Comments on: Why Do User Reviews Affect E-Tail?

By: Enterprise Ecommerce » Blog Archive » Online Shoppers Read Several Reviews

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 21:30:39 +0000

[...] reviews are all the rage in online retail. And now a recent study shows that online shoppers typically read [...]

By: Adding Reviews and Testimonials To Your Website Is Content Gold - Jaan’s Search Marketing and SEO Blog from Cincinnati, Ohio

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 13:53:48 +0000

[...] can attest to it. I personal always read reviews before purchase. Sure some of them can seem to be faked or even purposely created in a negative format, but regardless this study shows the consumers want them, read them and dissect them before buying. [...]

By: rick gregory

rick gregory — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 21:23:32 +0000

But… then… we agree… How boring.

@Seo Practices – If you have a good feeling for how your product is perceived by your current customers you should know whether bad reviews will be an issue. If you don’t know how your customers feel, you’ve got bigger issues that user reviews.

Don’t be afraid of a few bad reviews – everyone has them and online shoppers aren’t going to be scared off if there’s 1-2 poor reviews out of 25. If you’re concerned about competitors gaming the system, track IPs and, if you see a pattern, use reverse DNS to see where that IP is from.

By: Greg Howlett

Greg Howlett — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 21:09:58 +0000

The Wikipedia/Encarta example was to demonstrate that people are now placing a lot of value on collaborative wisdom. The application to retail is that people place a lot of confidence in user reviews. I was not trying to imply anything else.

By: rick gregory

rick gregory — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 20:37:05 +0000

Greg,

I don’t think the Encarta vs Wikipedia comparison really works. There, the entry on a topic IS the product, whereas with reviews they act as information about the product.

We see so much about how every product is the best, #1, the new leader, that we mostly skip over product copy. User reviews give us a way to see what others think about a product.

The key is to have enough of them on a product. One review isn’t that helpful… 25 might be. I can sometimes spot patterns or look at the low ratings to see if what bothered them might bother me.

The accuracy of any one review is less important if you have enough of them, and bias isn’t an issue – it’s the point. I *want* someone’s opinion. Now, gaming the reviews is a cause for concern, but even there with enough reviews for a product a few gamed replies will not matter that much.

@Brian – I would not do this for SEO, but for conversion. I’ve been wanting a cooling pad for my laptop for a bit… one night I popped on Amazon and looked through the reviews for several… one stood out in particular, so I bought it. The thing is, I might not have bought anything at all if I couldn’t see reviews because all of the products sounded the same if you just read the vendor copy.

By: Seo Practices

Seo Practices — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 20:08:39 +0000

I guess we are on the transition of allowing comments and reviews of the products or services we sell. We are still fearful of damage to our brand that bad comments can make.

By: Brian Chappell

Brian Chappell — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 19:49:59 +0000

I would be curious to hear other expert SEO’s opinions on user generated content, such as this, and why it wouldn’t help the ranking of the parent page. In this example the Green Widget Landing page.

At first thought it seems it would have the affect I mentioned above.

By: Greg Howlett

Greg Howlett — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 16:37:37 +0000

Brian, I know little about user review software vendors, but they are out there and I am sure you can find one to create separate pages for each review.

I want to caution you about one thing though. I am not sure that you will get the SEO bump you are hoping for. In the case of JC Whitney, they saw no increase in traffic from SEO after implementing reviews. Our experience is similar.

I will be talking further about this issue and others next week.

By: Brian Chappell

Brian Chappell — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 16:25:13 +0000

I have been begging my co. to get in on this boat. The only real problem is we will have to hire someone to moderate the reviews.

I know there are services to do it for you. But then we lose the SEO affect that user generated content can have from the ones I have seen.

My idea is someone posts a review for “Green widgets” The review then gets posted on the Green widget landing page (www.store.com/green-widget-page.php) Then a static page is created behind it. So for every review there would be a static page created.

ex. www.store.com/green-widget-page/reviews/green-widget-review-1.php

Anyone know of a system that has moderation built in, and lets you create a site structure like this?

By: john andrews

john andrews — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 16:24:44 +0000

Disturbing, indeed. The bias behind the copywriting on wikipedia and some other sites becomes more obvious to me every day. Sadly, I suspect that is just a reflection of it being tuned to the mass audience. Whether it is centrally directed or not doesn’t really matter.

Any suggestion that “anyone can edit it to fix what might be biased” is ludicrous – because “anyone” doesn’t have financial backing to craft such well-crafted propaganda.