Show Ratings in a Visual Format

How should you display ratings?

Show visual ratings (e.g., continuum of stars) instead of numbers — customers ignore the rightmost digits in a 3.8 rating, so it feels like 3.0 (Abell et al., 2024).

Plus, you can blame momentum.

For example, participants guessed where a moving box disappeared, and they consistently guessed locations that were further ahead (Hubbard, 2005).

You'll find this effect with any motion. Even abstract motion.

In a Top 10 ranking, customers prefer items that ascend from 6th to 4th (vs. descend from 2nd to 4th) because items feel closer to 1st place if they're moving toward this rank (Pettit et al., 2013).

Same with star ratings. Any visual rating might feel higher because of momentum.

Perhaps you could strengthen this effect by strengthening momentum. Try replacing disjointed stars with continuous bars to imply motion across this continuum:

Just be careful. Stars are recognizable shapes in product ratings, so customers likely search for these shapes when searching for ratings.

Caveats

• Prevalent Competitors. Numerical superiority converts better than visual superiority in competitor comparisons (Chang et al., 2024).

• Abell, A., Morgan, C., & Romero, M. (2024). EXPRESS: The Power of a Star Rating: Differential Effects of Customer Rating Formats on Magnitude Perceptions and Consumer Reactions. Journal of Marketing Research, 00222437241240694.
• Hubbard, T. L. (2005). Representational momentum and related displacements in spatial memory: A review of the findings. Psychonomic bulletin & review, 12, 822-851.
• Pettit, N. C., Sivanathan, N., Gladstone, E., & Marr, J. C. (2013). Rising stars and sinking ships: Consequences of status momentum. Psychological science, 24(8), 1579-1584.
• Chang, L. W., Kirgios, E. L., Mullainathan, S., & Milkman, K. L. (2024). Does counting change what counts? Quantification fixation biases decision-making. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 121(46), e2400215121.