When it comes to buying a car online, consumer expectations are changing and there is a greater appetite for more of the buying journey to be completed online.

According to recent research, over 79% of buyers said they found the idea of omni-channel retailing appealing¹, meaning being a trusted retailer is crucial for success. Reviews are a great way to build trust with current and future buyers and could be the determining factor for many consumers when choosing which retailer to buy from.

Highly Rated retailers will be announced in July and there’s still plenty of time to make sure you’re a winner

Highly Rated is an annual award for retailers who not only have great reviews, but also adhere to best practices when it comes to managing their reviews. Highly Rated retailers will receive a suite of assets both online and on their retailer stores to showcase to buyers.

How you can be Highly Rated on Auto Trader 2025

We’ve listened to your feedback and this year we are striving to increase the transparency of the Highly Rated criteria. In order to be Highly Rated, you must hit all the elements of our criteria in the last 12 months:

1. An average overall rating of 4 star and above

Highly Rated retailers will generally receive positive reviews and be 4 star or higher on average. Recency is important, with 86% of visitors to Auto Trader believing it’s important to read a review of a dealership that was written within the last 12-months². Continued momentum of positive reviews will stand you in the best stead to be Highly Rated this year.

2. Number of reviews in proportion to sales made

All of our retailers vary in size, so this is to make it fair and inclusive to every retailer. The key to this is ensuring that you request a review for every sale that you make. Making this part of your daily jobs to be done can help you generate as many reviews as possible in proportion to your sales.

3. Respond to your reviews, 1 and 2 star being the key focus

Highly Rated retailers will generally receive positive reviews. Replying to all reviews is important, however we want to focus on the responses to the occasional negative review.

Why? Because we strongly believe that things can go wrong from time to time and it’s about offering a resolution to any issues that may arise. Future buyers often want to see how the issue was resolved to give them reassurance that if something were to go wrong, you’d make sure to resolve the problem. Respond to 95% of your 1- and 2-star reviews to be Highly Rated in 2025.

4. Have a minimum of 10 reviews

New for this year, we’ve introduced a minimum number of reviews that a retailer will need to receive in the last 12 months to qualify for Highly Rated. This helps us to maintain fairness for the award and ensure retailers are given a fair chance to qualify for the award as well as giving us a baseline for retailers to aim for on a rolling yearly basis.

We’ll be announcing the winners in July. In the meantime, we’re here to help

Take our Customer Experience masterclass to support you in generating recent positive reviews
Speak to your Account Manager to have a deep-dive specifically on your reviews and have a Forecourt Review today

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1:Auto Trader Car Buyer Tracker, November 2024

2: Auto Trader on site survey, April 2025.

How to make sure you’re Highly Rated in 2025