August 17th, 2007 by Wayne Stribling Former VP of Client Services
The following is an interview with Shannon Glass, Director of Internet Operations, for Limited Brands, parent company for Bath & Body Works as well as Victoria's Secret, C.O. Bigelow, Henri Bendel, La Senza, and The White Barn Candle Co.:
Why did you add reviews to the Bath and Body Works web site?
Adding reviews functionality was a great way to connect to our customers, and it’s a perfect medium for customers to give direct feedback on our products. From a business perspective it will help us with merchandising and marketing strategies. We learn what products customers want to see in the store, what we can do to improve products, and how to market them better. We’ve already tested two emails with top rated products which have turned in great results!
Why did you choose Bazaarvoice over GSI Commerce’s standard reviews solution?
There were several reasons.
(more…)
August 11th, 2007 by Sam Decker Chief Marketing Officer
We recently published a joint study with Vizu Research on reviews.
The key finding is that US and UK shoppers have more trust and respect for Brands that enable product reviews. In fact, 8 out of 10 shoppers trust and respect brands more if they have authentic, user generated reviews on their site. So, not only do reviews help improve conversion, average order value, returns, satisfaction, natural search traffic, RSS feed click through, email revenue, and offline impact (ask us for any of these case studies)…they also improve brand perception!
Another finding: US shoppers consider ratings and reviews to be the most useful eCommerce site feature (44 percent). Product comparison (15 percent), product navigation (12 percent), and privacy information (11 percent) followed in the distance. We knew this already from site surveys with PETCO and CompUSA, but it's always helpful to get another data point! We're sort of maniacal about data 
