Comments on: Online Shoppers Read Multiple Reviews

By: Leveraging E-business 2.0 for competitive advantage « Edgewater Technology Weblog

Thu, 22 May 2008 18:25:11 +0000

[...] matter. 68% of shoppers read products reviews before making a [...]

By: Lucia

Lucia — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 05:54:53 +0000

It is always good to check reviews but honestly many times I disagree with the reviews that I read. So I rather follow my own intuition.
I found a place where I can shop from more than 1000 stores, very secure site. Also I know the great cause for this Shopping Place is to help children in need. A percentage of the shpping from everyone goes to that cause. I feel good about helping people. I have bought computers, clothes, cameras, even little things… always getting rebates. ANyway, the site speaks for itself. Check it out
[link removed]

By: Mike Montague

Mike Montague — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 17:25:12 +0000

I always take reviews into consideration before I buy a product. There are some good legitimate review resources out there.

By: Jeff Helfand

Jeff Helfand — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 03:12:25 +0000

Hi Jordan,

Thank you for your Blog post! We’ve had over a 1,000 downloads of this report and are thrilled to share these findings.

Regarding Steve Rosenbaum’s post…

Steve, I completely agree with you. This is exactly WHY PowerReviews has created our “Verified Purchaser” program, which enables us to determine whether the person writing the review at a retailer client site, has indeed purchased the product they are reviewing. You will see this designation on the sites of hundreds of retailers who use PowerReviews and our consumer product research portal, Buzzillions.com.

Further, we also label reviews written by employees of our retailer clients as “Staff Reviewers and Staff Experts. We even have a credentialing program which if approved, labels your review as an Industry Expert.

You can see a great example of this at EvoGear.com. Just search for the K2 Pontoon Ski and read the customer reviews.

While nothing is foolproof, I think we’ve created a unique method to enable “review credibility” and I would love your feedback if you have time to investigate.

By: Steve Elliott

Steve Elliott — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 21:11:48 +0000

I have to agree with Steve there. The first two pages of “reviews” seem to be from advertisers. I prefer to post on forums that I use and find people who 1. Have used the product and 2. Will give an honest appraisal.

By: Steve Rosenbaum

Steve Rosenbaum — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 20:25:01 +0000

Problem is that a lot of reviews online are made up or manipulated. It’s hard to know what to trust these days.

By: Steven Bradley

Steven Bradley — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 19:42:48 +0000

Speaking as a shopper I love reviews. I won’t base my buying decision on any one review, but they definitely go into the equation.

For me it’s the common themes in all the reviews. If one reviewer mentions poor customer support I don’t take it too seriously, but if a half dozen all mention the same thing then I do take it seriously.

By: Jordan McCollum

Jordan McCollum — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 18:10:22 +0000

@Kelly—Good points. Andy wrote about this a few months ago in Five Ways Negative Reviews Help Your Online Reputation.

By: Brick Marketing

Brick Marketing — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 15:56:38 +0000

This is good news for the consumers! Not only does this demand better service and better products from companies, but also enables them to get a true look at product and services. This puts the consumer back into power and in a day like this where the average person is infiltrated with advertisements, that’s the least they deserve!

By: Kelly Rusk

Kelly Rusk — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 15:37:37 +0000

I think equally as valuable as customer reviews is companies publicly responding to reviews –particularly bad ones.

When I was researching for an upcoming vacation, I went to TripAdvisor to see what people were saying about the hotels I was considering. The one I chose did not necessarily have all the best reviews–but actually had a member of management responding to all the replies. Because hey, nothing’s perfect, but who doesn’t love to know if they feel the need to complain afterwards, they will at least be listened too?

By: BuzzillionsJim

BuzzillionsJim — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 01:08:18 +0000

Hi Jordan, At buzzillions.com (consumer face of PowerReviews), I’ve taken a lot of that research and incoporated it into how I rank products on our website. So now you can see that if consumers want 4 or more reviews, we try to deliver products that fit that criteria (among others) in the top 20 results we always show.

It’s also good to see Amazon finally upgrading it’s review section…-Jim