Hi all,

We have recently updated the Hub rankings, which allows us to list Hubs in the search page based on the quality of service, reliability and how complete a Hub profile page is.

The new Hub ranking is meant to reward Hubs willing to go that extra mile. By increasing their rank, these Hubs appear higher in the search results, which increases the likelihood of receiving orders. An important thing to note is that as a Hub you can control the factors that influence your ranking, giving you an additional level of control over your Hub. Here’s a quick breakdown of each of these factors, together with some practical tips on boosting your ranking:

Quality of service

Simply put, customer reviews are crucial for your Hub ranking. As you probably remember from your first Marvin review, users will be asked to rate your service by print quality, service, speed and communication. A good average will have a major impact on your ranking. Protip_:_ Encourage customers to leave a review, especially the happy ones :wink:

Good quality of services often leads to customer satisfaction and long term loyalty, which is why returning customers are a great boost to your ranking. Protip: Build a personal relation with your customers to ensure they will come back.

Reliability

1. Response time matters for your Hub ranking. Letting customers know, through a comment on the order page, that you’ve received the order and that you’re “on it” is vital for a good customer experience. The response time is also included on your Hub page. Protip_:_ Be quick in replying to an order, even if just to say that you’ll be assessing the print at a later time.

2. Declined orders also influence your ranking. Not all decline reasons are created equal though. The impact depends on the reason for declining, which will always be checked and confirmed by the support team. If outside your zone of control, rest assured it won’t impact your ranking. Protip_:_ Below are some ideas for keeping the number of declined orders low:

  • Put your printer offline when busy or out of town, by using the printer status feature.
  • Test your pricing to avoid declines - here’s how.
  • Keep your material listings up-to-date, to make sure you have them in stock.
  • Leave a comment when declining an order, explain the reasoning behind it
  • Help customers find another hub, by pointing them in the right direction - like for example when the model would benefit from a different technology

3. Canceled Orders. This one comes to no surprise, as nobody likes cancellations after something has been paid for. Cancelled orders have a negative impact on the ranking. Protip_:_ Your ranking will improve as long as you don’t make further cancellations with a high frequency, so do make sure:

  • You can take an order before accepting
  • Your machines are running in good condition
  • You can make the deadline

Hub Page Completeness

There is a direct correlation in between how complete your Hub page is and how you rank in the search results. This is particularly important for new Hubs, as it can help you push higher in the search listing. The ranking also takes Hub page updates into consideration, so make sure to keep your Hub page with recent prints/ projects whenever you add new printers/ materials. Here’s a quick checklist to be sure you’ve got the basics covered:

  • Upload pictures of your prints on your Hub page
  • Display a header image
  • Add a description to your Hub

Protip_:_ If you want to take your Hub page to the next level, find the nitty gritty details here on Talk. On a final note, it’s important to mention that there are other factors at play that influence the search listing. Namely:

  • The distance from the customer, to create a mix of the best local & remote Hubs
  • Additional filters used by customers (materials, deadline, etc)

Also keep in mind that we’re constantly working on improving the search ranking to better identify and reward the best Hubs on the platform, so these factors we use and how we use them can change over time. If you have any questions, comments or general feedback, feel free to let us know in the comments below.

That’s it!
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15 Likes

Interesting changes…
But sometimes its difficult to get meaningful reviews from customers… especially if they are repeat customers there initial comment/review might be descriptive and fully descriptive but if they are constant customers they wont want to keep writing much, if at all…

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The ability to specify a custom print volume would also go a long way to assisting in a better customer/printer match.

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So, 3DHubs should weight a repeat customer very highly - nothing endorses a good review, like repeat business!

10 Likes

You forgot the biggest thing to get to the top… Offer HD service.

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thanks for your advice !

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Hi @JATMN, thanks for the input! I agree with you, reviews are hard to come by. Given the number of e-comm platforms that rely on reviews nowadays, it’s understandable, as they are time consuming in a way. We do email customers to leave a review after each order is completed, so if you back this up with great service, first time customers should be more than motivated to leave a review.

As far as returning customers go, as @ehud42 mentioned, they basically translate into gold as far as any business is concerned! They are indeed less likely to leave reviews in time, so we’ll make sure to add them to the ranking soon. Cheers!

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Hey @ehud42, thanks for the suggestion, it’s definitely something we could think about! I’ll make a note to pass along to the team :slight_smile: Cheers

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What to do when a customer cancels the order? It seems they cannot, the hub has to decline; does that affect ranking?

How do you rank a hub page completeness? Manually? Do you review them again after changes?

Also I don’t really understand how the “best match” listing works. I see a hub with 4 reviews on the first page, and some hubs in other countries before mine even thought I have good reviews. I just don’t understand how a hub with 5 reviews a hundred kilometers away is listed before a closer hub with more/better reviews. Maybe your algorithm needs more tuning or is there something I’m missing?

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Does said hub have a better rating than you? I see you have 7 reviews but only around 4.3/4.4 star rating on print quality… which will effect your ranking.

Also your description is -very- lacking… you should beef that up A LOT… I know 3dhubs does a lot of manual review of orders as well as feedback and hub pages… you really need to make your hub impressive. Also comments on your feedback shows more efforts too.

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Thanks for the tips. I’ll check that.

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Why is my hub not listed?

Of the 31 orders I have fulfilled I have 28 reviews and an average of 5.0 in all categories. I have a faster response time than all the nearby hubs listed. yet I am not listed at all.

What is going on?

Because you are part of the USA market.
See this topic… you’re not the only one upset.

1 Like

Nice topic, but what to do when I have a satisfied customer, he is happy with the print and expressed himself that he will order next print again. He just needs to adapt his model, because he is not satisfied with his own design yet. Nevertheless this satisfied returning customer has left a 3 star review ruining my average, which has been very good up to now. As he said he did not pay attention to stars and clicked anything just to have it over… What now? Is it better to accept next prints, receive more 3-star reviews and fall down deep among other 3D hubs ratings. I had idea to decline his next order, but I consider this stupid approach. What would you do? I think bothering customer regarding reviews is quite rude, isn’t it?