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A presentation by Kevin Irish, Bob’s Red Mill at Shop.org 2018:

Kevin Irish explains how he developed a marketing strategy of customer-generated content through real accounts of how Bob’s Red Mill changed lives forever. Check out the video below to see what they learned about building an exceptional customer experience and how they more than tripled their customer-generated content in less than a year.

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We’re getting ready to release a new-and-improved platform packed full of fast, fresh features!  Our Version 5 software will be released in the next few weeks. We took feedback from our valued customers on what they want and need in order to gather and display the best customer-generated content.  Our product team has gone beyond finding easy solutions to common concerns and have created a platform that allows customers to re-imagine the future of ratings and reviews software.

We know ease of use for your customer and your team is a top priority when choosing eCommerce software, so our new platform will allow non-developers to create different designs for all of their product categories.  Additionally, customers have full transparency into how their customer content strategy is actually performing by testing alternate layouts.

The drag-and-drop functionality is simple, and our customers will love how fast it functions on their site.

Your customers don’t have time to spare, so neither do you.

We chose the lightest javascript framework to deliver the fastest user experience for our customers.  They pick the exact items they need for their page and we deliver only that code.  This eliminates any and all frustration with slow site performance.  Increasing the speed of performance leads to happier, loyal customers—and more revenue!

“Our previous platform provided the best performance among our peers, but with Version 5, we went even farther by reducing the footprint to a third of the size,” says John Swords, Chief Product Officer.

Stay tuned for more details about our new platform, we’ll be rolling them out soon!

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A spotlight on a great product, Community Q&A.

Community Q&A, which is one of our first products and a TurnTo original uses an ‘active outreach’ model that delivers fast answers to shoppers’ questions from peers and experts.

What is it?

Q&A tends to differ amongst companies, but TurnTo’s Community Q&A keeps in mind our customers’ customer. Which is a mouthful, but let’s go a little further.

Companies have limited space on their product description pages.  And it’s hard to include every piece of vital information.  But if the customer is looking for an answer to something that is not explicit, they should be able to find it.

What better way to secure a sale than to give customers every answer they’re looking for?

Q&A lives on the product description page and operates by using search-friendly content, which populates instant answers to questions as customers start typing them.

An interesting quirk that we’ve found is that customers type in questions as if they’re “googling” something.  The organic or natural searchability is something an SEO team could only ever dream of. Our clients are using these stored questions from their TurnTo platform and repurposing them in their marketing down the road. A true win for everyone!

The library is just one place where answers are pulled from when a customer has a question.  The answers are also taken from the product’s Ratings and Reviews and real customers who have already purchased the item.

If the answer is not found amongst these different sources, then it is either submitted to an “expert” of the company’s choosing or it is emailed to a group of customers who have already purchased the item.  Our software is completely customizable—so if you only want product experts to answer questions from your prospective customers—then the platform can function in a way to do just that.

And if the question is routed to a previous customer, advanced logic ensures the question is sent to the right person.   Through our automated moderation feature, these questions are routed in less than 30 seconds and are approved just as fast.  Typically, customers have an answer within an hour!

Here’s how it works:

Customer user experience is at the heart of our platform. Community Q&A generates a community of “fans,” and they wouldn’t be fans if it wasn’t so simple.  When your customer feels supported in their purchases – they’re more likely to return.

Keep your biggest fans happy!

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Kellen Fitzgerald recently spoke at Salesforce Connections in Chicago about how Tarte Cosmetics used TurnTo to create a community of shoppers—or “tartelettes” as they’re called. These are Tarte cosmetic advocates who are passionate “fans”, but also act as their most powerful acquisition tool. Watch the video below to learn how over 625K orders were influenced by customer-generated content in the past eight months:

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David Blades of Jenson USA makes the case for customer-generated content, and discusses how the TurnTo platform helped them achieve their goals of creating a customer community, increasing time on site, and, ultimately, elevating conversion rates. Hear how Jenson USA increased their review content by 500% and reached their goals in the video below:

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As we are nearing July 3rd, multiple businesses are preparing themselves for the end of access to a syndication network they have relied on for years.

For many – this change means losing access to the network, syndication fees, and diminishing SEO performance site-wide.

We’d like to educate those businesses that will become the casualties of closed syndication networks through case studies that display the effects over the next 3, 6 and 9 months.

We can observe the juxtaposition between open and closed syndication as it effects two large beauty retailers whose merchandise overlaps.  Retailer A will keep their open syndication network while Retailer B will not.

Both retailers sell Waterproof Mascara #62.  Retailer A features Waterproof Mascara #62 with a 5-star rating based on 37 different reviews.  Retailer B features Waterproof Mascara #62 with a 3-star rating and has only received 9 reviews.

Due to Retailer B’s closed network restraints – they’re feeling the decline of ratings and reviews.   The limited number of submissions will also result in an overall lower rating per product.

