When I joined Bazaarvoice to manage our Ratings & Reviews product, what attracted me most was the fascinating psychology behind site visitors who choose to leave reviews on products they’ve purchased.  In the time I’ve been at the company, we’ve grown to help over 160 clients, and I’ve had the opportunity to speak with many of them about what makes their businesses and their customers unique.  While every client has their own flavor, one amazing commonality was the genuine desire of their customers to help each other find their perfect product.

Some reviewers have gone to great lengths to attach dozens of photos and videos to their product reviews to help their fellow shoppers (admire the dedication of Jewelry Television’s #1 reviewer).  In some reviews, like the first review of this product on QVC.com, you can almost hear the desire to impart words of wisdom from her purchase.  This past summer, we launched Ask & Answer™ to let customers ask their product questions to the world and to let those same reviewers continue to share their knowledge by providing answers.

After analyzing thousands of reviews and talking with dozens of clients, it became clear that these customers were dying to share even more of their experience and expertise with the community.  Product reviews and Ask & Answer gave them a great opportunity to share their opinions on the products they’d purchased, but what about the story behind the purchase?  Why did she get that small business loan?  What happened after he bought that engagement ring?  We knew that they wanted to share more…and that other customers wanted to hear what they had to say.

Accordingly, I’m excited to announce the launch of Bazaarvoice Stories.  This product is designed to let customers share the story that made their experience unique:  getting engaged to her fiancé, taking that trip to Peru, opening his restaurant.  Our clients have proven that Ratings & Reviews are invaluable in helping customers find the right product on your site (read their case studies).  Stories puts the spotlight on the people behind the reviews and lets them share what happened before and after their product arrived.  If you have a website where there’s a story with every conversion, Bazaarvoice Stories may be for you

Of course, Stories offers all of the key elements that we’ve focused on since our inception:  multiple levels of human moderation by trained Bazaarvoice moderators; flexible implementation options (you can host it or we can host it); rapid product innovation (a new product release every 6 weeks); and superior, robust analytics.

See it here on David's Bridal. We will have several clients launching Bazaarvoice Stories in the next month, so stay tuned!

We started answering that question today with the launch of our newest feature, called ShareThis(tm). It is a FREE feature for our clients allowing their shoppers and customers to share a review, profile or product to their favorite social networking or bookmarking site. And because we’re already hosted in their site, we can turn this live within days without IT involvement.

Dow Jones covered the launch, including commentary from Dell. Here’s a snippet from the article:

The feature enables a person who is, say, excited about the Dell monitor he just bought to share the news by posting on his Facebook profile a link to a review that he or someone else wrote. The post, which can also include an image of the monitor or the Dell logo and brief comment from him, will show up on his profile mini feed and in the news feed his Facebook friends see. Bazaarvoice says no money will change hands; shoppers won't be paid for posting reviews and Facebook won't get fees.

"It's making (consumers) an advocate" for brands on sites where the audiences are highly desirable to marketers, yet tend to be skeptical of online marketing, says Greg Sterling, of Oakland, Calif., consulting firm Sterling Market Intelligence. "It's trying to leverage a more trusted environment" and a form of marketing — word-of-mouth — that is particularly trusted by consumers.

It is also an effort to engage people who online-marketers have come to call "influencers" — people who through their expertise and efforts to share that expertise in online forums have gained outsized influence over other consumers. Sites like Facebook, del.icio.us and Digg are places where these people, and other less-active Web users, love to express themselves and have access to large numbers of other people.

"Now, for the first time ever, whenever (consumers) see a product they like, they can post it as a representation of who they are and what they like," says Sam Decker, chief marketing officer at Bazaarvoice.

I couldn’t have said it better myself!

You can see it live on these sample product pages from Dell, Toshiba and Jewelry Television.

We have future plans for this functionality, plus other ideas on social network integration with user generated content. Drop me a note if you’re interested in discussing them (sam at bazaarvoice.com).

If you’re a client interested in adding this to your site, it just takes a call or email to your Community Manager…otherwise you’ll be hearing from them! Remember, it's free! I mean FREE!