Content Merchandising Roundup #65
Below is a summary of the week's most interesting content merchandising-related posts from Content Ping as well as from other blogs and news sites. Enjoy. The Challenge of Aligning Your Product Launch Content Needs Content26 President Mark White lays out the drawbacks of storing content in a non-modular format--and the benefits that come from tagging content. Amazon is the Most-Visited Online Retailer in Europe According to a new comScore report,...read more >>
Businesses Buying Positive Yelp Reviews Get Branded
Yelp slapped a scarlet letter on eight businesses recently--only, in this case, the A stood for Alert. Search Engine Land reports that Yelp's ongoing quest for real, honest reviews has led them to add prominent consumer alerts on offending pages, complete with links to the incriminating correspondence. In response to ongoing criticism of their filtering practices, Yelp has discussed their methods while being necessarily cagey about what will set off...read more >>
Introduction to User-Generated Content
User-generated content (UGC) is pretty self-explanatory: it refers to all content created by a site's users, rather than by marketers, administrators, or other professionals associated with the site. The category encompasses discussions in forums and on social media sites, but I use the term to refer to consumer reviews posted on retail sites, on Amazon, and on Yelp and other rating/review sites. UGC has attained what amounts to celebrity status...read more >>
User-Generated Content’s Role in Merchandising: Part 1
Retailers may not have mastered the art of Facebook selling yet, but social commerce is already here in the form of Amazon's Vine Program, assorted functions like wish lists, recommendations, ratings/reviews, and forums, Epinions, and Buzzillions, which all rely on user-generated content. Consider some early definitions of the term: "Social input in online shopping services [that] augments the experience" (from Steve Rubel) and "Creating places...read more >>
Friendize.Me’s Mark Shteiman: Personalizing User Reviews
Mark Shteiman's inspiration for social reviews came from a speeding ticket. The normally law-abiding citizen found himself calling friends to find a lawyer who could help him get his license back. He realized there must be a way to take this type of friendly advice and put it on the Internet. The result? Friendize.Me, which launched as a social review website in May of 2011. A year later, Friendize.Me developed a tool that allowed online shoppers...read more >>
User-Generated Content’s Role in Merchandising: Part 2
In Part 1 of this article, I talked about the ethics of user-generated content in light of its steadily increasing influence in e-commerce. There are plenty of reasons to seek out authentic reviews other than, well, ethical business practices. Though it comes from consumers, not companies, UGC can be integrated into merchandising both as a complement to brand content and as a tool to inform that content. Product reviews also lend themselves to e-commerce's...read more >>
How Social Reviews Will Change the Retail Landscape
Reviews can play an important role in giving consumers the confidence to buy. They can also be incredibly overwhelming. For example, the reviews on Amazon for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix rival the length of the book itself, but without any of the plot intrigue or fancy writing. No one is going to read all those reviews, damned be any far-buried nuggets of useful information. When you look at why people love reviews, you see that consumers...read more >>
Online Reviews: No Big Deal?
A recent article in the Financial Times delves into the contradictory world of online reviews. In some cases, user reviews have a big impact on purchasing behavior. In other cases, not so much. This is similar to what we found in our series on the effects of user-generated content on e-commerce. The Financial Time's Michael Skapinker took a look at the research on reviews, and found it to be "strangely inconclusive." Skapinker notes that little is...read more >>
Online Retailers Strive to Answer Shoppers’ Questions
Studies show that online shoppers rely heavily on user-generated content when doing product research. But what happens when there are no user reviews for a product? Or when there are hundreds of user reviews, but none of them seem relevant? Or when there are plenty of glowing reviews, but none of them seem trustworthy? That's where TurnTo comes in. Based on the notion that relevant, helpful answers increase conversion rates, TurnTo gets past customers...read more >>
Brands Commissioning Fake Reviews to Look Good on Social Media
A new study by Gartner suggests that brands are increasingly turning to fake feedback to make themselves look good on social media platforms such as Facebook. Purchased reviews and "Likes" will make up 15 percent of total reviews by 2014, according to the report. The report predicts that federal regulators will need to become involved and that major brands will be found guilty of faking reviews. But millions of fake Likes on Facebook won't fool savvy...read more >>