The number of reviews that a product has on any given site is directly correlated to the likelihood of a customer converting and purchasing that product.    The more reviews, the better the rating, the likelier the customer is to convert or buy. TurnTo has found that even if the product has the same rating on both sites (Retailer A & B) – the customer is more likely to buy from the site that has generated a larger quantity of reviews, in this case, Retailer A.

“When asked, 81% of shoppers would pay more for a product that has ratings and reviews vs. another product that is cheaper or offers a promotion.”

—”Hearing the Voice of the Consumer”, 2017

Unfortunately for Retailer B – this is not an isolated occurrence.  In fact, it will impact their business going forward.  Retailer B will see a decline in overall commerce on their site because customers will flock towards Retailer A as they accumulate a greater number of reviews.  It’s a slippery slope for Retailer B to not amend their closed syndication network.

Wouldn’t you pick the item that has a 5-star rating with more reviews versus a 3-star rating with less?

We want to hear from you – what are your plans for open syndication?

Even though the clock is ticking – you’re not out of time just yet!  Eliminate syndication worry, and increase your number of reviews by exploring TurnTo’s open syndication network that does not stop at innovation…

We just wrapped up a great events season with IRCE and Salesforce Connections in Chicago. We were fortunate to have several partners speaking at the events and we’re happy to share their great presentations with you. The first comes from Ben Johnson of Spy Optic, who speaks about how they used CGC to boost their sales—at an even higher rate than discounts! Check out how in the 10-minute video below.

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We just returned from a great week at Magento Imagine 2018! One of the highlights was hearing Brittany Graham of Tombow share her story on how they leverage customer generated content. We couldn’t be more thrilled about our relationship with Tombow, what a great story!

Check out the video below:

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Last Wednesday, Gene Austin, CEO of Bazaarvoice, published a discussion of the coming end of the Justice Department-mandated syndication relationship between Bazaarvoice and PowerReviews, on July 2, 2018.  As he stated, “Unless something changes, as of July 3^rd, Bazaarvoice will no longer be required to accept content from PowerReviews brands for syndication to retailers in the Bazaarvoice Network.”

What does this mean for brands? Review syndication is about to get a lot more expensive.

Bazaarvoice charges brands to syndicate their product reviews to merchant sites in the Bazaarvoice network, whether the brand uses the Bazaarvoice platform for review collection or a third-party platform.  For the last 2.5 years, PowerReviews brand customers have been able to get around these fees because of the Justice Department decree which gave them very low cost access to the Bazaarvoice syndication network.  Now, PowerReviews brand customers are going to have to start paying the network access fees that Bazaarvoice demands, at best, or will lose access to the Bazaarvoice network entirely, at worst.  And since brands using the Bazaarvoice platform will no longer be able to threaten a switch to PowerReviews to avoid the network access fees, they are likely to see their syndication fees rise, too.

Anticipating this, TurnTo built a partnership with Bazaarvoice based on a realistic view of their business model.  This partnership enables brands to choose the reviews platform that best meets their needs and know they can still access the Bazaarvoice syndication network even if their platform choice is TurnTo.  Our brand customers make their own deal with Bazaarvoice regarding the network access fee, and we work directly with Bazaarvoice to ensure the data transfers run smoothly.  It’s a truism that partnerships only work when everyone wins, and we recognized a year ago that meant letting Bazaarvoice control access to their merchant network.  As a result, as of today, TurnTo is the only 3rd party product reviews platform that can assure brands ongoing access to the Bazaarvoice syndication network.

For merchants, the implications are different.  The consequences are going to be about reach rather than cost.

As the cost to brands to syndicate their reviews goes up, or if cross-platform access between Bazaarvoice and PowerReviews is cut off entirely, the number of brands whose reviews are available for syndication on either platform will go down.  Even if cross-platform syndication remains available, rising network access fees will be bad for the relationships between merchants and their vendors.  After all, why should brands have to pay a “network access fee” to a merchant’s reviews platform at all?  The real estate on the merchant’s product pages belongs to the merchant!  If brands pay anything for syndication, it should be a co-op fee to the merchant, not an access fee to the reviews platform.

With this philosophy in mind, TurnTo has developed a radically different syndication offering for merchants.  It enables merchants to syndicate in product reviews from any brand, regardless of their technology platform.  That includes brands that use reviews platforms other than Bazaarvoice and PowerReviews.  And there are no charges (!) for this service to either the merchant or the brands.  By removing both the cost and the technology limitations to syndication, TurnTo enables merchants to access the largest possible network of brand sources.  In one case, a merchant’s syndication network more than doubled after they switched from the Bazaarvoice/PowerReviews network to TurnTo.  TurnTo’s approach also eliminates any risk to merchants that their syndication network will be compromised in the future by spats between the technology platforms.

