding : Reviewer’s Reading Behavior in E-commerce

There are differences between buyers behavior seeking reviews in e-commerce and outside e-commerce, because not all kind of reviews could be provided in e-commerce and different nature of purpose.
In e-commerce, people are looking for product consistency which means the consistency between the products description and real products, while whenever buyers are looking for products outside e-commerce, they are looking for product quality reviews, it means that the experience when reviewers already tried the products.

4th Finding : Usability Testing’s Findings

Identify how labels affect trust
When users accessing review page, they will consider several factors in review’s content such as photos uploaded, review content, and ratings. Unfortunately, those who are aware of this label express that it doesn’t affect their trust associations towards the review when its content is not complete. Furthemore, they were unclear on how reviewer can get this label.
Understanding the naming association
As the buyers, because the most important things is about the content itself, even though they don’t feel any urgency to know the reviewer’s name and don’t mind if the reviewer is anonymous. One of our users also felt that it become useless if there’s a label along with a gibberish review’s content.
As the reviewers, they prioritize monetary benefit once they’ve got the labels.
Perception towards Statistic & FAQ
Most of participants are wondering the criterias to get the labels, but none of them try to find out more by intuitively clicked the reviewer’s profile.
Monetary benefits
Label’s alone is perceived less attractive or triggering them as reviewers to pursue having it unless it comes with other benefit related to monetary (e.g. coupon, free delivery cost, and promotions). Why? Because to write a high quality reviews need more efforts especially those who often purchase online every month.

Usability Testing’s Recommendation

Redefine the label’s objective
Consider to redefine the goal/objective to applying the label such as to build more review’s engagement instead of social proof, because in e-commerce people’s objective in giving reviews are althursim based, that’s a consideration why people not much interested in “reviewer terpercaya” label unless it leads to monetary benefit.
Enhance tiering system and stats awareness
Enhance awareness of tiering system from notification and review submission page in reviewer’s journey, especially awareness about the new tiering system and their milestone. We also can build engagement through inbox as a solid entry point, then give more detailed explanation about the criterias to users.

E. What’s the Next Action Plan?

Complete and Quality Review Users Distribution Data Analysis

The data says 13% of those submitted complete reviews (~180K reviewers); min 5 complete reviews & 7 image uploads. We want to test this to a smaller user because it is easier to control if we want to rollout the incentive, thus we make the bar higher (7 complete reviews). And since the data shows linear correlation # of quality upload and image upload we want to simplify the metrics to 7 complete reviews (estimated of 140k reviewers). To make it more easier for user to understand and reduce confusion.
Need to explain what is complete reviews to the user since we only use that metrics.
We counts 3 months back, can convert to exact date (just like in Go Member)

So, from the combination of these data and also usability testing’s finding, I recap the next action plan to redisign the user interface :

Action Plan 1 : On Review Credibility Bottomsheet / Concept

Provide brief introduction about who/how this label is given (could be via notifications as well, from user insight). it shows that at least the review comes front the real buyers instead of sellers or bot since the label is awared by Tokopedia system that they have trust. Make them more understand about the labels concept and how it benefits users
MVP : Improve the label’s UXW Name because they don’t get the concept from the get go
Ultimate: Improve the label concept through tiering system. (could also integrate with leaderboard types)
Metrics on bottomshet need to highlight that only High Quality Reviews are counted. User afraid that gibberish reviews are considered as well. (Show the HQ reviews in mini profile?)
We will use Complete Review as the metrics, need to inform the meaning of Complete Review as user don’t understand what it means. (is it from the # of characters / review with photos?).
User don’t get the urgency why they should become a trusted reviewers. They expect to get incentive (monetary, discounts, points or promo)

Action Plan 2 : On Review Reading Experience Ideas: Create clear pattern on the profile clickability, meaning we could consider all profiles to be clickable and not just the ones with labels. as it keeps the user guessing.

Only show the label if the review is not a gibberish review content
Anonymous Review can still retain the label as long as the content is good and the user are eligible to get the label.
While users are wondering what are the criterias to get the label, none of them try to find out more by clicking the reviewers profile. Could consider if the is not only from the reviewers name. (They thought it is not clickable / not interesting enough to gather clicks)

Action Plan 3 : On Review Writing Experience

Create a how-to section so reviewers understand how to create a complete quality review.

Part 5 : Redesign After Usability Testing

Based on the previous action plan, then I translated the usability testing’s insight and make a final UI Design based on that.