DISQUS

mleis · 6 months ago

You're bringing up a lot of interesting points here, Dirk (as usual).

First is basic testing of *any* kind. I'm still surprised at how many brands simply don't test. At all. I just got a survey asking for my responses in an email! Then there are others who jump into multivariate testing so deeply, they lose the forest for the trees, only ever trying to beat the control and never moving towards any kind of qualitative experiment radically different from the control.

To add to your point on which source is most influential to customers may not be in the community itself, but in what you end up presenting in the context of the brand site experience.

For example, your target audience may not be on Twitter, but the way Twitter juxtaposes images of faces along with short text may work to the brand's advantage on the home site -- the effect of having those small facial images and bites of text are valuable even if the brand isn't a part of the conversation, so to speak.

If a brand's time spent per page is low, and the audience shows a clear predisposition towards visuals, then YouTube embeds may make more sense -- though as you posted earlier, video is always a good bet to demonstrate and persuade.

All good food for thought -- thanks again for posting :)

Eric Hansen · 6 months ago

Dirk,

nice post and great thought-provoking questions raised.

I think just having user-generated content (i.e., ratings and reviews) adds vaule to the user experience, and contributes to the trust that users build for your website... particularly e-commerce sites. Whatever helps users make confident decisions and expediently get to the "finish line" (conversion) in the checkout funnel has to be a good thing, right? :)

We've done a bunch of testing at SiteSpect around "with vs. without" of various 3rd party rating and review services on retail sites. The 3rd party tools (e.g., PowerReviews, Bazaarvoice, etc.) are usually JavaScript based so it's pretty easy to run an experiment which simply inserts the code in a controlled way - some users get the feature, others don't - and then measure how the additional of thefeatures causes users to behave.

Most of what we've found indicates what I stated above -- that by being helpful to the end user and making it easier for them to accomplish their task at hand (researching/comparing products), everyone wins. The customer makes a more informed decision and the site owner / web marketer gets a conversion.

Of course your mileage may vary based on the products/services you sell, and the willingness of your audience to contribute content around rating and reviewing their purchases. As you and Michael (commenter) already asserted, testing is the best way to determine what is optimal for each specific site and its audience.

Keep us the good work!

best,
Eric

http://twitter.com/ericjhansen

dirkmshaw · 6 months ago

Hey Eric,

Thanks for commenting. You shared exactly what i was hoping to get,glad to see there are some stories to share on this topic. I think you nailed it when you said "Whatever helps users make confident decisions and expediently get to the "finish line" (conversion) in the checkout funnel has to be a good thing, right? :)"

Thanks again,,

dirk