Shopsafe Star Ratings

What Are They?

We've reviewed every online shopping site that is listed on Shopsafe and awarded them a star rating. We show the web sites to you in order of the star rating, so the five star sites are shown first, and so on. We hope that this will make it easier to find good, high quality sites quickly and easily.

Essentially the ratings are meant to be a quick guide to our opinion of each site and a starting place for you the shopper. The ratings we give are:

Excellent
Very Good
Quite Good
Fair
OK

How Do We Decide?

To get listed on Shopsafe we look for:

Online ordering and secure of credit card payment transactions.
Product prices and delivery prices that are clearly displayed.
A wide range of products, suitable for "high street" consumers.
Sites that aren't just clones of other sites, or purely data feeds of other people's products.
Sites that are based in the UK and deliver to the UK.
Full contact details including phone and fax numbers, postal and e-mail addresses and a contact for complaints. We won't accept sites with just a PO box number.
Prominent display of customer service information, including delivery information, a refunds and returns policy and information on how to cancel contracts.
A full privacy policy. If you do not have one, you can use this privacy policy, making any changes you need to suit your business.
Terms and conditions that are clearly displayed.
Good design, making the site quick to load, easy to use and multi-browser compatible.
Compliance with the latest legislation regarding electronic communications and disability acts.

We decide the star ratings by looking at:

The range of products sold on the site.
The price of the products on the site.
The quality of the design, in particular
- The ease of use
- The ease of navigation
- The download times
- The quality of any photos
- The validity of the code
- The visual appeal. We like white space.

More Questions

What if a site advertises with you?

Online shopping sites can advertise on Shopsafe, they can add banners, logos and products from their site. But we won't change their star rating, a high rating can't be bought.

Does that mean a one star site is no good?

No. All of the sites listed on Shopsafe meet our safe shopping standards. The majority of sites that apply to be listed on Shopsafe get rejected, so getting a listing on Shopsafe is difficult to do. The one star sites meet our standards as a minimum, but there are many many sites that didn't get listed, zero star sites, if you like.

What qualifies you to judge a site's design?

As well as running Shopsafe, Edward Robertson Ltd have been building web sites since 1996. We've got our hands dirty creating web sites for other people, so we know what we're looking for.