Archive for November, 2006

Word of Mouth, eCommerce

Brett Hurt Cyber Monday and the Best Deals in One Place

November 28th, 2006 by Brett Hurt Founder and CEO

Cyber Monday has passed (it was yesterday) and the numbers are looking good.  Across the board, I am hearing from clients and prospects that they posted significantly better than expected results.  Online is the place to be, and as mobile Internet access gets more ubiquitous and usable, the eCommerce teams inside large multichannel retailers will have even more clout.  Just wait until shoppers start actively using mobile Web browsers while shopping in physical retail stores.  Mobile, personalized kiosks in the palm of your hand with full access to reviews, price comparison, accessories, rebates, competitive products, cross-sell recommendations, bundled or unique-to-that-retailer services, videos, and much more.

Who coined the term "Cyber Monday"?  Well, my friends at Shop.org of course.  I remember that around this time last year I was watching Scott Silverman, Executive Director of Shop.org, on CNN and CNBC being interviewed on Cyber Monday.  It was pretty wild to see Scott up there in such a prominent way, especially since I remember Shop.org in the lean years (post bubble-bursting) when the community was so small and a little shunned.  This year's Annual Summit had no less than 2,200 people at it; I remember when it was only 200!

And now everyone is talking about Cyber Monday.  Coremetrics, the company I founded prior to Bazaarvoice, has started to capitalize on Cyber Monday buzz with their new term, eDay, which is next Monday, Dec. 4.  Coremetrics' benchmarking service, LIVEmark, shows that Cyber Monday is the largest day for traffic on eCommerce sites, but eDay is the largest day for sales. 

I don't hide my love for Shop.org.  I spent over two and a half years serving on Shop.org's Board of Directors, during our most significant period of change and growth.  It was devastating when Ray Greenly, our VP of Research and Member Services, passed away from cancer last fall.  Ray was such a huge asset to the team and such a genuinely great guy.  We decided to honor his memory with a scholarship fund for students interested in a career in eCommerce.  What better way to do this than through a shopping portal where 100% of the Shop.org commissions on all sales are donated to the Ray M. Greenly Scholarship Fund.

So what does this have to do with word of mouth?  Well, first of all, if you want to see all of the best deals in one place and contribute to the Fund through your shopping, please visit CyberMonday.com.  Second, and this is probably obvious by now, with all of the press that Cyber Monday gets the URL www.CyberMonday.com is sure to attract many visitors.  Word of mouth with a good cause at its core.  And that's the best type of word.

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Community, Customer Centricity, New at Bazaarvoice, Ratings & Reviews, User-Generated Content

Wayne Stribling Three Reasons Why Photo Reviews Drive Impact

November 28th, 2006 by Wayne Stribling Former VP of Client Services

The ability for customers to rate and review a company’s products or services online is not a new concept- it’s been around for many years, but as the internet has evolved into what’s commonly referred to as Web 2.0, we’ve seen the popularity of sites with a heavy focus on digital photos and video became very popular in a very short timeframe, ie., YouTube.com and Flickr.com.

Why are photos and videos so popular? There are many reasons, but probably the most logical is that they tell a story in a way that written word simply cannot. The common saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” is true and a video can be as powerful as a thousand pictures since it combines sound as well.

We recently launched a new feature called Photo Review that provides reviewers the ability to include digital photos along with their written review. Just like ratings and reviews, we provide all of the moderation services for photos and the captions associated with them.  Here are some reasons we believe this new feature will have a major impact on the way people perceive and utilize reviews in the future:

1) Photos generate interest and curiosity – people are naturally drawn to pictures more so than written text. This fact of human nature helps explain why websites that allow digital photos that are user-generated (home made) are so popular. It is only natural that reviews that include photos will generate more interest and spark people’s curiosity above and beyond the written word.

Here’s a good example:

2 Headed Dog on Petco

This was the first photo uploaded with a review on Petco’s website. That’s right- it’s a two headed dog!  It may even be a real one. Now do you think this photo will generate some interest and curiosity from people that see it?  I’m betting it will dramatically increase the number of readers of this review for a dog crate.

