There’s a huge surge in interest in the ecommerce community, for example, in posting customer reviews on web stores. A couple of interesting businesses in particular (ReeVoo and BazaarVoice) are based around this concept, and both seem to be doing quite nicely thank you.

Over at the IMRG, I’ve participated in/listened to some discussions around the issues involved here – and a big initial concern for e-retailers is around the nature of things that people will say. The assumption is that consumers are far more likely to post negative comments than rave about good stuff. Apparently this assumption is false.

And yet, away from the direct retail environment, one of the themes I’ve heard from new (and new-ish) businesses is around the difficulty in getting conversations started at all. It seems that once they’re underway, it’s somewhat easier to keep it going, but seeding the discussion is a tougher proposition.

What does the Sandlines audience think? I’d love to hear back from people about their ideas on this? Or experiences?

Share

A friend of mine recently shared some research she’d found about levels of trust in various media. It deeply re-inforces Sandlines opinions about the shift in the balance of power from marketer to consumer in forming opinions. It makes for interesting reading, I thought. Turns our that our faith in Fleet Street is a little less than we hold in what a complete stranger with no credentials tells us in a blog.

What price your banner ad now?

Now, I’m tempted to give you a PO Box number and asking you to send me money – just in the interests of updating an experiment that was tried in a newspaper in the US last century…(which worked by the way). But maybe that’s where it all started to go wrong for that industry?

Seriously though, it does re-inforce why dedicated review sites and customer reviews on retailers sites do so well…

Share