January 18th, 2007 by Wayne Stribling Former VP of Client Services
Today we announced the upcoming launch of video reviews on the Bazaarvoice platform. This is an exciting new innovation that will propel customer ratings and reviews to a new level even beyond photo reviews, which we also launched recently (I wrote about the impact of photo reviews in November). Everyone has heard of the amazing success of YouTube which became one of the most popular sites on the internet with the advent of user-generated online videos. If you haven’t seen the site yet, you’ve probably seen an email with a YouTube video link. The use of online videos for word of mouth advertising caught fire last year and there is no stopping it now!
We believe that taking that excitement and interest in online videos and applying it in the world of e-commerce for both products and services is the next evolution of online word of mouth. Video reviews by ordinary people putting the products they purchased to use, for example, will most certainly increase brand awareness, influence the purchasing decisions of other shoppers, and drive higher site traffic and sales conversion. This is especially true for products and services that are a natural fit for demonstration or evaluation, such as sporting equipment, home improvement, pet care, apparel, foods, autos, hotels, rental properties, and many others.
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January 17th, 2007 by Brett Hurt Founder and CEO
According to TechCrunch, Blockbuster has been very successful with their "Total Access" offering, which I wrote about in my round two post on Netflix vs. Blockbuster. Apparently they attacked Netflix where it hurts (the immediacy of movie delivery), and it has resulted in Blockbuster growing their online membership by 700,000 over the last two and a half months to a total of 2.2 million. Netflix has 6 million subscribers, by comparison. For the first time since I started writing about this in February of last year, Blockbuster is worth close to the same amount as Netflix ($1.25 billion versus $1.56 billion, respectively). Blockbuster's stock rose from a low of around $3.8/share in late October to today's $6.57/share. I'm not sure if Blockbuster reads this blog or not, but they did something right! They have added $527 million of market value in the last four months while Netflix has basically plateaued in value over the same time period.
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January 15th, 2007 by Michael Osborne Chief Revenue Officer
Since this is my first post to the Bazaarblog I thought I might introduce myself – I’m Michael Osborne, Vice President of Sales at Bazaarvoice. I’ve been here for 6 months now and finally had a break between our great meetings with prospects to write up a quick post on something I’m very passionate about – technology. Consumer electronics and technology in general has been a passion of mine since I was much younger and exposed to the original Apple Macintosh 128k. And a recent announcement reminded me of just how long it has been since 1984.
This past week saw the public announcement of what will be THE device of the year in consumer electronics – the Apple iPhone. Regardless of your views on Apple, the Mac, or the now legally-embroiled Cisco iPhone issue, you will admit that this thing is cool. The blogs that cover this space exploded on Tuesday with the announcement at Macworld by Steve Jobs. The blogs that DON’T cover this space exploded just the same. It seemed that everyone was talking about this 4.5” x 2.4” x 0.46” phone – that doesn’t really exist yet. I found it interesting that no matter how hard people tried, you couldn’t really talk about it for the past 2.5 years – including Apple employees that were working on it.
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January 14th, 2007 by Brett Hurt Founder and CEO
As a BusinessWeek subscriber, I look forward to Saturdays when I get the upcoming week's edition. BusinessWeek is never as "meaty" as my favorite magazine, Wired, but it is a fast read, more focused (all business, all the time), and keeps me informed. In this issue, the January 22, 2007 edition, I noticed a trend that mirrors a topic I have been writing about often – the potential of "green" products (see my Dec. 30th, 2006 post).
First, on page 6 there is a full-page ad from The Home Depot, one of our clients. It is titled "What do you call a year in which you sell 63 million Earth-friendly products? A healthy start". This ad has a corresponding Web presence, but it is a little hard to find and it isn't mentioned in the ad. Unfortunately, you can't yet shop for these "Earth-friendly products" online and searching for "Earth friendly" on their Web site doesn't return any results.
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January 12th, 2007 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer
This week ForeSee Results, a firm that specializes in online satisfaction measurement, released findings from its Online Retail Satisfaction Index study.
Key findings of the study show that consumers desire and remember product reviews, and appreciate having them handy;
- Nearly half (49 percent) of online holiday gift purchasers recall seeing online customer product reviews.
- 39 percent of those who bought from sites with reviews cite the reviews as the primary factor influencing the purchase decision.
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