2) Photos are valuable authentic user-generated content – When people read reviews, they are looking for information to help them make a purchase decision. By providing them not only written review text, but also authentic user-generated content in the form of pictures, they will have more information to help them make this decision.

3) Photo reviews increase community participation – If users discover a website that supports and encourages customers to upload their photos (authentic user generated content), they will be more likely to participate in the site’s community (back to my YouTube example), return more often to see their review with photos “in lights” and then repeat this behavior.

Here’s another example of a photo review from our client Burpee that demonstrates community participation:


While this picture of a hollyhock plant is not quite as interesting or controversial as the two headed dog photo, it is certainly more interesting than a text only review about hollyhock plants. I never knew hollyhock plants bloomed such vibrantly colored flowers! The value added to the review by having this picture associated with it is readily apparent.

In a future blog post, I will report back on the traffic generated by these two photo reviews. I suspect they will be very impressive when compared to similar reviews without photos. Do I think photo reviews will become the norm for all types of products and services? The answer is no, but for many of them the undeniable power of photos will generate more interest, drive more valuable user-generated content and result in greater community participation than ever before.

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Community, Ratings & Reviews, Research, Word of Mouth

Brant Barton Reputation: An Inalienable Right in Web 3.0

November 25th, 2006 by Brant Barton Co-Founder and Chief Innovation Officer

My trusty Google Alerts directed me recently to Toward a web 3.0?, a compelling blog post that speculates on the web's evolution and names Bazaarvoice in doing so.  The author classifies Bazaarvoice, along with complementary solutions like RapLeaf and iKarma, as a universal reputation system that enables consumers to evaluate products prior to purchase.  While our marketing efforts might present us somewhat differently, I personally like the "reputation system" description for a couple of reasons. 

First, it's novel to think of products as having reputations, considering that we typically reserve that privelege for individuals (you, your friends, eBay buyers & sellers) and  brands, not necessarily the objects of consumption.  "Reputation" sounds richer and more meaningful than "rating" although a product's average customer rating is certainly a component of its reputation, along with reviews of the product and the volume of customer word of mouth surrounding the product, in absolute terms and relative to the product's peers. 

Second, reputation is also a function of WHO's talking.  In the course of collecting ratings and reviews for tens of thousands of products, we are also gaining deep insight into the "opinion value" of individual reviewers.  For example, our solution allows end users to flag reviews as being helpful, not helpful, and/or inappropriate.  These aggregate statistics help us pinpoint influential reviewers as well as abusers of the reviews function.  In addition, we assist our clients in selecting featured reviews based on review quality attributes, such as length, level of detail, and language quality, and our clients can assign Expert Reviewer badges to their most outstanding contributors.  

In the offline world, you'd trust a product recommendation from a close, respected friend before you'd follow the suggestion of a stranger.  These same dynamics apply to the online world as well, and online communities and word of mouth networks are driving their evolution.  I believe that consumer trust in online peers and word of mouth sources will very soon exceed trust in known, offline peers and sources, if it hasn't already (eBay has certainly proven this to be true within their trading community, but there is not yet a dominant eBay-like reputation system for individual consumers in widespread use, although RapLeaf and others are trying to change this).  

In summary, a product's reputation is a function not only of its quality, performance, and buzz factor but also its consumer relationships.  When smart and informed consumers speak well of your products, their opinions should count more than the impressions of less informed consumers with no good or long-standing reputation of their own.  To those companies that want to take the short route to building a positive "reputation" for their products by hiring professional bloggers and PR firms, you are forewarned!  Even Web 1.0 consumers are smarter than that!  In Web 3.0, expect even greater levels of transparency and more sophisticated systems for measuring the reputation of products, services, brands and the people who talk about them. 

Community, Customer Centricity, New at Bazaarvoice, Word of Mouth

Wayne Stribling Nine Clients Launch with Bazaarvoice!

