NoFakes
Designing the conditions for trust: proof of purchase, clear participation rules and incentives that work for customers and businesses.
The challenge
Trust starts before a review is published
Online reviews influence purchasing decisions, but manipulated ratings and unauthenticated feedback make it difficult for customers to know whom to trust. Local businesses face the same problem when trying to build credibility.
NoFakes made proof of purchase part of the review journey. Instead of relying only on moderation after publication, the product established a connection between the reviewer and a real customer experience.
The approach
Give both sides a reason to participate
Customers earned rewards for sharing authentic experiences. Businesses gained visibility through verified feedback. Connecting verification, rewards and discovery gave both sides a reason to use the platform.
The customer journey follows four steps: discover a local business, verify a purchase, publish a review and redeem rewards. Restaurants, cafés and shops become discoverable through the experiences of verified customers.
Design decisions
Build verification into the journey
Publishing a review required a verified purchase. I treated that requirement as part of the customer journey: people needed to understand what made them eligible to review and why that made other reviews more credible.
Users receive tokens for verified reviews, including richer contributions with photos or videos. Those tokens can be exchanged for gift cards. The reward system encourages participation while keeping verification as the requirement for publishing.
Business tools
Help businesses act on feedback
Collecting ratings was only one part of the business experience. Owners also needed to understand sentiment, respond to customers and communicate what their business offered.
We designed a central business hub for managing profile information, responding to reviews, tracking engagement and understanding customer experiences. The dashboard turned individual reviews into information a business could act on.
Outcome
An ecosystem built around credible experiences
The published results report more than 280 active local businesses, 8,200 registered users, 3,700 verified reviews and €9,500 in redeemed gift cards.
The design lesson was that trust depends on the incentives around participation. Verification, rewards and business visibility needed to work together so that credible reviews benefited everyone involved.