Archive for the ‘Ask & Answer’ Category

Ask & Answer, Bazaarvoice Stories, Ratings & Reviews

Brittany Blackmon Deck the Halls with user-generated content

December 16th, 2009 by Brittany Blackmon Client Success Analyst

With the holidays being one of the biggest seasons for most e-commerce sites, we see a large number of creative and whimsical campaigns from our clients during November and December. And since we know that 43.7% of purchases are affected by word of mouth (BIGresearch, December 2009), it makes sense that companies would want to leverage the customer voice in their holiday promotions.  I’ve rounded up a few favorites.

Emotional stories help shoppers find heart-felt gifts

The holidays evoke all kinds of emotions, and retailers capture this with Stories campaigns. Beauty products brand Thymes asks consumers to “Share Your Holiday Tradition,” and Burt’s Bees asks shoppers, “Who Is Your Reason for Giving?” Each brand offers a chance to win a prize while honoring something or someone special for the season.   Philosophy links the holiday spirit directly with e-commerce by asking customers to ”Share your Holiday Magical Moment” and including a link to their favorite philosophy products. When a shopper reads a story they connect with, they can immediately link to the writer’s favorite products and buy them.

philosophy Stories with Social Recommendations

Urban Outfitters helps shoppers find the perfect gift

Urban Outfitters came up with the perfect way to solve any holiday gifting woe by launching Ask & Answer Holiday Edition to help UO fans give gift givers ideas for their favorite people. Customers can also link directly to the product they suggest, driving shoppers directly to purchase pages. My favorite question on the site was posted by a mom who  asked “What should I get for my 14 year old daughter?” adding that “she  likes to be a trend setter, she’s always trying something new, and our sense of style really differs.” The answers submitted are sincere, varied, and fall into many different price categories – giving the mom a plethora of choices.

Customer feedback helps givers uncover gift options

Ice.com Top Rated CategoriesCustomer reviews definitely help gift shoppers. Home décor retailer Wrapables helped its customers with a holiday-themed email featuring top-rated gifts, along with discounts on these customer faves.  Urban Retreat’s online luxury hair and beauty store, Beautique.com, sent an email focusing on products that make a woman look great in her little black dress, which included top-rated products to show shoppers which products women love best.  Ice.com has a whole category dedicated to top-rated gifts for him, her, and the top-rated overall gifts. Segmenting top-rated lists adds an even richer experience for the consumer –  if Ice.com had only featured a top-rated gift guide, none of the men’s products would be featured!

These are just a few examples from hundreds of clients; we’d love to hear how user-generated content has helped you find the perfect gifts this season! And if you’d like to see more holiday promotional ideas, click here.

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Ask & Answer, User-Generated Content, Word of Mouth, eCommerce

Sam Decker Holiday shoppers relying on word of mouth more than ever

December 10th, 2009 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer

Thanksgiving Week 2009 was a record-breaker for Bazaarvoice clients. Collectively, shoppers consumed more than 1.9 billion pieces of user-generated content across hundreds of client sites, up 58% over 2008. And they read much more than just reviews. Use of consumer questions during this time was up 122% over 2008 numbers, and use of consumer answers increased 124%.

While research such as the recent Shop.org/BIGresearch study continue to show that customer reviews are consistently among the most important features on retail sites for consumers, brands that have added community Q&A and shared stories campaigns have seen that this content is increasingly impacting site traffic and sales.

The spike represents a continuing fundamental shift in the way consumers do research and make purchases. UGC usage peaked at 11pm on Thursday night, as users researched Black Friday deals online. And our network saw a 61% increase in UGC served on Cyber Monday than the previous year, serving 28,000 pieces of content per second during peak usage.

Our data matches the findings of a recent comScore study, which found that 28% of shoppers who have started buying holiday gifts were influenced by social media. Of these, 13% were influenced by a customer review, and 9% were influenced by a connection’s shared opinion on Facebook or Twitter.

