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Tag Archives: customer reviews
Trust does not equal influence – be careful how you interpret the data
The new Nielsen trust report is out. (Write up at Social Commerce Today.) Duck - here come the inflated claims from social commerce companies about how this proves the effectiveness of what they do. The problem is, it's not that simple. First, here's the data: The temptation is to conclude that because "recommendations from people I know" are most-trusted, a sure-fire strategy is to get your customers to recommend your stuff to their friends. The problem is that the whole reason friends are trusted is because they WON'T recommend your stuff to their friends - not unless they sincerely and spontaneously ... read more
What To Do When Shoppers Don’t Trust Your Customer Reviews
The New York Times recently published a piece about the industry of paid customer reviews. This story surfaces periodically. Even if it's only a small percent of reviews that are paid for, the perception that positive reviews are bought (or that negative reviews are suppressed) undermines the value of all reviews, even the legitimate ones. Here's a typical comment responding to the NY Times article: "When I search Amazon, I only trust the negative reviews. Too many of the 5-star comments sound phony." So if you have customer reviews on your storefront, what can you do to address review-skepticism? One option is to augment your ... read more
A webinar just for Yahoo! Stores: Social Q&A for eCommerce
For Yahoo! Stores Join us and leading Yahoo Store services provider FastPivot for a webinar on: Social Q&A for eCommerce Tuesday, March 29, 2011 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM EDT Register here Question-and-Answer systems are one of the hottest topics on the social web. Now learn how to use Social Q&A on your store to increase conversions, bring past customers back, improve your SEO rankings, and drive fresh traffic from social networks. The goodwill of your customer base is the #1 asset of your business. Don't leave it locked away. Adding Social Q&A to your store can release this untapped goodwill to generate more sales ... read more
Customer reviews are great, and word-of-mouth is still better.
Discgear.com just announced some dramatic success with customer reviews -- 74% increase in conversions within 5 months. Congrats to them and to their review system provider, PowerReviews. But I couldn't help noticing this quote from Michael Brown, their IT Director: “User-generated comments and reviews are second only to word-of-mouth as a purchase driver for web users.” So, by all means, invest in a customer reviews system. But don't forget your word-of-mouth system, too!
Thought leaders predict social shopping among top trends for ’09
Peter Kim asked a handful of thought leaders in the social media space to give their predictions for the top trends of '09. Here are a couple related to social commerce: Charlene Li: Shopping Goes Social (also reprinted on her own blog) After a devastating holiday season, retailers will eagerly seek a way to improve results other than driving demand with deeper discounts. One option they will investigate will be how to insert people and social connections into the buying process, illuminating and influencing for the first time the Black Hole Of Consideration. As they lick their wounds in the first half ... read more