'Net Features : PowerReviews

PowerReviews Introduces its Essential Social Suite

Linc Wonham — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 22:00:00 GMT

Customer reviews technology provider PowerReviews has launched a new set of tools designed to help online retailers measure the financial impact of their social media activity.

It seems we hear about such a product being launched almost every week nowadays, but PowerReviews is one of the Web’s largest social commerce networks and helps more than 5,500 brands tap into their customers’ conversations. This is worth looking into further.

The Essential Social Suite (ESS) enables e-commerce merchants to promote, reward and measure customer engagement and content generation to better meet their business objectives. Retailers are able to transcend the fleetingness of a Facebook Like to optimize on-site social activity and drive more website traffic, customer engagement and sales.

ESS integrates all three components of social success – content, engagement and measurement – by including the following product features:

Social Content: Generates three times more product-related social content, including customer reviews and Q&As. This content is incredibly effective at driving conversion rates and powering improved SEO that generates 10 to 50 percent more organic site traffic.

• Social Answers: Drives conversion and SEO by ensuring that customer questions are answered within 24 hours.

Social Engagement: Amplifies social content across the Web by giving a brand’s most valuable customers the tools to connect and contribute to the community.

• Social Loyalty: Uses gamification to create the social content and sharing activity that drives traffic, conversions and sales.
• Social Discovery and Community: Drives organic traffic from social networks and connects shoppers with a brand’s best advocates.

Social Measurement: Precisely measures the sales impact of social activity with a powerful analytics engine. A single, integrated platform means that on-site social activity is optimized to drive traffic, conversion and revenue. Helps to answer key questions such as, “Which type of shared content creates the most organic traffic?” and “Which type of engagement is most likely to drive a conversion?”

Visit PowerReviews for more information on the Essential Social Suite.

New Patent Drives Results for PowerReviews

Linc Wonham — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 19:00:00 GMT

Social commerce solutions provider PowerReviews has received a new patent relating to the method in which it delivers user-generated product reviews to more than 4,700 websites globally. This is the second patent PowerReviews has received for social commerce innovation since 2009.

PowerReviews’ Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) delivery methods make it possible to display user-generated content on brands’ product pages in a format that is easily crawled by search engine spiders, making it a leader in the space along with Bazaarvoice and others.

“The SEO value of user-generated content is essential to our business,” says Kimberly Ruthenbeck, Director of Web Customer Experience at home furnishings retailer Room & Board. “PowerReviews’ technology allows us to drive more traffic directly to our product pages and increase sales.”

In November 2009, PowerReviews received its first patent relating to its Review Snapshot, a technology that helps provide consumers with a structured review summary. In a study of over 400 Internet shoppers, PowerReviews’ structured reviews were preferred 2-to-1 over traditional reviews for making more informed purchase decisions.

“Because of our multi-tenant SaaS model—which ensures all customers are on a single code base—we can consistently deliver innovations that produce results for our customers,” says Nadim Hossain, Vice President of Marketing for PowerReviews. “We’re pleased to be recognized by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for our technology, validating our commitment to social commerce innovation.”

Capturing Social Opportunities with Fan Accelerator

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 01:00:00 GMT

Want more Facebook Fans? Who doesn’t! In order to gain control of the opportunities however, retailers and brands must engage their most loyal audience.

Social commerce enabler PowerReviews released a new addition to its Facebook OnSite solution dubbed Fan Accelerator which lets retailers and brands acquires fans as part of the review process.

“Facebook is clearly the consumers’ community of choice, with over 600 million users, half of which engage with the site daily,” said Cathy Halligan, senior vice president of sales and marketing for PowerReviews. “For the past 20 months we have innovated, delivering high-performing products that increase traffic and sales as the case for Facebook commerce emerges. As a result, over half of our clients’ reviews are shared on Facebook, when written by Facebook verified reviewers. Retailers and brands working with us have seen an increase in traffic - and thus conversion - directly related to their Facebook integration.”

Based on its knowledge of how retailers and brands are leveraging Facebook, PowerReviews also shared some interesting new data. In addition to the widely discussed $15.72 value per shared review that is currently making its way around, the company reports that 57 percent of reviews written by Facebook verified members are shared to their Facebook streams and 70 percent of all reviews shared to Facebook receive Likes or Comments. At an aggregate level, four percent of all reviews are shared to Facebook, with some multi-channel, multibillion-dollar retailers experiencing sharing rates of up to eight percent.