Like Gene, I am thrilled with the strength of our syndication offerings as we enter 2018.  For brands, we are the only alternative to the Bazaarvoice platform that can offer access to the full Bazaarvoice syndication network without a cloud of uncertainty.  And for merchants, we offer unrivaled syndication reach and an unrivaled value.  I thank Bazaarvoice for their partnership and look forward to working with them in 2018 as the market returns to a more normal competitive environment.  And I invite brands and merchants that would like to learn more about the syndication alternatives available to them to contact us.

A version of this article was originally published by Total Retail on October 5, 2017.

The Association for Psychological Science recently published an interesting study on consumer shopping behavior, showing that when two comparable products have similar average ratings, shoppers are significantly more likely to choose the product with the larger number of ratings.

This finding won’t surprise e-commerce retailers, but in the psychology world, it’s an illustration of herd mentality leading to irrational decisions. When two comparable items have low ratings, it would be more logical for shoppers to pick the one with FEWER total reviews, as it’s possible that the poor average rating is a fluke — an unrepresentative sample of grumpy reviewers. An item which has a large number of low ratings, on the other hand, is very likely to actually be a dud. Yet even in these cases, where both choices are poorly rated, shoppers prefer the one with the larger number of reviews, because a high review count signals popularity, and people tend to buy what’s perceived as popular.

The e-commerce implications of this study are clear — retailers need to signal to shoppers that the items they sell are popular. Travel sites do this well by showing an indication of the recency and volume of bookings. Take Hotels.com for example:

And here’s another example from Orbitz:

On retail sites, product review volume is among the most powerful ways to signal popularity. While influencing review volume may feel difficult because it seems there are only so many people that want to write product reviews, there are actually many strategies to increase review collection.

For starters, it’s a mistake to think that the number of product reviews that can be collected has a hard limit based on the willingness of customers to write them. It’s more like drilling for oil — some comes out in a gusher, but there’s a lot more in the ground that you can get out by using clever techniques. To illustrate, we recently had a customer begin sending follow-up “please review your purchase” emails a few days after their first request. The retailer expected that the follow-up would get a much lower response rate than the initial email, believing that most customers motivated to write a review would respond to the first request. Surprisingly, the response rate to the follow-up email was 80 percent of that of the initial email — nearly the same. This showed that many of those customers that didn’t respond to the first email had no aversion to writing a review, they just happened to get the request at the wrong moment.

Since many customers ignore a request to write a review for reasons of convenience rather than intent, retailers can increase review collection simply by taking the friction out of the collection process. Strategies aimed at motivating review writing (e.g., incentives) can help, too, but they can also have side effects (e.g., reduced trust). Reducing friction is the low-hanging fruit. Technology that enables customers to write and submit reviews from inside an email rather than requiring a clickthrough to a web form can more than double submission rates. A simple change from a button that says “Click to write a review” to a display of five stars with the message, “Start by rating it” can add 50 percent to the response rate. Allowing users to write reviews before requiring authentication, rather than leading with a log-in demand, can double collection rates.

On mobile devices, allowing photos to be submitted without first requiring the user to author a review can multiply visual content collection up to four times. Asking a user who has just submitted a review to review other items they’ve purchased is five times more likely to produce an additional review than the initial email. It’s common for this “Do More” technique to increase total review volume by 50 percent to 100 percent.

The lessons are clear: Increasing review volume can have a major impact on sales by tapping into the popularity effect, and review volume can reliably be increased with the proper tools and techniques.

I have never been a fan of the Netflix rating system. I’ve found it to be one of the most frustrating elements of my daily Netflix experience. The plan to completely change the rating system for the platform is thrilling, overdue and very much welcomed by this movie fan and consumer content geek.

While much of the news about the change has focused on the switch from a star rating to a thumbs up/down rating, the details are much more interesting.

The star rating system at Netflix has always been confusing and misleading. For example, I may see the BBC docu-series “Planet Earth” in my Netflix menu with a 5-star rating. My sister, who is not a fan of such shows, could see the same title with a 1-star rating.

I may give a movie a 4-star rating but I’m never really told what benefit that has to me. Will the rating shape future recommendations? The answer is yes. Will it impact the movie’s rating? Kinda, but not really (Keep reading!).

Netflix was showing you a star rating of how much they thought you would enjoy a show rather than the more common aggregating and averaging of ratings by fellow viewers. This could often lead to the assumption that I wouldn’t like something based on previous viewing habits when a show, in fact, could be highly-rated by the majority of viewers. The VP of product at Netflix summed this up by saying, “What you do versus what you say you like are different things.”

This tail-chasing dynamic of what marketers think is best vs, what consumers want stunts so many commerce marketing strategies. Is it segmentation and personalization or is it social proof?

To add another layer to the Netflix ratings wreck, there are longer format written reviews on the Netflix website that are not available in most apps and connected TV platforms. That star rating may not match as you move between site, app or device.

Specific to UGC, marketers should focus on providing a platform for customers and shoppers to have a dialog about products, service and brand interactions that can help them to discover new products, answer questions and buy with confidence. The experience should be consistent across devices and channels.

