By Richard Anson
E-commerce experts have discovered the power of ratings and reviews and are advancing the art and science of social commerce every day.
We enthusiastically recommend getting out there and picking the virtual brains of these smart people. And we’ve even made it easy for you: aggregating opinion is our thing, so based on the Six Essentials of Social Commerce ebook structure we’ve gathered ideas on key social commerce issues: coverage, depth, speed, leverage, traffic and trust.
These blogs are our favourites and a great starting point for anyone thinking about how to maximize ratings and reviews for social commerce success.
Social Commerce
It’s all about Social Commerce – here are three fantastic ways into the issue.
Brendan Hughes, Where Have All The People Gone with a great Social Commerce summary.
Lee Odden, TopRank on choosing the right Social Commerce tools for you.
Paul Barrera, Social Times on getting your Social Commerce plan together.
Coverage (Getting reviews for all products)
Here are a couple of great blogs that outline the problem caused by passive review software - a problem we think we solve.
Seth Godin's blog explains why review coverage is a problem for some products.
Rishi Rawat, betterretail also believes traditional ratings and reviews techniques struggle for coverage.
Depth (Getting enough reviews on each product)
And there are a couple of tip-top routes to get some more background on the issue.
Peter Leech, socialshoppinglabs.com talks about the power a wealth of reviews brings a retailer.
Chris Lake, Econsultancy introduces us to the power of storytelling that only comes from from deep reviews.
Speed (Getting enough reviews in time)
A crucial issue that many people overlook but not:
Linda Bustos, GetElastic whose ideas on how to gather reviews at double-quick time are a must read. An energetic piece straight out the top drawer.
Reineke Reitsma, Forrester Research points out that people need reviews for reassurance. If you can’t supply it in time, somebody else will.
Leverage (Spreading the word)
A largely overlooked area (although it deserves more attention). How do you get more from your social interactions across the web?
Jeremy Owyang, Web Strategy on how to maximize the Social Commerce debate from your web HQ to wider social spheres.
Ian Lurie, Conversation Marketing amongst other nuggets of ecommerce wisdom talks about the need to bring in ratings and reviews.
Traffic (Attracting the people)
One of the key issues feels like a shift by search engines toward reputation weightings. And who delivers more traffic than these guys.
Bill Slawski, SEO by the Sea certainly thinks search engine reputation scores are around the corner – and he knows a thing or two about it, to say the least.
Elisa Gabbert, WordStream is another wise SEO owl who can see changes to the way reviews impact rankings.
Trust (Getting the truth)
Here’s an area where the debate is very fierce. There are two questions: do users trust reviews and can you trust reviewers?
Mike Moran, Biznology skilfully shows that a review fabricator has no real power to damage your business.
Andy Sernovitz, I Wish I Thought Of That shows what the future holds for anyone fixing the ratings – even those in the “well meaning idiot” camp.
Graeme Foux, Knexus gives you the stats on why you can’t afford to ignore trust building reviews on your web offers.
Chris Goward, WiderFunnel, hits the nail on the head when he talks about how to overcome consumer anxiety with the right methods and tools.
Social Commerce at work
So there you have it.
We hope these views bring the coverage and depth to help you reach a speedy decision on ratings and reviews that you can trust.
If you want to leverage these ideas elsewhere then please feel free – we don’t mind a bit of traffic ourselves.
And – please – feel free to comment or add your own posts on the topic. We’re always keen to learn more.
And don’t forget (if you’ve not done it yet) to read the Six Essentials of Social Commerce ebook and tell us what you think about it.