Social commerce is changing shopping on a deep level, bringing interaction between customers into the purchase path to help shoppers and drive sales. Expect this trend to continue throughout this holiday season and into the new year.

Ask & Answer

Mike Svatek Announcing BrandAnswers! New Channel Marketing Tool Enables Brands to Answer Questions Inside Retail Sites

November 2nd, 2009 by Mike Svatek Chief Product Officer

Today we launched BrandAnswers, which notifies manufacturers when shoppers have questions about their products across our network of retailers. With BrandAnswers, manufacturers have a whole new way to impact sales across the channel. Watch a quick video about BrandAnswers here.

We’ve seen that answers to customer questions on a site can drive sales – PETCO’s Answer Den case study showed a 72% increase in conversion. JC Whitney saw that answers decreased product returns on 80% of products with answers had a lower product return rate, with an average 23% decrease in return rates for these products. And Canadian Tire found that questions with more than three answers eliminated up to 81% of their pre-sales calls taken by the customer service department, greatly reducing those costs.

BrandAnswers notifies participating manufacturers when a shopper has a question about one of their products across all retail sites that use Bazaarvoice Ask & Answer. The manufacturer answers the question and it’s immediately posted to the retailer’s site. Manufacturer answers are badged with the brand’s logo, giving the brand even more visibility on the retailer site, and showing that the manufacturer is listening and responding to shopper queries.

Samsung sees the power of answers

SamsungJust over three months ago, Samsung launched BrandAnswers and we ran analytics to see the impact their answers have on sales on a major retailer site. We looked at TVs that are comparatively rated, have similar traffic, and are in the same price range. We split these televisions into two groups: those with high BrandAnswers engagement (an average of 15 Samsung answers per product), and those with low BrandAnswers engagement (an average of four Samsung answers per product). Here are the trends we saw over three months:

Samsung answers correlate with a 96% increase in product views, suggesting that Samsung’s involvement fostered an increase in interest for these products.

When Samsung answers questions, the number of questions doubles, suggesting that Samsung’s brand engagement influenced an increase in their community’s engagement.

Samsung fills information gaps while learning what’s important to shoppers. BrandAnswers helped Samsung address online knowledge gaps – 91% of the content Samsung provided in their answers was not already on the site. The most repeated question was, “Can I hang this TV on the wall?” From Samsung’s perspective, the answer may be obvious; however, shoppers are telling them that it’s not clear. Filling these information gaps can help turn shoppers into buyers.

Each answer creates a “ripple effect” of value. Unlike one-to-one communication vehicles, such as a customer email or phone call, answers provided online help the overall community. When a shopper asks a question, it’s safe to assume that others have the same question. Additionally, having these answers within the purchase path helps drive sales conversion, so just one answer from Samsung can help drive incremental sales beyond the one person who asked the question.

Now Samsung – and other forward-thinking manufacturers – can easily help inform consumers, increase awareness of their products, and help drive channel sales. BrandAnswers requires just one sign-in to see questions across multiple retail sites, can notify product experts via email, and can let manufacturers publish answers instantly.

The best part? Manufacturers finally have first-hand insights into how consumers consider and buy their products. This perspective will help them create even better marketing campaigns and product information, and help them gain a major leg up on competitors. Look for more interesting BrandAnswers stories to come from major manufacturers.

Oh…and the other best part…for retailers. The content is FREE to retailers, and requires no impact to IT if they are a Bazaarvoice Ask & Answer client!

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Ask & Answer, Ratings & Reviews

Sam Decker Music artists and fans connect at LiveNation.com

October 29th, 2009 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer

Live NationLive Nation, the world’s largest live music company, has announced major upgrades to its open platform on LiveNation.com. Using the Bazaarvoice Interaction Suite, Live Nation has opened the communication channel for music fans everywhere at LiveNation.com.

Already a top-fifty ranked ecommerce site and top-five online music network, Live Nation’s use of UGC aims to make the site the go-to place for interaction between music fans and artists. Much of the site’s content is now at the control of the artists and fans who use it.

