Understand the psychology behind a consumer guide. Your goal will be to produce a printed resource that empowers people by giving them unbiased information from which they can make good decisions about the goods and services they buy. Consumer guides report the truth as evidenced by information collected by neutral parties.
Structure your consumer guide to offer solid information not inferences. For example, if you're evaluating mom-and-pop grocery stores in the area, level the playing field by evaluating each of these businesses using the same criteria. Compare store size, numbers of products offered, services and amenities, business hours and opinions of shoppers at each location to get a comparative result for your guide.
Come up with a rating symbol and apply it judiciously. Do this by picking an icon from your computer software program (e.g. a smiley face, a heart or a star found most commonly in the Wingdings or Dingbats font family). Choose criteria upon which your research will be collected and then assign up to five of these symbols to recommend a business or warn consumers about a product or service featured in your publication.
Write a revision policy with teeth so your guide can be amended to reflect changes businesses make. Let's say a restaurant only received three out of five hearts and it wants to improve its rating. It cleans up, revises the menu or moves to a new location. As the publisher of your consumer guide, you owe it to the businesses you rate to re-evaluate them regularly. This goes for everyone on your roster.
Avoid the inference of impropriety by having a board of people reach consensus on ratings. This shares responsibility, divides up research duties and offers the variety of opinions that will keep your guide fair and balanced. To be on the safe side, don't publish your guide until an attorney vets it so you stay on the right side of libel issues and keep the guide legitimate.
Publish your guide. Depending upon the universe of consumers you hope to reach, your guide can be output as a Microsoft Word document that's placed into a three-ring binder, you can contact one of the many publish-on-demand sites and have your book produced for a fee or you can establish a website and post your findings there. Use other types of guides as your model for structuring your first effort and by the time you get ready to update your guide, you'll be a pro.