20 User Review Websites Critical to Small Business

Mike Phillips — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 19:00:00 GMT

According to an internal analysis of small business search results, Marchex – a provider of small business marketing products – found that more than 80 percent of results did not point to the websites of those businesses. Instead, they pointed to social network results and consumer reviews.

The businesses surveyed were those of restaurants, travel, legal, beauty, plumbing and automotive – all highly susceptible to consumer reviews. These businesses and similar consumer-facing companies need to be aware of where they stand in search results with their own websites, compared to the rankings of reviews and comments from social media users.

"Marchex has seen how consumer reviews are impacting the bottom line of our small business customers, and we wanted to highlight how big the impact really is," said Ryan Fritzky, Director of Small Business Product Development at Marchex.

Increasingly, however, every business is being reviewed by consumers. Oftentimes the reviews and ratings might not even be justified. So, not only is it important to know where you stand on these sites but also to have resources ready to speak out (or type) on your behalf. That means recruiting brand advocates. Of course, the best way to do that is to provide quality experiences for your users and to respond quickly to any problems before they become viral hate campaigns.

Some obvious places to look for your small business reviews are social sites like Facebook, Twitter and Yelp.com, and Google Maps, Bing, Yahoo Local, City Search and Local.com. Below are a dozen more places where your business or products might be getting reviewed.

InsiderPages.com
Mainly focused on rating those in the medical and health care field. Insider Pages also features reviews on restaurants, beauty and home & garden.

MerchantCircle.com
MerchantCircle focuses on promoting businesses by using online user reviews via a pseudo paid advertising system. Businesses can create their own local coupon book.

JudysBook.com
Judy's Book provides review guides to users, such as "Top 10 Auto Mechanics" and so on. Businesses can create their accounts and get help with promotion and SEO.

AngiesList.com
Angie's List is a paid service for consumers to get certified, unbiased reviews of local businesses. It is a large and trusted network, claiming more than one million members.

TripAdvisor.com
As the name suggest, TripAdvisor helps users filter travel destinations via user reviews. A must-know for travel businesses.

OpenTable.com
Because OpenTable.com allows users to make reservations immediately, good reviews on this site can help restaurants take advantage of the convenience factor.

BBB.org
The Better Business Bureau is a relative newcomer to the user review scene but its trusted reputation makes it a must-monitor for every business.

Buzzillions.com
Buzzillions' focus is products -- electronics, computers, sports equipment, clothing, etc. Manufacturers and retailers would be wise to research their products here.

Epinions.com
Part of the Shopping.com family, Epinions solicits reviews on just about anything a person can buy online -- from autos to office supplies.

Wize.com
Wize reports "the best & worst products" by matching products based on consumers' needs. The main focus is electronics and appliances.

PowerReviews.com
In tandem with Buzzillions, PowerReviews looks to connect consumers with reviews about the producty they care about, through SEO, mobile, social networks and more.

SiteJabber.com
SiteJabber provides reviews of websites as a whole. Obviously, every online property should make sure good things are being said about them, or find a brand advocate to get the ball rolling. They claim more than 450,000 people search websites for reviews every month.

Be sure not to miss Website Magazine's May edition, where we tackle the subject of crisis control for online businesses! Subscribe or renew now and get a free copy of our new book, Web 360!

User Reviews' Growing Importance to Business

Mike Phillips — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 19:10:00 GMT

Word-of-mouth marketing, feedback and testimonials have been a big part of every successful business long before the Internet even existed. Remember comment cards?

But today, user input and user reviews are more important than ever. Consumers can provide feedback for other users about your product with a single click (clicking a star to rate a product, for example), or reach thousands of people with a single comment - perhaps with a Tweet, Facebook update or a two-sentence review on Yelp.com. Users don't even need to write their own review. There are any number of ways to repurpose another person's review that echoes one's own sentiment - a retweet or 'share this review via email,' for example.

Not only are user reviews becoming easier to generate but also more numerous and prevalent, meaning that others are keenly aware of this resource. A quick search on Compete.com shows traffic increases year-over-year for three important consumer review resources: AngiesList.com (+ 34.3%), Yelp.com (+ 7.46%) and Buzzillions.com (+ 21.97%).

Speaking of Buzzillions.com, it's reported to have increased its total number of reviews on the site by more than 12 million, or 39% year-to-date. The site is also owned by PowerReviews. PowerReviews, in turn, recently cut a deal with Google to provide user reviews on the search engine results pages. And forthcoming is OnSite, a partnership between PowerReviews and Facebook.