The updates include a healthy dose of UGC, with concert- and artist-specific wikis, Ratings & Reviews, fan-moderated Ask & Answer, and integrated Twitter streams. Live Nation has also taken advantage of Facebook Connect integration, enabling fans to share and discover concert information through the social network, and discover which Facebook friends are going to a show.

Ask & Answer, Ratings & Reviews

Heather Brunner Reduced resources don’t mean reduced customer satisfaction!

September 14th, 2009 by Heather Brunner Chief Operations Officer

This post is guest written by Vaughan Heilman, Training Team Lead at Bazaarvoice.

Earlier this month, Bazaarvoice introduced the first of a series of “Take Action” webinars designed to provide our clients with social commerce strategies around their user-generated content. It’s essential for companies to have a clear strategy around their social commerce to maximize their online communities.

Our first webinar focused on how companies can deal with reducing overhead without hurting the customer experience. Here are some examples of how UCG can improve customer satisfaction.

First, we recommend looking at critical or negative product Ratings & Reviews. By targeting specific complaints around products through reviews, brands can take action to correct these issues – and even notify customers about the improvement in line with the negative reviews. The public resolution shows you’re listening, and reduces customer contacts about the concern.

Ask & Answer has also been proven to reduce customer care costs. When customers ask questions on a company’s website, these are visible to the entire online community, so the answer helps educate all potential customers – as opposed to a one-time interaction between a customer and a service agent. And providing answers around difficult or technical questions publicly can reduce the number of tech support contacts as a whole. In one case study, a client reduced their support contacts by over 80% on products with three or more answers posted. The graph below shows the relationship between the number of answers verses customer service contacts for certain products.

Client reduces support costs by 81% with Ask & AnswerYou should also mine rejected reviews to uncover customer service issues. Bazaarvoice provides tools to assist in analyzing and responding to customer complaints that are not appropriate for the public brand site. These reviews can target specific problems with processes or products that a company can take action on, and formerly disgruntled customers can become brand advocates when their needs are addressed directly.

Our Take Action webinar series will tackle a variety of ways UGC can help solve business problems, drive sales, and reduce costs. Look for future blogs recapping these informative sessions, created especially for Bazaarvoice clients. They’re just one more way we help our 575+ global clients maximize their UGC investment.

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Ask & Answer, Bazaarvoice Stories, Customer Centricity, Ratings & Reviews

Sam Decker The customer voice helps Norwegian Cruise Line delight travelers

August 19th, 2009 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer

Norwegian Cruise Line launches Bazaarvoice Social Commerce SuiteAs part of its initiative to become a one-stop shop for booking a cruise and learning about the Freestyle Cruising® experience, Norwegian Cruise Line has launched the Bazaarvoice social commerce suite with Ratings & Reviews, Ask & Answer, and Stories.

Enhancing the cruise experience

Experiences can differ vastly from cruise to cruise. Different vendors service Norwegian’s many cruises, and the cruise line previously had limited control over the different experience each vendor provides.

The UGC at NCL.com/FreestyleVoices uncovers which cruises are best and which can be improved. Empowered with the customer voice, Norwegian will be able to provide specific, actionable content to these vendors to make their excursions even better.

Improving communication of the offering

After launching A&A, Norwegian found there was pent-up interest among shoppers to ask other travelers what the cruise experience was like.  Based on what customers are asking and the way other customers are answering, Norwegian can identify gaps in their marketing copy. They’ll be able to modify the way they talk about the trips and the information they include in their descriptions, to help customers find all of the information they need to make a confident purchase.

Finding the right cruise for the right customer

Some of Norwegian’s excursions can be highly specialized, meeting the needs of very specific interests of their customers.  For example, they offer highly active biking or hiking tours that appeal to  experienced and athletic travelers.  When customers don’t fully read the corporate marketing copy for a trip – as is very often the case – they can end up on a trip that isn’t right for them.

