Reviews Are Live: What You Think, on the Page

Customer reviews are now on every product page. There is a Reviews tab under the product, a rating out of five, the written review, and a badge saying whether the person bought the thing from us. That is the whole feature. The rest of this post is about the decisions behind it, because most office furniture reviews on the internet are arranged to sell you something, and I wanted ours arranged to tell you something.

How office furniture reviews work here

• Anyone can leave one. No account, no order number. If you did buy it here, the review carries a verified purchase badge, and if you did not, it does not. Both are allowed. Only one is labelled.

• A person reads every review before it goes up. We check that it is about the product and that it is not spam. We do not check whether it is nice.

• One review per product per email address. Enthusiasm is welcome. Volume is not.

• Twenty characters minimum. Great is not a review. Great, but the arms squeak is.

• Newest first. There is no default sort that floats the five-stars to the top. The one you see first is the one that arrived last.

• We can reply, in public, underneath. If a review says something is wrong, the answer goes where the question is.

Why the grumpy ones stay up

A three-star review is the most useful thing on a product page. It is where the trade-offs live. One of ours, on a visitor chair, says the chrome has stayed clean and nobody has complained, but the seat is shallow enough that a tall person looks perched. That is not in the spec table and it never could be. Another, on a lumbar cushion, says it took the edge off a bad back but slides about on a mesh backrest. That is exactly the sentence the next buyer needs, and a filtered review system would have hidden it.

For the record, the average across the catalogue at the time of writing is 4.4. Most reviews are four or five stars. A handful are three. None yet below that, which says something about the furniture or something about how new this is. Give it time. When a one-star review arrives, it will be published like the others, and we will reply to it like the others.

What we do with them

Every review lands in a list in our admin, next to the product it is about. If a review tells us a spec is wrong, the spec gets fixed on the listing. If a review tells us a product is quietly disappointing people, that product gets a harder look the next time we go through the range. The Ace mesh executive chair is a good example of the other direction: two reviews, both four or five stars, both leading with the folding arms because they let the chair tuck under the desk. We had listed that as a feature. The reviews told us it was the feature. If that is the thing you want, office chairs with folding arms is the page.

What we will not do

No pop-up on the way out asking you to rate your experience. No counter telling you how many other people are looking at this chair. No incentive for a five-star review, and no quiet suppression of a two-star one. We have not switched on the automatic please-review email either. We might, later. If we do, it will be one email, sent after the furniture has had time to arrive and be sat on, and it will not nag.

Reviews are only worth reading if the site would show you the bad news. Ours will. That is the same reason the spec table is on the page and the price is the same for everyone. Have a look round the shop, and if you have bought from us, tell the next person what you think. Especially the bit we got wrong.