Marketers can help to shape these interactions, but making assumptions, forcing the conversation and/or trying to control the dynamics of consumer interaction can lead to failure and distrust by shoppers and customers.

So, yes, Netflix’s switch from a star rating to a thumbs up/down system is significant, but I look forward to how this move to a binary choice will impact the larger algorithms and how Netflix will feature ratings across their platform.

Hopefully the experience will be more consistent and representative of the ratings given by fellow Netflix viewers while still being peppered with the ever-evolving algorithms that power the Netflix experience.

Whether you are exploring your first user-generated content strategies or looking for ways to expand your current UGC offerings, it can be a challenge to figure out which tools and methodologies are going to connect with your shoppers.

Many marketers may simply add ratings and reviews to product pages and think they have launched enough of a UGC program that will boost sales and engagement. Rarely will that “just flip a switch” strategy be enough to truly impact the customer experience or your bottom line.

Imagine throwing a dinner party where you invite friends, family and co-workers. When the first guests arrive, you run upstairs and hide hoping everyone will get along, converse, find the food and have an enjoyable evening. A few guests will make the most of the situation, but most will probably feel a bit confused and may just leave.

The evening would be much more enjoyable if you are a good host. You must consider how the various groups will interact and foster an environment that will bring everyone together. Guide the conversation. Serve the main course. Delight with a dessert.

Make these same considerations when you are planning your UGC implementations. Your shoppers and customers are showing up to your site, what are you doing to bring them together? Analyze your customer segments to identify behaviors that could encourage content submissions, spark conversations and educate first-time shoppers.

Check out these 3 common customer behaviors and how they can be translated into a powerful UGC strategy.

Mobile Moments

You know your shoppers are using mobile devices to research products and to check the status of their orders. You have probably invested in mobile-friendly product pages and checkout processes. Augment these efforts by including a mobile-optimized UGC submission flow. Give customers the power to take and submit photos on their mobile phones when they are reviewing a product. Ensure that this UGC is easily found on your mobile site and viewable on a variety of devices by shoppers considering their next purchase.

Pride and Projects

Brand advocates are rarely bashful. From unboxings to shopping hauls, completing a project or completely taking a product apart, your most active customers have a lot to say and a lot to show off. Help your most enthusiastic customers to share their stories by prominently featuring customer-created video reviews of your products. Build awareness that videos can be included on your site and then actively share their hard work to spread their message as well as your own!

Continued Conversations

An informed shopper can become a valuable customer. They may just need to have a few questions answered before they can confidently make their first purchase. Think about conversations your customer service reps and store employees have with customers. Identify the topics that happen organically in your product reviews and Q&A sections. Certain products or product categories could benefit from having these themes prominently featured on product pages or in search results. For tough to answer questions or overly complex products, consider developing videos or written guides that can be an additional resource for shoppers. UGC comments and Q&A can supplement and complement these efforts and motivate shoppers to move further along the customer journey toward completing a purchase.

Using existing consumer behaviors to build a UGC strategy can help you to develop meaningful site interactions, motivate shoppers to buy and give customers a reason to come back and share thoughts on purchases. As you plan to add UGC features to your site, think about how you can help to expand on these successes rather than just adding features to your product pages and hoping for the best.

Learn how TurnTo customer Sur La Table identified a UGC collection opportunity on their order confirmation page. Download the “The Power of the Customer Voice” white paper.

The end is near. Not exactly the holly, jolly message you want to hear during the holidays. Whether you’re ready or not, you only have a few days to grab that gift that every marketer wants – record-breaking Q4 revenue!

As your festive promotions approach their final days, you may find your marketing messages getting staler than your Aunt Bertha’s fruitcake. How many times can you effectively promote percent off sales, dollar discounts and free shipping offers?

It may be time to change the conversation you are having with your customers. After all, you don’t want to be that person at the holiday party who keeps repeating the same story.

User-generated content can be an effective tool to re-energize your exhausted shoppers. Inboxes have been overstuffed with emails and sites have been slammed with special seasonal sales. It can all take its toll on consumers.

Shifting the conversation away from what you want to say to what other consumers say about your products can be a refreshing way to fight shopper fatigue. User-generated content can help you to pivot the promotional perspective of your holiday marketing without having to significantly overhaul your existing plans.

TurnTo’s 2016 UGC Holiday Lookbook showcases various ways top retailers featured user-generated content during the peak shopping days of Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday. These UGC strategies can be a source of inspiration as the holidays wrap up.

Here are a few ways to use your existing user-generated content to mix up your final few merry messages.

Get into the Gifting Groove
Your remaining holiday messages will likely feature lifestyle shots of your products being worn or used. Pair these promotional photos with quotes and comments that your customers left as reviews on your product pages. UGC that evokes the senses can be especially impactful during this season of gifting. Remember, many shoppers will be buying for others. Help shoppers who are unfamiliar with your products to buy with confidence by quoting reviews that explain why customers love the product.

