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Yesterday, I was told my presence is required at a family reunion in June and I should bring a my tent because I'm sleeping outside.  Apart from any initial reactions, I immediately took this opportunity to do what I do best - spend time online to see if my existing gear needs replacing.

When shopping online, I rely heavily on editorial and customer reviews, putting the most weight on customer reviews because they are usually written by people like me - casual shoppers who want to share their experience with a product.  Although an in-store expert opinion can really help influence a purchasing decision, I find customer opinions more valuable for products I am not going to wear.  Reviews provide me with a range of opinions, both positive and negative, that I can use to make my own buying decision.  According to Forrester, MarketingSherpa, Jupiter and others, I am not alone in thinking reviews are a critical part of the purchasing process.

Finding a list of products I'm interested in with quality reviews can be a daunting task, but I remembered reading something on TechCrunch about the customer review site Buzzillions.  This site takes reviews submitted from vendors using PowerReviews and publishes them all together - so if a review was submitted on this site for a North Face VE 25 Tent, it will eventually appear next to other reviews on Buzzillions for the same tent.   Brilliant. 

So I search for 'tent', and up comes a great list of tents that have been reviewed.  Fantastic.  A few reviews even included vendor feedback, which seems like a great opportunity for vendors to respond to customer comments.

Another interesting feature is the opportunity for vendors to link back to their own product page within a review.  The ability to drive traffic back to a vendor site is an interesting twist - the site not only guarantees me a review on any product listed, it also connects me to vendors selling the product.  This provides me with a single place to do initial research prior to visiting my preferred vendors for purchase.  I might also find a few new vendors that I hadn't considered before.

I might lose a whole day on this.

Posted at 09:20 AM in General | Permalink