Accepting User Comments on Products

Pros and Cons?

[Nick_W]

Hi all,

I've been thinking alot about allowing users of a site to comment on the products. Possible benefits would include:

• Content Creation
  
• The Reccomendation Factor (i always read user comments at amazon, don't you?)
  
• Fresh Effect for Pages

There would also be some clear disadvantages:

• Negative Feedback
  
• Site Maintenance Could Sky Rocket

I think the benefits would outweigh the drawbacks but am keen to get some input ffrom people that have or are doing this...?

Also, do you require users to 'sign up' before making a comment? I think that would have a serious impact on the amount of comments you got as the site is not a 'chat' or 'forum' site...

Thoughts anyone?

Thanks

Nick

[starec]

The pros far outweight the cons.

The main pro is that your users help your other users to choose the right product. They help you to sell, and they do it for free...

I don't understand the "fresh effect" pro, but then, I don't understand the whole freshbot thing...

Negative feedback is not a con at all, it allows you to filter out bad products, and to offer some compensation to dissatisfied clients. These users may be lethal, since they are unhappy AND vocal. It is extremely important handle the negative feedback well.

Manual review before publishing the comments is absolutely necessary to weed out errors, spam and offensive content. Make sure you have capacity to do it. Your observation on signing-in requirement is very correct.

Make clear what type of comments will not be published.

And be prepared: some producers will get in touch with you pretty fast if a negative comment of their product appears:-)

[Nick_W]

Thanks starec,

Do you ask for an email address or do you let them just post but subject to review?

Nick

[chris_f]

Hi Nick,

I would setup the system so that the comment has to be reviewed before it goes live on the site. Definity get them to include an email address. Afterall, you might be able to help them and keep them as a customer. Plus, it's expected.

Chris

[gsx]

Didn't Amazon recently get a patent on this method?

[starec]

Do you ask for an email address or do you let them just post but subject to review?

I do ask for an email address, but it is not a compulsory input.Some clients expect your answer (especially when they didn't like something).

[Jenstar]

I think adding product reviews to a site is smart, especially if it is an area of products where people might not be too familiar with.

Amazon is a perfect example - I buy most of my books there because I can go and read reviews and see if others thought it was a great read or not. I wouldn't buy nearly as many books from Amazon if it wasn't for that feature. There is nothing worse than buying a $40 book only to discover it is virtually useless.

Yes, you definitely want to have some sort of moderation. Making it mandatory to leave an email address can be a good or a bad thing - might prevent hate campaigns and spam, but it might make people leery of leaving truthful reviews if they were disappointed in a product. Perhaps make it mandatory to leave an email address, but that the address will not be published on the site. I would be more likely to write an honest but scathing review if I knew the whole world wouldn't see it was me who thought so ;)

[Marketing Guy]

I think even negative opinions can be good:

>you get a negative comment
>you act on it - make changes to improve your business
>you bring the changes to the attention to the person that made the intial comment, as well as the rest of your users
>you look good for listening to your customers

Sometimes the actions taken after negative feedback can be better than generic good feedback.

Another plus is user feedback and research - if a product is getting bad feedback then ditch it in favour of a better product.

Scott

PS I would quite happily put my name and email address to any scathing comments I made! Required or not! ;)

[tolachi]

I also think that the benefits far outweigh the cons.

My take is that I don't have so many reviews that editing and activating them is a chore. Because we have high customer satisfaction I actually enjoy it quite a bit and it makes for a nice break from programming.

In addition to mentioning what will not be published I would consider offering some advice on how to write the review, stylistically that is.

For example I remind people that personal anecdotes can help illustrate a point they want to make and to remember that readers will not know the product in the detail they do so be specific and illustrative. I only added this recently but preliminarily I have found that it has improved the quality of reviews.

And, the number one reason is... Our customers consistently cite our testimonials and reviews as the top reason they bought from us. Course that might not apply if you don't sell your own brand.

pete

[stickledene]

Yeah I totally agree with all the comments above. Pros far far outweigh the cons and imho the biggest Pro, like marketting_guy said, is from the Cons... As a customer, if I see a retailer acting upon negative feedback I immediately feel more at ease about ordering from this person. Can't be a bad thing!

Regarding e-mails... perhaps have the choice in the form for them to supply the e-mail address and then a further choice if they want you to publish their e-mail address on the site, or just have "e-mail address supplied" instead of their real addy.

Perhaps also have a "total amount of comments from this user" as to add credibility to a certain person's comments. This also helps create return customers!

HTH

Sticky

[Hawkgirl]

I would love to do this on one of my sites ... but it seems like the time involved would be enormous.

The two biggest factors that get in the way for me are:

Startup costs
Seems like you'd have to seed the discussions at first with several "reviews" to get the ball rolling. (As a user, I'm not going to participate in some hinky feedback system unless a lot of people before me have done it and it seems to be very high quality. So as a webmaster, how do I make sure to implement it properly? Is it even a feature my users would want and use?)

Maintenance costs
Depending on the volume, how often would you need to check/read/update/edit? Weekly? Daily? Yow. I suppose the ultimate value of it would drive how much time to put into it ... but that's a chicken-egg problem. You have to put time into it to make it work, but it has to work before you'll let it take valuable time away from other activities.

[pshea]

Everyone's advice here is dead on and great. For my part, I would simply add that how you present your Customer Comments has to be natural to your site and products. You alone know the ebb and flow of your products, site and how your visitors navigate.

When I first added this feature, I was really scared, I felt insecure. But the comments started flowing in and I burst with pride. Now, I've got a link from just about every page and new customers cite the Customer Comments as a factor is deciding to buy.

Go for it!

[bcc1234]

Set up a system that would follow-up on orders (giving enough time for delivery) and then have a link in those follow-up e-mails that would allow to leave a comment.
That way, only you customers will be able to leave comments and only for the stuff they ordered.

No need to collect e-mail addresses, since you'll know them already. Have your software generate a unique link for each customer-order.

That way, instead of reviewing each comment before publishing, you can just set it up to mail you a copy every time someone leave a comment. And if you see something offensive - then just delete it. Otherwise, you are not wasting more time than just reading a short e-mail.

That's what I'm working on now. Just added related products links and the conversion rate increased. This might be another useful feature.