Enabling past travelers to tell potential customers exactly what the trip entails, in their own words, helps customers find the trip that meets all their expectations. From a customer service standpoint, UGC will help Norwegian connect customers with the trips most likely to delight them.

Read more about Norwegian Cruise Line’s launch of Bazaarvoice solutions in our accompanying press release. You can also read what Norwegian Cruise Line has to say about adding Bazaarvoice solutions to their site in their own press release.

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Ask & Answer, Bazaarvoice Stories, Ratings & Reviews, Word of Mouth

Sam Decker Facebook expands its reach, makes friends even more powerful

August 17th, 2009 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer

Become our fan on FacebookWith Facebook’s recent search functionality improvement, it’s working to become more like Twitter. With the changes, Facebook hopes you’ll find information on important topics that your friends – and everyone else – are commenting on.

And Facebook’s acquisition of FriendFeed, an online tool that helps users share information with their friends, further underscores the power of friends and other “people like me.”

Bottom line? If you’re on Facebook, you likely care most about what your friends – and perhaps their friends – think. There’s a reason you’re on Facebook, to share information with the important people in your life.

The power of these people is one of the main reasons we created Social Network Accelerators. When you’re shopping – whether you’re looking for a TV, a new insurance policy, or your next vacation – you automatically ask the people you know best. Social Network Accelerators feed into this by integrating with Facebook. When you go to your favorite retailer’s site to browse, you can see reviews from your friends, and even ask them questions from the site.

With our Facebook Connect application, customers can now shop online with their smartest friends in tow, seeing the products they recommend (or don’t), stories, and questions they have asked or answered.

For years, Facebook users have been able to share their published product reviews with their Facebook friends through applications like ShoutIt!, so their friends can see products they prefer. Bazaarvoice’s Facebook Connect solution takes this a step further, showing friends’ preferences while a shopper searches for a specific product – and guidance on what to buy – online.

This is just one phase of the new Social Network Accelerators we’re developing, part of helping our clients gain value from all their social assets. As discussed in our blog introducing Social Network Accelerators, our Facebook Connect application helps distribute user-generated content among a user’s friends, lets profiles drive which content a Facebook user sees at a retailer site, and lets Facebook users participate on retailer sites when retailers enable users to submit stories, answers, and reviews directly through Facebook.

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Ask & Answer, Bazaarvoice Stories, Ratings & Reviews, eCommerce

Mike Svatek Introducing Social Network Accelerators from Bazaarvoice

August 10th, 2009 by Mike Svatek Chief Product Officer

Follow us on TwitterTwitter and Facebook get all the headlines and are clearly great ways to connect, but how do they drive real results for business? At Bazaarvoice, we’re all about results, so we’re creating real ways for companies to use social networks to fuel social commerce.

Our new Social Network Accelerator program, announced today, gives brands a blueprint for plugging into social networks in the right way to drive sales. It all starts with engaging users through social commerce applications such as Ratings & Reviews, Ask & Answer, and Stories – and gives brands an integrated strategy to tap into social networks for better distribution, profile information and participation.

Become our fan on FacebookDistribution: With Facebook Connect, for example, customers can automatically publish reviews, answers and stories directly to Facebook to share their opinions with their network of friends. Unlike other solutions on the market, we give our customers control of the message. They decide when and if the content should post to social networks, ensuring the content is moderated and safe for the brand.

Profiles: Clients that integrate with Facebook Connect can let their customers automatically see opinions of their Facebook friends, and find out what products they liked best. This will help drive sales and increase engagement with the site.

Participation: There’s also an opportunity for customers to submit reviews, answers, and stories via Twitter or Facebook and automatically funnel back to a site, directly to the product and category pages, where they can directly influence sales, increase search, and more.

In addition to the superior technology of our Accelerator program, we’ll also provide recommendations and best practices through our Community Managers. As part of a broader ecosystem, we recognize that our Radius partners will also play a key role in maximizing Social Network Accelerator results for our clients.

