PowerReviews, a company that provides white-label customer review tools for retailers and brands, is preparing to release a service called BrandConnect.
BrandConnect features two elements: Listener and Megaphone. According to Darby Williams, the vice president of marketing at PowerReviews, "Listener will help brands track and understand what their customers really want out of their products."
Listener
To do so, PowerReviews first asks users to review a product in more detail than they might be accustomed to. According to Williams, the process will first ask consumers what the pros and cons were of a particular product. It then asks them to describe how they use it.
Listener then examines the data gathered from each review and aggregates responses for the client. Williams contends that the tool's statistical data helps deliver actionable content to PowerReviews' clients.
BrandConnect showing reviews in real time.
(Credit: PowerReviews)Williams said in a phone interview on Wednesday that most companies are averse to negative customer reviews. PowerReviews employs a two-level moderation process. It first analyzes reviews containing "at least one word in the comments and three checked tags" to ensure that no profanity or unnecessary content is included in a respective review. From there, reviews are sent to the client, giving them the option of removing negative reviews or allowing them to stay on the site.
Williams told me that PowerReviews encourages its clients to keep negative reviews in place to maintain credibility, but ultimately, that decision rests with those clients.
Megaphone
BrandConnect will also feature a tool called Megaphone. The company's Megaphone feature gives customers the option to syndicate their reviews to Facebook, Twitter, and their blogs.
BrandConnect showing advocates and detractors.
(Credit: PowerReviews)While they're writing a review, consumers are notified by Megaphone that they can share it when it's complete. They can either use Facebook Connect or log in to Twitter to syndicate their review to the respective social networks. A snippet of about two sentences will be displayed on Facebook, followed by a link to the review. That same form will be displayed on the user's blog, if they choose to syndicate it there. A message will populate Twitter's input box, giving users the option to introduce their review to followers.
PowerReviews said it believes that it's that social element that could significantly improve its clients' ability to drive traffic to their sites. The company makes BrandConnect available to retailers and brands on Tuesday.
Updated at 12:01 p.m. PDT on September 21 to include information on positive reviews.
Dropio has launched a new applet called Playlistio that allows users to post music to the cloud in just three clicks. According to the company, users can find the file, upload it to the cloud, and stream it anywhere they can find a Web hookup and connect to Dropio. And with the help of the company's new Apple App store application, Droppler, users can even stream their Playlistio songs through their iPhone. The free applet is available now.
Google announced Tuesday that it has launched a new skills qualification program. Dubbed Google Analytics Individual Qualification, the new feature will allow users to demonstrate proficiency in Google Analytics.
According to the company, it will provide a free online course that covers Web analytics techniques, as well as Google Analytics implementation and administration. The company hopes that businesses will require their IT professionals to take the course and become more skilled in Web analytics. And in the process, Google is hoping that its qualification will join a laundry list of others that IT professionals are encouraged to have.
Shoeboxed, an online receipt depository, has partnered with FreshBooks that will allow users to export their receipts directly to the online invoicing company. Any Shoeboxed customer can have their receipts scanned into the service and export them to FreshBooks. No fee will be charged, but to use the new Shoeboxed feature, users will need to register for both sites.
Online customer review site PowerReviews announced Monday that it has moved from a subsidized pricing model to a paid subscription model with monthly subscription fees. The company also announced that it has launched a new service called AnswerBox, which is a question and answer tool that allows knowledgeable customers and staff to address questions posed by shoppers. The new tool and revenue model, which was designed to help it survive the economic downturn, are live now on the company's site.
In other PowerReviews news, the company has also announced that it's working with eBay's ProStores, a customizable online store service, to provide access to its customer ratings for ProStores' merchants. The service will be available for free for 30 days and after that period, the customer will be given a limited-time 15 percent discount off the standard $80 per month charge.
This story has been corrected from the original, which stated that PowerReviews Express collects reviews from other sites that use PowerReviews on behalf of its customers. It does not.
PowerReviews user reviews show up on popular sites like ToysRUs.com
Citing research showing that customers are more likely to buy items online after they've read a few user reviews, both PowerReviews and BaazarVoice are expanding their services that collect and distribute user reviews.
PowerReviews, which I've covered favorably in the past, is taking its user reviews service and making it available to smaller retailers. As before, the company makes a module that retailers can plug into their stores to collect reviews from buyers. Unlike the big-site version of PowerReviews, which collects all PowerReviews user reviews on a product from all the sites that use the service, PowerReviews Express sites only display reviews left by the site's own users.
PowerReviews also runs an aggregation site Buzzillions where users can see all reviews left by users of the service.
The new Express program goes live on November 26 at $80 a month (for the smallest retailer).
Meanwhile, BazaarVoice is launching a program, BrandVoice, in which manufacturers can collect user reviews on their sites and then syndicate those reviews out to their retailers. This service, like PowerReviews', increases the number of user reviews that a potential customer sees on a retailer's site.
BazaarVoice has its marquee clients, too, such as BestBuy.com
The issue with both services, though, is trust. Since the user reviews a browser reads can now be coming from anywhere, how does a customer know that the reviews are honest?
PowerReviews has a "Verified Buyer" program that guarantees that reviews come from actual purchasers of a product. BazaarVoice lets reader flag fishy reviews, and employs a team of moderators and automated procedures to ensure that inflammatory of off-topic reviews don't get posted for a product, but a fake review could, theoretically, be posted. BazaarVoice CMO Sam Decker told me that they could link the ability to write a review into a site's login system, but that "70 percent of reviews come from people who've bought offline," and neither he nor his company's customers want to shut the door on valuable feedback from users who just don't happen to buy the products on the Web.
The companies have different business models: PowerReviews' Buzzillions site can be seen as competitive to the site where the reviews come from; BazaarVoice serves only manufacturers and retailers. But both companies are engaging in a very interesting new trend: they're amplifying the consciousness of the consumer by spreading reviews around.
When we last checked in with PowerReviews, the company that powers user review feedback for online retailers, the team had just launched a user-facing site to aggregate reviews from its clients. I liked it, although I had some criticisms. This week, PowerReviews launched a new site, Buzzillions, which addresses some of the early site's issues and adds a few more features. (It's too bad the name sucks, though.)
The new site does a much better job of clumping products together. You're less likely to find 15 different listings for the same camera now (one for each store that carries it). Now they're listed together, and you can compare feedback from people who bought the product at different places.
Buzzillions also offers a few ways to find a product beyond searching by prices and brands. In some categories, you can select products based on personal attributes. For example, you can find cameras suited to people getting started in digital photography, or that are good for travel, or both. These criteria are based on what people have tagged the item for when they wrote their review. You can also search for more free-form tags. For example, in the furniture category, "comfortable" is an option.
Buzzillions lets you find products based on consumer-tagged attributes.
(Credit: CNET Networks)It's a more contemporary, Web 2.0-ish experience than what many shopping sites offer, although there are some archaic user-interface elements still on the site. For example, when selecting a price range, you can't choose your own range, like "$200 to $225." Instead, you have to choose from one of a few predefined ranges, which can be a drag if your intended range spans two of the Buzzillions ranges.
But all the other features from the last PowerReviews consumer site are there, such as the useful Brand Compare feature.
I like Buzzillions not just because it's got a nice product finder interface on top of a rich mine of data, but because the way the company got its data is so clever (see that previous review for more). We're seeing a lot of very creative apps these days, but few truly innovative businesses. Buzzillions is both.
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