This email sent by Garnet Hill contains a quote from a review of a customer who bought the product as a gift. This kind of quote may be more effective than one that focuses on product details that could motivate someone buying for their own use.

Click to view larger image.

Feature the Quality and Quantity of Ratings
Curated collections are perfect for last-minute shoppers looking for those final few gifts. Many retailers will feature shop by price, gifts by recipient (him/her, mom/dad), top sellers, staff picks, etc…

These gift guides will help the shopper to self-select their shopping path and help you to direct them to related products. Boost the power of these promotions by coupling the collections with the ratings for related products.

A simple star rating may be an effective addition to a variety of hand-picked products, though you should consider additional UGC data points that could entice the shopper to click and cart the items.

The numerical value of the star rating, the quantity of reviews and even the number of questions answered or customer photos can offer a more compelling reason for the shopper to explore a collection.

Athleta added the star rating, numerical rating and the number of reviews to the products featured in their Black Friday email.

Click to view larger image.

Boost Your Brand
Shipping deadlines are quickly approaching. Last-minute shoppers will be searching for expedited shipping offers, in-store pick-up and digital gifts that can help them to check off the final few folks on their list.

Calm these procrastinating purchasers by assuring them that your brand can make things merry before Christmas Day arrives. Feature customer service ratings and quotes that highlight happy customers and showcase your company’s commitment to their satisfaction.

This strategy can be effective for retailers who do not have a rich supply of UGC to use, sell bespoke products or have limited inventory items.

In addition to featuring how their products were showcased on Ellen, Balsam Hill used quotes from happy customers to give shoppers even more reasons to buy.

Click to view larger image.

The holiday season is a crazy, chaotic stress fest for marketers. Months of planning will go into ensuring that year-end revenue goals are met. As you approach these final days of the final quarter of 2016, take a moment to see if there are any tweaks you can make to your marketing plan that will build on the successes seen so far this season. UGC can be a valuable resource for boosting holiday sales and finishing the season strong.

Download the 2016 UGC Holiday Lookbook to see how top retailers featured user-generated content in their Thanksgiving Day, Black Friday and Cyber Monday marketing.

A new study from L2 of the CPG personal care market looks at the relationship between review volume and search engine results and finds:

…products with more reviews enjoy superior search visibility.

SEO is a major reason to maximize the number of reviews you collect, but there are others:

• A high review count displayed alongside the average star rating signals that a product is popular and also increases trust in the average rating by showing it is based on a meaningful sample.  In fact, a higher review count can more than make up for a lower average rating.  In this recent study, 61% of respondents preferred a product with a 4.5 star average based on 57 reviews over the same item with a 5 star average based on only 4 reviews.
• Larger numbers of reviews drive higher average ratings by tapping into the “happy middle” of the customer base to dilute the over-influence of the often unhappy extreme that otherwise dominates.  Jockey.com (underwear) recently found that sending an email to request reviews not only increased review volume by 7X, it also increased the average  rating across the site by a half a star – a HUGE effect.

While it’s no surprise that more-reviews-is-better, in practice, we find many brands and stores are so focused on the average star rating for their products that they undervalue the raw volume count and miss opportunities to increase collection.

The L2 study points to review syndication from brand sites to retail sites as an effective strategy for increasing review volume at the point of purchase.  We would add that merchants should consider an open strategy for in-bound syndication, as closed networks can have significant limitations in reach, complexity, and cost.

We would also recommend that stores and brands evaluate their mechanisms for collecting reviews, as  platform limitations can crush the volume of reviews collected.  For example, the furniture store Raymour & Flanigan doubled the volume of verified-buyer reviews they collect by switching to an approach that automatically authenticates known reviewers rather than requiring a separate authentication step.  And for unrecognized users, a flow that enables review creation before requiring authentication is essential.  (Do you make your visitors register before they shop?!?)

… And we mean LOOK different.

Consider:

• 90% of reviews come in response to emails
• >60% of emails are opened on phones
• Phones are bad for long text (like reviews)
• Phones are great for photos!

The implications are clear:

• Your strategy for collecting customer reviews needs to work on phones
• On phones, the strategy should be “visual first.”

So what is a visual review?  It’s a photo (or video) submitted by a customer in response to a request for a review – the proverbial picture that is worth a thousand words.  Instead of text stating, “With my new cookware, I was finally able to perfectly brown the crust of my famous chicken-pot-pie,” it is a photo of that perfect chicken-pot-pie.

Instead of text stating, “The shirt fit perfectly, with no extra blousing around my waist,” it is a selfie of the customer looking great in her new shirt.

Instead of text stating, “The fabric on the sofa was gorgeous, but the cushions were way too saggy,” it is a photo of the sofa with its gorgeous fabric and saggy cushions.