November 6th, 2006 by Wayne Stribling Former VP of Client Services

It has been a very busy time for the Client Services Team at Bazaarvoice – we recently set a new record for most clients implemented in a single month. We successfully launched our ratings and reviews solution on nine client websites with a combined total of over ten million products that can now be reviewed by consumers online! Here is the list of clients, many of whom are the largest in their industry, that recently launched with us: nine more clients go live with the Bazaarvoice solution! Blinds.com – America’s largest online retailer of blinds and other custom window coverings Cabela’s – the world’s foremost outfitter of outdoor products CarMax – the nation’s largest retailer of used cars The Home Depot Canada – the Canadian website for the world’s largest home improvement retailer; Home Depot US has been live for several months now. Finish Line – a leading athletic retailer specializing in brand name footwear, apparel, and accessories with over 650 stores Jigsaw Health – provides a resource of information from both the alternative and conventional medical worlds President’s Choice (Loblaw) – Canada’s largest food distributor and a leading provider of general merchandise products, drugstore and financial products and services Scholastic – the world’s largest children's publishing, education, and media company Thumbplay – a leading online retailer of mobile entertainment content Rapidly implementing all of these highly respectable clients is an especially impressive accomplishment when you consider that most software products, even ASP solutions, normally take months to implement and often require a large team of IT Professionals. We designed our solution to be simple and straightforward to implement, and we really deliver on this promise. Clients are surprised by their ability not only to quickly integrate Bazaarvoice functionality with their existing website, but also to customize the look and feel with very few limitations. Being able to quickly implement our solution was especially important to these nine clients because they can now begin harnessing the power of word of mouth to help promote and sell their products in time for the 2006 holiday season. To kick off their holiday promotion of ratings and reviews, President’s Choice recently had 130,000 t-shirts printed for all of their employees to wear in their stores!  I want to congratulate each of these clients on their successful launch of the Bazaarvoice solution. And say how proud I am of the entire Client Services Team for their dedication and professionalism in accomplishing this impressive implementation record! Great job Team!

Community, Customer Centricity, User-Generated Content

Brant Barton Gannett Bets Big on Citizen Journalism

November 3rd, 2006 by Brant Barton Co-Founder and Chief Innovation Officer

Earlier today Wired News reported that Gannett, the publisher of USA Today and 90 daily newspapers across the US, is restructuring its newsrooms as 24/7 "information centers" that will rely heavily on user-generated content and the eyes, ears, and minds of citizen journalists.  Rarely does industry news send a shiver of genuine excitement down my spine, but this story absolutely did because Gannett's actions are an evolutionary leap forward for the media and news industries.   

The Wired story covers Gannett's ambitious plans to "crowdsource" (see Brett's May blog post for his perspective) its news function, enabling the media giant to focus more of its energies on local news while transforming its newsrooms and websites into digital nerve centers for their respective communities.  While the last phrase of the previous sentence could be used to describe any number of media companies that claim to understand and embrace "digital convergence", it is not so hackneyed a phrase when describing a 100 year old, $13 billion publicly traded company.  This is actually real news for a change.   

Gannett's move is sure to stir controversy in the inner circles of its industry, but I have no doubt that the company's biggest competitors are already, or will soon be, right on its heels.  Even so, Gannett will certainly have to endure more than its fair share of criticism.  After all, we users aren't perfect and Gannett will face a daunting editorial challenge in managing the biases of so many citizen journalists.  (For the record, the Wired story doesn't describe Gannett's strategy as "citizen journalism" – I'm using that label, editorially!)  But in my view, quite a few missteps are to be expected – and tolerated – before Gannett gets the formula just right.   

What's most exciting about this is the potential for Gannett's actions to influence consumer brands and retail businesses to follow a similar path, enabling their consumers to play contributing and editorial roles in how their products and services are concepted, developed, packaged, and delivered to markets.  This is painfully obvious, but media companies like Gannett are the makers and shapers of public opinion, and if Gannett is successful in its transition to an audience-powered media company, there will be major ripples across other industries because of the underlying change in consumer expectations.  Once we, as consumers, begin to see our own contributions delivered locally, nationally, or even globally as "news", we will begin to expect a similar degree of influence over the advertising messages that bombard us and the products that stock store shelves.  As the nation's top-selling newspaper, USA Today is just as well recognized a brand as Nike, Nokia, or Neiman Marcus, but Gannett sees the big picture – that tectonic shift in power from company to consumer that we're always blogging about! – and that big picture is worth taking risks that will likely seem small in hindsight.