This all adds up to help companies broaden their reach, increase engagement with customers, and increase their intelligence about their customers as a whole. And – finally – companies can use Facebook and Twitter to drive real, measurable results. These are just a few ways we’re innovating to drive value throughout all of social.

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Ask & Answer, Ratings & Reviews

Sam Decker Danskin switches to Bazaarvoice Social Commerce Suite

July 22nd, 2009 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer

DanskinWe’re excited to welcome Danskin.com, a world leader in women’s active apparel, to Bazaarvoice. Danskin has added Ratings & Reviews and Ask & Answer to their site, allowing customers to access the authentic opinions of other shoppers like them as they shop Danskin apparel.

Danskin.com had previously deployed a free hosted product review technology. So why the switch? Danskin found that they needed a broader platform of services, products, and reporting to effectively harvest and analyze their UGC – information they’ll use to guide their advertising and marketing initiatives, as well as their product development teams. We’ve seen UGC drive value across entire organizations. Is your brand using your customers’ voices to improve your entire business?

The decision comes on the heels of a recent Nielsen report that 70% of people online trust recommendations from unknown users. Danskin is taking their trust building a step further, following our best practices for badging users. Badges like “Staff Answer” and “Expert Answer” highlight Danskin employees, so users can distinguish between Danskin pros and other customers. Danskin is also recognizing high-volume participants as “Top Contributors,” a practice we’ve seen work wonders for clients like Urban Outfitters.

Read more on Danskin’s decision to switch – and statements from their Director of e-Commerce Marketing, Jessica Koster – in our accompanying press release.

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Ask & Answer, eCommerce

Chad Bockius Help holiday shoppers find the info they need

July 8th, 2009 by Chad Bockius Former Director of Product Marketing

The holiday season is approaching, is your business ready?It’s a fact: shoppers who can’t find the information they need will leave your site and buy elsewhere.  In the past year, we’ve seen a 2.5x surge in the number of questions and answers served through Bazaarvoice Ask & Answer clients during the holiday season – and 40,000 questions were served up in December 2008 alone. What’s more, from December 2008 to December 2009, we will double the number of retailers and manufacturers that let consumers ask and answer questions on their sites.

Is your website “stocked” with plenty of information for the holidays?

Sure, you can plan now to buy massive quantities of merchandise for the holiday shopping season, but have you thought about how to beef up your site with the right answers for holiday shoppers? You can add in-store sales associates as the holidays get closer, but they can’t have all the answers, at any time, for every customer.

And while you may have a stellar customer support line, you want those folks helping customers place orders – not answering product questions. With Ask & Answer, customers ask their question once, then you and/or the community answers it. The answers remain directly in the purchase path, where others can use this information to make purchasing decisions quickly. Customer service actually improves while the overall cost dramatically decreases. Retailer Canadian Tire decreased its support costs by up to 81% with Ask & Answer.

Manufacturers should get involved, too

According to research from Channel Intelligence and Forrester, 58% of online researchers start at the manufacturer’s site – more than any other source. And research across our client base has shown that questions about products answered by manufacturers are more helpful than any other type of answers, so it’s important for manufacturers to be proactive in answering customers’ questions. Bazaarvoice enables manufacturers to answer questions both on their own sites and on top retailer sites.

Add more answers in time for the holidays

We can help you get Ask & Answer up and running on your site quickly, and your Community Manager can help you maximize consumer, manufacturer, and your own staff’s involvement to increase sales (up to 22% for one retailer), reduce returns (a 23% decrease for JCWhitney), and give your customers a great shopping experience this holiday season.

The holiday shopping season could be make-or-break this year, and it’s coming up fast. User-generated content like customer reviews and community Q&A can help make your brand the preferred source for holiday research and shopping. Stay tuned to this blog for ideas about how to get customers engaged, and read our other holiday-ready blog: “It’s 100 degrees. Are you ready for Christmas?”

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