Far from being yet another “gotta-keep-up-with-changing-platforms chore,” the shift to visual content that the rise of smart phones demands creates a huge opportunity.  Simply put, visual content converts better.  Few shoppers have the patience to read the full body of customer reviews, and those that read any rarely go past the first couple of entries.  So while having lots of reviews is valuable for signaling that an item is popular, most of the text you are collecting has little impact on conversion.  On the other hand, shoppers can scan an image gallery in a blink and come away with a powerful, visceral sense of the appeal of a product.

This is not to say that you should abandon collecting text reviews; there is plenty of information in text reviews that images can’t convey.  If a customer is on a desktop when they get your request to write a review, you should lead with the request for a standard text review (with an option to attach an image).  But when the customer is on a mobile device, don’t try to force a round peg into a square hole by asking for text.  Instead, ask the customer to do what comes more naturally on these devices and submit an image.

The applications are broad and go way beyond selfies. Image subjects can vary such as:

• Things made with the product (cooking, crafts, do-it-yourself projects)
• The product in use (home furnishings, hobby items)
• Unboxing and explainers (electronics, fashion)
• Travel (Hotel rooms, attractions)
• And yes, selfies (fashion, beauty, sporting goods)

Visual reviews are a great complement to imagery you can gather from social media sites, if you’ve taken that approach.  But visual reviews also have some important advantages over social media harvesting and may be all the visual content collection you need:

• Images are automatically connected to the relevant SKU (saving a lot of work)
• Usage rights are automatically acquired
• You can collect a lot more images, since there is a big portion of your customer base that is happy to write a review but isn’t going to post your product to their Instagram page.
• The image collection is continuous; there’s no need for special hashtag campaigns

So as we said, the next generation of product reviews is going to look very different.

1. Social is increasingly part of the decision process for travelers.

Many and leisure travelers now leverage e-commerce tools, such as social Q&A and ratings & review tools, when booking rooms online. In fact, 53% of travelers won’t commit to booking a room until they’ve read reviews of the property* and 21% needed to check with other travelers before booking**.

2. Guest feedback broadens SEO reach and reduces call center inquiries.

Fresh and engaging content is essential for any successful SEO strategy. And user-generated content (UGC), such as feedback that is developed by your site visitors, provides unique content for your website — which ultimately feeds Google and other search engines.

As pointed out in a recent Harvard Business Review case study, “most customers these days demonstrate a huge — and increasing — appetite for self-service”. E-commerce tools that front-end your hotel inquiries help increase customer satisfaction (by answering many questions instantly) and decrease support costs.

3. Mobile booking will continue to grow in 2015.

According to the Skift “Megatrends Defining Travel in 2015” Special Report, mobile booking is poised to grow exponentially over the next five years, with 60 percent estimated growth from 2014 and 40 percent in 2015. Having enhanced e-commerce tools, such as a community Q&A tool and ratings & reviews platforms, for mobile browsers have been known to effectively increase conversion rates.

*Custom Survey Research Engagement. Independent PhoCusWright Dec 2013 study of 12,225 respondents
**2014 SalesCycle Travel Survey of 1,000 travel consumers

We’re thrilled to announce the general availability of our state-of-the-art product Ratings & Reviews system.  You can read the press release here or download the product fact sheet here.

To provide some more context, I sat down with our CEO to discuss how this new product came about.

Heather:  TurnTo is well known for providing the top-performing community-powered Q&A solution for eCommerce.  Why branch out to Ratings & Reviews?

George:  Well, we resisted for a long time!  One reason we’ve been able to build up such a lead on the Q&A side is focus.  But 4 things changed our minds. I’ll go through them:

• First, some businesses wanted to adopt our Q&A without increasing their vendor count.  Our Q&A has always been targeted at businesses that take a best-of-breed approach to vendors; but with integrated Ratings & Reviews we can meet the needs of those who prefer suite providers, too.
• Second, we identified some very exciting ways to integrate the two products to deliver more value than either can alone.
• Third, we realized that all of the enterprise-grade infrastructure we built for Q&A could be leveraged by our Ratings & Reviews product, enabling us to rapidly build out the application and launch with a full enterprise-ready feature set.
• And finally, our customer research revealed some pretty wide-spread dissatisfaction with the existing choices and a strong demand for a better option.

Heather: What was the overall philosophy behind the design of TurnTo’s Ratings & Reviews product?

George:  We spent a lot of time talking with both current customers and prospects to understand what they wanted in a Ratings & Reviews product, and the feedback was very consistent: all the important functions that have been proven to work, beautifully executed, on an enterprise-grade platform, at an affordable price.  We also heard consistent requests to stay away from bells and whistles that don’t add value and clutter up the user experience or make the system management difficult just to appear different.  The architect Mies van der Rohe was famous for saying “God is in the details”, by which he meant creativity doesn’t necessarily require wild gestures – there’s plenty of opportunity for innovation in just honing an idea until it’s really right.  I’d say that was the philosophy guiding us here.

