Smile Prep strives to provide content that’s highly informative, useful and engaging. In support of this objective, we have established certain policies, practices and criteria that guide our approach to producing and publishing our articles, reviews and comparison guides. In the interest of transparency, we created this page to document those principles.
Publishing Principles
We have adopted the following policies and procedures with respect to the content that we publish on Smile Prep.
Publishing Policies
- Our editorial team is solely responsible for creating all of our guides, reviews, and articles.
- We occasionally publish guest posts that complement our own content by providing new and relevant information or a unique perspective. All guest posts are clearly so designated, and we do not accept payment for these submissions.
- We receive commissions through links marked with a $ and thus have an economic motivation to encourage you to purchase using these links. However, we are never paid to publish content and we do not permit our affiliates – or any third party – to control or otherwise approve any of our content.
Publishing Procedures
- We assign each new project to one of our writers with specific instructions on its subject matter, tone, and style. Where feasible, we assign reviews covering a particular type of product/service to the same writer to improve consistency of approach.
- The writer researches and writes the article, including links to their sources when possible.
- Prior to publication, an editor reviews each article for both style and substance. This includes making sure the tone and voice align with Smile Prep’s other content.
- While we are passionate about creating helpful and highly informative content, we are not licensed dentists and, accordingly, we generally avoid covering topics that implicate clinical expertise. However, if an editor determines that an article would benefit from professional oversight, we arrange to have a licensed dentist review the article and provide input (and indicate that the article has undergone professional review).
- We periodically update our content, so that we can continue providing the most useful information to our readers.
Customer Review Policies & Procedures
Smile Prep periodically receives unsolicited reviews from customers who wish to share their experiences. In addition, we attempt to gather customer reviews from individuals who have purchased products and services we cover.
Our standard practice is to publish every customer review we receive, positive or negative, that we can verify as authentic and which complies with our customer review guidelines. However, we reserve the right not to publish any review that includes:
- Offensive or threatening language, including profanity
- False, baseless, or unreasonable claims
- Inclusion of personally identifiable information
Customer review ratings do not directly determine our own ratings. However, we carefully monitor all customer reviews that we collect in an effort to ensure that our product coverage and assessments take into account those experiences.
Throughout our site, we may reference customer reviews in various ways, including presenting individual reviewer comments and displaying an average customer rating or the distribution of customer ratings for a particular product or product category.
Review Methodology & Rating Criteria
At Smile Prep, we put a lot of time and effort into preparing our reviews. To help you understand our process, we have summarized our review methodology.
It involves four main steps:
1) Identifying Review Criteria
For each product or service category, we attempt to discern which attributes or benefits matter most to customers by a variety of means, which may variously include: interviewing customers, analyzing online reviews and discussion forums, and applying our own first-hand experiences. We distill that insight into a set of “review criteria” — product or service qualities we closely consider when creating a review.
You can find our criteria for each category Smile Prep reviews further down this page.
2) Identifying Suitable Review Candidates
While we don’t commit to review every brand/product in a particular category, we attempt to cover the most popular ones. We also review newer and lesser known brands that, in our view, have something new to offer.
3) Creating Reviews & Assigning Ratings
Our starting point when creating a review is a careful survey of a company’s marketing claims and available third party customer reviews. We rely on the accuracy of company claims, and do not independently verify them. Our reviews use this information to help our readers get information about the available options in a centralized location. In addition, we attempt to identify and convey in our reviews sources of consumer frustration as well as valuable product differentiators that might not be well-advertised.
In some cases we additionally take one or more of the following, additional steps to further inform our review analysis:
- Gather detailed reviews/insights from verified customers
- Purchase or demo a product so that we can make a hands-on assessment
- Set up interviews with companies or arrange to have them complete questionnaires to fill gaps in our knowledge
When we rate products and services, we do so according to the review criteria set forth below. We do not engage in any laboratory testing of the products/services considered. In addition, we are not licensed dental professionals and cannot provide clinical performance assessments. While our assessment of each factor is necessarily subjective, we do our best to explain the considerations that informed our assessment.
4) Ongoing Monitoring and Updates
The dental industry is an ever-changing landscape. We regularly revisit our reviews, our review criteria, and our ratings to ensure they stay as up-to-date and helpful as possible. If you notice any inaccurate or out-of-date info in our content, please let us know by emailing us at admin@smileprep.com.
Clear Aligner Rating Criteria
*As noted above, our evaluations with respect to these rating criteria rely on statements that manufacturers make about their products
Review Criteria | Topics Considered |
---|---|
Scope of Treatment (25.0%) |
|
Affordability (20.0%) |
|
Convenience (20.0%) |
|
Appearance (10.0%) |
|
Customer Experience (25.0%) |
|