How the DNA Score Works: A New Standard in Business Reviews

Traditional star ratings are broken. Five stars for a product that fails after six months. Four stars because the reviewer couldn't figure out how to use it. One star because the delivery was slow, even though the product itself was excellent.

At RatingHub, we built the DNA Score to solve this problem. Instead of collapsing everything into a single number, the DNA Score breaks performance down across five axes that matter most to Australian consumers.

The Five DNA Axes

Performance (weighted 25%) How well does the product or service do its core job? For a restaurant, this is food quality. For a software platform, it's reliability and functionality. For a financial service, it's accuracy and speed. Performance is the most heavily weighted dimension because at the end of the day, products must work.

Value (weighted 20%) Price is relative — what matters is the relationship between what you pay and what you receive. A $50 restaurant meal might be excellent value, while a $15 meal might be poor value if it's mediocre. Our Value axis captures this nuance, letting reviewers independently assess whether a business is fairly priced.

Reliability (weighted 25%) Can you count on this business? Do they deliver when promised? Is the experience consistent across visits? Reliability scores separate businesses that occasionally dazzle from those that consistently deliver. Equal in weight to Performance, because trust is earned through consistency.

Support (weighted 15%) When something goes wrong — and eventually something always does — how does the business respond? Support scores reflect customer service quality, complaint resolution, response speed, and how well a business makes things right.

Experience (weighted 15%) The overall feeling of dealing with this business. Is the website easy to use? Is the store welcoming? Are staff knowledgeable? Experience captures the intangible quality that turns customers into advocates.

How the Overall Score Is Calculated

The overall DNA Score is a weighted composite of all five axes:

DNA Score = (Performance × 25%) + (Value × 20%) + (Reliability × 25%) + (Support × 15%) + (Experience × 15%)

Scores range from 0 to 100. Our scoring benchmarks are:

90–100: Exceptional — industry-leading across multiple dimensions 75–89: Excellent — consistently strong performance 60–74: Good — solid but with room for improvement 45–59: Average — meets basic expectations, notable gaps Below 45: Poor — significant issues requiring attention

Category-Specific Scoring

Not all businesses are equal. The DNA axes adapt to different categories. A restaurant review focuses on food quality, atmosphere, and dining experience. A software platform review weights technical reliability and integration capability more heavily. A tradie review emphasises workmanship, timeliness, and communication.

RatingHub's AI automatically calibrates category-specific question prompts to ensure reviewers are evaluating what actually matters in each industry.

Transparency First

Every component of every company's DNA Score is publicly visible. You can see exactly how many reviews contributed to each axis, the distribution of scores, and how the business compares to its category benchmark. There are no hidden multipliers, no paid boosts, and no secret sauce — just community reviews, fairly weighted.

This is the standard we believe Australian consumers deserve. This is the DNA Score.