Heather: OK, so there’s nothing radically different about TurnTo’s Ratings & Reviews product, but are there still some innovations you’d like to point out?

George:  At the application level, one nice touch is that the “purchaser credential” (like the Verified Buyer badge) provides an approximate date of purchase.  That increases the credibility of the review and also enables the shopper to see how much experience the reviewer has had with the product.  We also offer state-of-the-art mobile capabilities – responsive design right out of the box and phone-optimized UX for review collection.  Plus, as I mentioned, we’ve found some very valuable new ways to integrate Ratings & Reviews with Q&A.  For example, when a shopper enters a question, our Instant Answers feature now searches the Ratings & Reviews for relevant information (as well as the existing Q&A dialog and the store’s knowledge base).  Also, the please-review-your-purchase email can now include an offer for customers to get help with their recent purchase from others who already own the item.  That turns Q&A into a post-purchase support tool; and by coupling it to the  review solicitation, stores can head off potential negative reviews and turn them into positive ones.

Heather: How has the market received TurnTo’s Ratings & Reviews so far?

George:  The reception has been great.  Many of our existing Q&A customers have already or are in the process of switching their reviews over to us, too.  Many of our new customers are signing up for both reviews and Q&A together.  And we’ve even got a some new customers who are starting with our Ratings & Reviews and planning to add Q&A later.  And that’s all before we’ve really started to market this new product.

Heather:  Does this mean TurnTo is no longer a “Q&A first” company?

George:  No, we’re still Q&A-first.  We expect that online business who are satisfied with the current reviews providers will still come to us for best-of-breed community-powered Q&A.  It’s already the industry leader, and we have many big enhancements coming in 2015.  But when you look the whole package of our Ratings & Reviews offering – the product itself, TurnTo’s outstanding support, affordability, integration with our industry-leading Q&A, and our extraordinary roadmap – it compares very favorably to the existing alternatives.

This interview was originally posted by StellaService’s Happy Customer Blog on October 8th, 2014 located here!

“Happy Customer is always on the lookout for innovative approaches to customer service. We recently visited with TurnTo Networks CEO George Eberstadt about his company’s approach to “Assisted Shopping.” Retailers using TurnTo’s technology include Saks Fifth Avenue, Newegg and Sur La Table.

What is “Assisted Shopping” and how is it different from live chat?

The difference is in the approach. Both share the vision of taking the customer experience that a shopper gets with a primo in-store associate and bringing it to the web: the shopper can ask questions in her own words and get the information she needs back quickly. Live chat takes a very literal approach: make the associate available to the web shopper by putting her on the other end of a chat line. “Assisted Shopping”, on the other hand, says: use ALL the resources that the web makes available to get shoppers the fastest possible answers from the best sources, whatever the question. That includes tapping into the wisdom of fellow customers, going beyond the associate to the merchandise category manager (who probably wrote the training materials for the associate!), reaching out to the manufacturer, tapping into all the content in the store’s FAQs or help center.  And, yes, even involving the store associate – not just the one in the call center, but the one who covers that category at the nearest store. Also, Assisted Shopping can be faster than live chat much of the time by enabling instant answers from a continuously-learning knowledge base. Studies show shoppers often prefer self-help. And when a live chat is needed, Assisted Shopping provides a seamless escalation path.

What sort of results can online merchants expect from this type of solution?

There are many value-levers for stores using this technology: Conversion lift, SEO, reducing call center load, reducing returns, increasing loyalty, and gaining merchandising insights.

• Conversion lift: Shoppers who interact with tools like these convert at 3-7X the rate of those who don’t.  Further control group testing shows that about 25% of this lift is causal (ie not just cherry-picking shoppers who were going to buy anyway).  That’s a big effect.
• SEO: The community aspect of Assisted Shopping – enabling shoppers to get questions answered by fellow customers who already own the products they are considering — produces 2-4 times more user-generated content (UGC) than customer reviews do.  UGC is one of the most effective strategies for SEO, so more is better.  Stores have reported increases in organic traffic of 20% from this tool.
• Reducing call center load:  Shopper questions that get answered by the community or from the knowledge base never end up in the call center.  That’s faster, better answers for the shopper, and less work for the store staff – depending on the category, up to 30% less.
• Reducing returns: fashion and apparel businesses, in particular, can reduce returns by enabling shoppers to get authentic feedback from past customers who have experience with the products.  Assisted Shopping systems work with sizing charts and fitting tools to help online shoppers get it right the first time.
• Increasing loyalty:  Fast, authentic answers from the best source for the question are part of a great online shopping experience and have been measured to increase repeat purchase rates 15-40%.
• Merchandising insights:  Assisted Shopping tools make it easy to see what causes shoppers to hesitate before buying, what information they need but aren’t getting, or unexpected ways they plan to use their purchases.  That’s great insight for optimizing merchandising, and it starts to build up from the very first day an item goes on sale.

Is this just a pre-sales tool, or is there a post-sales support application?

