The problem

The Infatuation is known for honest, trustworthy reviews, but our ratings system wasn’t clear.

Users thought our 10 point ratings scale was like school grade percentage with anything under an 8 meaning it was bad quality. However high 6s and and 7s were actually places our editorial team still recommended.

Our readers also didn’t know why some places were rated and others weren’t. They assumed unrated spots weren’t worthy of a rating and therefore must be bad. We never explained that places that don’t serve a full meal (bars, coffee shops, dessert shops) will never be rated.

Past designs

Originally, users had to hover over the rating (inside a small yellow dot on the cover photo) to reveal a full page explainer for what the number actually meant on desktop. On mobile, they needed to click the yellow dot to reveal more.

Readers had to scroll past a long FAQ section to the bottom of the page overlay to get to ratings breakdown.

Most people didn’t know they needed to hover or click, and those that did didn’t want to be hit with a wall of text about FAQs only to find their answer at the very end (if they made it there).

The design was confusing, inaccessible, and not intuitive. Yikes.

Ratings scale confusion

Our 10-point scale also caused widespread misinterpretations.

A 7 felt like a "meh" rating—when it actually meant a place was “pretty good” in our scale. In fact, when I pulled the data breakdown of reviews, I found that 50% of all reviews fell in the 7 point range. This meant half of our reviewed spots across the world were being ignored by users due to this belief that they were only so-so. That both hurts small business and greatly misleads and limits readers.

Unrated spots—like bars or places that don’t serve full meals—were lumped into the 6 and below category, leading users into thinking we didn’t like them. In reality, they just weren’t eligible for review.

The content design challenge

In speaking with Product, Design, and Editorial leadership about ways to improve the ratings system and user feedback, our Editor-in-Chief was firm: The 10-point scale wasn’t changing.

I needed to clarify the ratings scale and improve the UX without changing points system.

My goals became:

Spell out what each rating actually meant, while staying within the brand voice.
Ensure users understood that unrated ≠ bad.
Make this info easy to find—no more relying on hidden hover text.
Give justice to the 7s! I am passionate about small businesses thriving and wanted to help them get a more deserved positive reception with our readers.

Collaborating with editorial leadership and my product designer, I:

Redefined each rating with clear, user-friendly explanations that matched our brand voice.
Reduced the hover explanations to a small text box with a link out to an FAQ page instead of a full page overlay.
Added a visible, intuitive ratings explainer modal that lives within every review page—no hovering, clicking, or re-directs needed.
Co-created a ratings guide page with an FAQ section, so our readers could learn more about our review process and editorial point of view to build trust—but only if they wanted to be redirected.

The results:

📈 A statistically significant engagement increase on pages with the module, versus without.
📊 Higher 14-day retention among new users who saw the module.
❤️ Improved trust, authority, and clarity—users finally got our ratings.