October 18th, 2008 by Brett Hurt Founder and CEO
Things certainly change quickly – in the economy, in technology, and online – and I want to take a moment to fill you in on our outlook.
I’m extremely bullish on Bazaarvoice, as I have been all along. We have always spent judiciously and balanced between high growth and cashflow neutrality, and our current investments have enabled us to rapidly grow our Client Services team to best serve our more than 280 clients globally. We are 375 people strong and will continue to hire engineers to continue our development of ROI-driving products, features, and programs. You won’t find another company that has consistently developed as many new offerings – we have consistently delivered new features every seven weeks across 6 (soon to be 7) products in 20 international languages, and this will not slow down. Our culture is stronger than ever. It is truly humbling (and exciting, every day) to work at such a special place.
In the midst of the global economic uncertainty, I want you to know that we will continue to thrive as a financially viable, rapidly growing organization by staying focused on our most important job: effectively and passionately servicing our clients to deliver measurable results. You will see many companies with unproven business models fold over the next year, as I witnessed happening around us at Coremetrics during 2001-2002. But our business, and our business model, are very solid:
- In our most recent quarter, we saw a 148% increase in signed clients and a 229% increase in revenue, compared to the same quarter a year ago.
- We now serve more than 280 clients globally.
- Currently, 90% of the Internet Retailer Top 50 and 80% of the National Retail Federation’s Top 100 who outsource reviews choose Bazaarvoice.
- We have served over 17 billion product reviews to date, across 20 international languages.
- We were voted one of Austin’s Best Places to Work this year for the second year running.
- This week, we won the 2008 Marketing Excellence Award from ClickZ for our Ask & Answer solution.
To us, user-generated content must deliver a real impact to our clients. Here are some recent benefits they have seen:
Now, more than ever, social commerce can have the greatest impact on the bottom line, including reducing support costs and product returns, and increasing site traffic, conversion, advertising ROI, customer satisfaction, and loyalty. In this economy, consumers will scrutinize their purchases more than ever, driving an increased need for user-generated content. They will reward businesses that help them make more informed and satisfying purchase decisions. Businesses that step up their pace of customer centricity will emerge as even stronger leaders after these challenging times turn.
We will continue to be the leader in social commerce. Our entire company is focused on our clients, and it excites us to see so much innovation and success from the smart people that choose to partner with us. Please let us know how we can help your business.
As always, keep an eye on this blog for more real-world ideas from our clients about how user-generated content works for them. Here are a few of my favorites from just this month:
Net Present Value (NPV) calculations are common in financial circles, but something I discuss with prospects all the time is how investments on their sites and in their customer communities can also follow this concept. The longer you wait, the more you’ll miss out on. Let’s take a look at the time value of reviews…