Although we call it Assisted Shopping, there’s no reason the assistance needs to stop at the sale. All the same resources work post-purchase, making content from the help center or community forums, as well as the experience of customers who own the product, easily accessible for trouble-shooting. One exciting application is the post-purchase question solicitation email, which works particularly well when combined with the review solicitation email. In effect, it says: “Ready to review your recent purchase, click here. Need help getting the most from it, click here instead.”  Not only does this improve customer satisfaction, but it can turn what would have been negative reviews into positive ones.

Can Assisted Shopping work in physical stores, too?

The vision of bringing the deep content available on the web into the store aisle has been around for a while.  But there have been two major obstacles.  One is easily identifying the items on the shelf, the other is easily retrieving the relevant information. QR codes and scanners were supposed to solve the first challenge but turned out to have limited scope. A new generation of solutions that combine native mobile apps with scanners, or perhaps beacons, now appear likely to solve this challenge at scale.  There’s still a second problem: too much information to be easily retrieved on a small screen by a shopper standing in a store aisle. That’s where Assisted Shopping comes in. By making asking a question as easy as writing a text, these systems make nearly limitless resources instantly and easily available to the in-store shopper.

Is this a tool for brand manufacturers as well as for retailers?

There are multiple ways manufacturers can benefit from Assisted Shopping tools (in addition to deploying them on their own online storefronts). An easy one is to participate in answering shopper questions from the merchants that stock their products. With features like “instant answers”, this can be efficient as well as effective, as each answer becomes a resource for future shoppers with the same question, too. And the insights that come from seeing what questions shoppers have at the point of purchase can be highly valuable for manufacturers. Even more powerful is the ability for manufacturers to use these tools to extend all the rich content they provide about their products on their own site out to their channels. Now detailed product info and rich media that a merchant might not make available on their product pages can be accessed by any shopper in response to a question. By breaking the trade-off between extensive information and clutter, Assisted Shopping tools enable manufacturers to deliver all the information that will help close a sale while enabling merchants to maintain a streamlined shopping experience and consistent templates.“

Mobile Commerce Daily has a nice article summing up the comments from Todd Sprinkle, VP, Content & Platform Innovation at QVC, at eTail East about how QVC is using video for post-purchase support.  They explain,

QVC initially tested a post-purchase email to customers with follow-up on content on how to use or assemble certain items, especially particularly complicated ones. When returns decreased, the company broadened its thinking on the post-purchase experience to include video on how to use, how to wear and how to love something.

QVC’s strategy makes sense on many levels: decreasing support costs, deepening brand engagement, increasing customer satisfaction, and encouraging repeat purchase.  It’s also interesting that while QVC started with a focus on complex items, they’ve broadened out to apparel as well (most of which you won’t normally put in the “complex” category).

Another powerful way to achieve the same benefits – without all the work of video production – is to leverage community Q&A.  Shortly after an order is delivered, send an email offering the purchaser the opportunity to ask questions of customers who previously bought the same item.  Customers will reliably help each other resolve their issues, and the direct shopper-to-shopper engagement you’ve provided will do more to strengthen their relationship with your brand than interaction with your staff would have.  (Of course, your staff will also monitor these questions and provide additional resources where needed.)  QVC could combine the offer to ask a question with their video email to double the effect.  Another great place to extend the offer to ask a question is in the email where you solicit a review, since it enables customers who are having difficulties to get them resolved before they write a critical review.  It’s also powerful to put a tear sheet in the box with the order pointing the buyer towards the Q&A utility, if they have any questions, or to printing that info on the receipt or the return instructions; those are great ways to head off returns and improve your c-sat scores.

QVC’s innovations are pointing the way toward a larger post-purchase support trend where we expect to see a lot of investment and creativity over the next few years.  Tip-of-the-hat to them.

Our friends at Internet Retailer just released a thought-provoking article about best practices in online customer support. “Can I Help You?” discusses trends in pre-and post-purchase support, including chat, proactive engagement, self-service and visitor monitoring.

TurnTo’s CEO and Founder, George Eberstadt shares his thoughts:

Yes, there’s a lot of room to improve the customer support experience for online shopping, both pre and post purchase.  But “better chat” isn’t the answer.  Real shoppers want input from peers who actually own the products.  Real shoppers want to hear from merchandise managers and category experts, not from CSRs looking up answers in a database.  And if the answer is already in a database, they want it delivered instantly, not just “live” chat fast.

That’s why Community Q&A is the essential backbone of a first-class Assisted Shopping experience.  Community Q&A is also highly effective post-purchase.  Just include a link in your review-request email, saying “We want to make sure you get the most out of your recent purchase.  Need help or have a question?  Click here to get fast answers from fellow customers who bought this, our own product experts, and our complete knowledge base”…Community Q&A is a fast, easy way to improve conversion rates, drive up customer satisfaction, drive down returns, and learn a lot about what your shoppers really care about.