2017 TrustRadius Top Rated Criteria & Timeline
Each year, TrustRadius recognizes products with the highest user ratings in our most popular categories with exclusive Top Rated Awards. This honor stands out because it represents the authentic voice of real users. The ultimate piece of social proof, a Top Rated badge shows prospects that their peers rank your product ahead of your competition.
Qualifying for a Top Rated Award
Top Rated badges are awarded to vendors in the top tier of their category’s TrustMap. Designed to help buyers impartially compare products, TrustMaps position products within their market based on user ratings and reviews. We currently have TrustMaps for over 70 of the most popular B2B software categories.
While they may look similar to the Gartner Magic Quadrant and Forrester Wave, here are a few of the things that make our TrustMaps unique:
- Based upon authenticated end-user data versus analyst opinion.
- Dynamically updated as new data comes in, reflecting the latest customer sentiment and buying trends.
- Users can filter based on company size, creating comparisons that are more relevant for buyers and more fair for vendors.
- Ratings are backed by in-depth review content, allowing buyers to drill down and understand the context behind the ratings.
- Inclusion does not depend on company size, revenue, popularity or status as a TrustRadius customer.
- Unlike other review sites, once a product clears the threshold for inclusion, its position is not tied to the number of reviews it has on TrustRadius.
Your position on a TrustMap is based on two dimensions. The first is the product’s overall trScore, which is the average satisfaction rating weighted in favor of independently sourced reviews, to correct for vendor bias, as well as review recency, to most accurately represent the current product. The x-axis represents research frequency, based on monthly unique pageviews of TrustRadius pages associated with the product, including reviews, comparisons and product descriptions.
Becoming a Top Rated product
The first step to getting on your category’s TrustMap is to make sure you have enough published reviews on TrustRadius. The threshold for each category varies based on the competitive landscape, but ranges from 10 to 20 overall ratings and reviews. We recommend sourcing at least 20 reviews to ensure you will be represented as well as provide the greatest benefit to your buyers. The deadline for published reviews that will count towards our 2017 Top Rated awards is Feb. 17, 2017. Update: While the first 2017 deadline has passed, trScores are updated as new data comes in, and Top Rated badges can be automatically awarded once a product is positioned in the top tier of their TrustMap. Please contact marketing@trustradius.com for more information.
If you plan to drive reviews from your own customer base, we recommend applying for our free Review Verification Program. All verified vendors agree to guidelines for collecting authentic, representative, unbiased reviews. By following these best practices, your new reviews will have the biggest impact, with equal trScore weighting to those sourced independently from our own community and outreach efforts. Contact our Research team to learn more.
Alternatively, we can work with you to more efficiently drive reviews with our Review Acceleration Program. Set up a demo to see how we can help.
Each year our categories become more competitive as vendors see value from visibility on TrustMaps. If you are currently Top Rated and want to maintain your status, make sure you continue to source new reviews and run renewal campaigns to keep your current reviews fresh.
Leveraging your Top Rated Award
The 2017 Top Rated products will be announced in March. Past recipients have leveraged their exclusive placement and badges across a wide range of marketing and sales channels. Approved use cases include:
- Adding the badge to your homepage or site
- Issuing a press release announcing your award
- Publishing an announcement post or article
- Promoting your award on social media
- Sending outreach emails announcing your award
- Adding the badge to your email signatures
- Running ad campaigns that include your badge
We are happy to work with your team to help you spread the word.
2017 Top Rated categories
Below is a list of all 71 product categories that will have Top Rated badges this spring.
| A/B Testing & Personalization | IT Service Management |
| Accounting & Budgeting | Learning Management |
| Ad Serving & Retargeting | Live Chat |
| Agile Development | Marketing Analytics |
| All-in-One Marketing | Marketing Automation |
| Application Servers | Nonprofit Constituent Relationship Management |
| Blogging | NoSQL Databases |
| Business Intelligence | Platform-as-a-Service |
| Business Process Management | Project Management |
| Call Center | Project Portfolio Management |
| Cloud Storage | Prototyping & Wireframing |
| Collaboration | Recruiting |
| Configuration Pricing Quoting | Relational Databases |
| Construction / Estimating | Sales Acceleration |
| Content Management | Sales Email |
| Content Marketing | Sales Enablement |
| Core HR | Sales Intelligence |
| Corporate Performance Management | Sales Proposal Automation |
| Cross-Channel Campaign Management | Search Engine Marketing |
| Customer Relationship Management | Search Engine Optimization |
| Data Center Backup | Server Virtualization |
| Data Discovery & Visualization | Social Media Analytics |
| Data Integration | Social Media Customer Service |
| Data Warehouse | Social Media Management |
| eCommerce | Social Media Marketing |
| Electronic Signature | Social Media Monitoring |
| Email Marketing | Subscription Billing |
| Endpoint Backup | Survey |
| Enterprise Content Management | Tag Management |
| Enterprise Resource Planning | Talent Management |
| Enterprise Video | Telephony & VoIP |
| Expense Management | Time Tracking |
| Full-stack Business Intelligence | Virtual User Session / Remote Administration |
| Help Desk | Web Analytics |
| In-page Web Analytics | Web Conferencing |
| Infrastructure-as-a-Service |
If you don’t see your category, please reach out to our Research team — we may be planning to roll out a new TrustMap in 2017 that could include your product.
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