We’re always excited to see the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide, and the 2009 edition just came out. Not only does it list the top online retailers based on annual online revenue, but it also gives a breakdown of the top eCommerce vendors these top retailers use.

The intent of the vendor ranking is to help retailers make decisions about suppliers. Internet Retailer is a great organization and we’re happy to be listed as one of the top providers of customer reviews; however, we noticed that the numbers can be a bit deceiving. The breakdown cited Bazaarvoice as serving  40 of the Internet Retailer 500. In fact, we are proud that we partner with over 100 of the Internet Retailer 500, making Bazaarvoice #1 for ratings and reviews, not to mention for social commerce solutions.

Why did they cite only 40? In the case of the Internet Retailer Guide, the methodology is for retailers to self report about which eCommerce providers they used. It’s the prerogative of the one person who fills out the survey to choose or know who their provider is for each function of their ecommerce ecosystem. It’s possible larger clients are less inclined to divulge all their providers, or perhaps the person filling out the survey doesn’t know all of their providers. Either way, according to our actual client records, Bazaarvoice was vastly underreported in this year’s Guide. We noticed other large eCommerce providers, such as IBM and ATG, were also underrepresented in the survey.

You could also look at market leadership in terms of size of clients or business size. In the Internet Retailer Guide, no additional weight was given to the largest retailers – the #1 retailer is ranked the same as #500. While smaller retailers may serve niche markets, the huge mass retailers amass tons of internal knowledge and expertise to become the largest in the United States, and more of the larger retailers choose Bazaarvoice. Among the Top 50 retailers, Bazaarvoice outranks the closest competition by a ratio of nearly 7:1 with clients like Best Buy, Dell, QVC, Macy’s, Costco, Overstock.com, and more. And in the Top 100, we outserve our nearest competitor by a ratio of 4:1.  See our partial client list here (not all clients give permission to display their logos).
When you factor in retailers who don’t have reviews or host them in-house, Bazaarvoice’s leadership is even more pronounced, with more than 80% of the Top 100 retailers choosing Bazaarvoice. And we are just talking about our Ratings & Reviews product, not to mention our other social commerce solutions, such as Ask & Answer and Stories.

This is an important point because as a hosted provider, part of our value to each client is learning from the whole. We help shape and share best practices from innovative, smaller clients (such as Vintage Tub and Bath or Fair Indigo) to large multi-channel retailers, such as Best Buy, Dell, and Costco. We truly believe we are inventing the future with our clients, and with a cross-vertical client list across small and large clients, we are able to innovate products rapidly (every seven weeks) and share best practices that help all clients grow ROI from social commerce.

Today over 525 brands, including over 100 of the Internet Retailer 500, turn to Bazaarvoice because we are the leader in ratings and reviews…and moreover the leader in social commerce.  We’d rather not beat our chest about these things, but we are proud of the company we keep, proud of what we’ve accomplished, and believe it’s important that our clients know the facts.