"Facebook OnSite goes beyond the 'Like' button by bringing the Facebook experience to the retailer’s site," said Cathy Halligan, Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing, PowerReviews, in a recent press release. "This opens up new opportunities for retailers and brands to leverage the Open Graph to drive customer loyalty and sales."

Facebook and Google are two of the most visited, highly-trafficked websites in the world. And both of them see the value of user reviews. Now, do you?

There's no doubt that consumers are turning to each other for their purchase decisions. Mostly, becuase they trust each other. It is clear that consumer reviews are becoming a vital - if not involuntary - part of doing business online, and in online marketing. The importance of monitoring feedback and soliciting consumer reviews and responses cannot be overstated.

Don't forget the old adage about how a dissatisfied customer will tell 10 of their friends about their experience while a satisfied customer will tell one. (Or something like that.) Now, multiply that effect by 100. Or 1,000. Or maybe 10,000 - it depends on that particular customer's sphere of influence.

Find that poor review or dissatisfied customer and work to change his or her mind. At the very least, pay very close attention. They're out there and they are talking about you.

The Power of Reviews Meets the Reach of Facebook

Linc Wonham — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 19:18:00 GMT

A deeper integration with Facebook is giving PowerReviews clients some extra muscle on the Open Graph. The new application from the ratings and reviews provider invites Facebook users to incorporate their profile data into the reviews they write for retailers, enabling the retailers to post the reviews and the data onto their e-commerce sites.

The significant innovation is that, unlike the Facebook Like button, which sends the retailer’s information to Facebook, the new tool from PowerReviews sends Facebook information to the merchant, such as a reviewer’s gender, age, location and interests. From the consumer perspective, shoppers gain a more social retail experience not only by reading what a user has to say about a product or service, but also by learning more about the reviewer without leaving the merchant’s website.

Shoppers have to opt in to integrate their Facebook data into their reviews, and they can post the reviews directly onto Facebook. Through the new application, reviews posted to Facebook will appear with a product photo, a star rating, partial text of the review and a link to the retailer’s site, and will be seen on the user’s Facebook Wall and distributed to their friends’ newsfeeds.

PowerReviews’ new Facebook tools also allow merchants to group reviews together, show their histories and ask reviewers for additional comments to send to their Facebook newsfeeds. Companies already utilizing the new technologies include Abe’s of Maine, Campmor and Diapers.com.

PowerReviews has experienced enormous growth this year due in large part to its ability to combine the power of user-generated reviews with the reach of social media. The company has enjoyed a 51-percent increase in clients and recently partnered with Google to provide reviews for Google search results, Product Search and Google Ad programs.

Consumer Reviews in a Video World

Administrator — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 19:37:00 GMT

Customer review and social commerce solution PowerReviews has partnered with EXPO, a video community where consumers share opinions about the products they buy. The companies are buddying up to offer a platform that delivers video and text content created product owners to brands and retailers worldwide.

“Teaming with EXPO, who pioneered the video market for unbiased product reviews, allows us to empower brands by bridging critical opportunities to leverage this fresh, authentic content, created by their own customers," said Pehr Luedtke, CEO of PowerReviews. "By combining best-in-class review technologies, we’re delivering the most comprehensive shopping experience to consumers, while creating new possibilities and value for consumers and merchants alike.”

EXPO has essentially just chosen PowerReviews as its primary provider of text reviews which will act as a complement to its video platform, leveraging PowerReviews' review engine. PowerReviews will in turn be able to accelerate its distribution to brands by leveraging the EXPO brand network, and offer its retail partners access to EXPO's video reviews – of which there are already over 300,000.

PowerReviews Added to Google's Product Reviews Program

Linc Wonham — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 19:00:00 GMT

The importance for e-commerce merchants to utilize user-generated product reviews just increased even more as Google has added PowerReviews to its industry-leading partners in the category. PowerReviews’ ratings and review content will now be available to online shoppers in Google search results, Google Product Search and Google advertising programs, joining Bazaarvoice, which Google teamed up with three months ago when it announced the Google Product Reviews program.

Google Product Reviews allows retailers to engage online shoppers by featuring participating merchants' logos and linking back to the merchants' product pages. Subject to prior approval by Google, Google Product Reviews is immediately available to the more than 1,000 retailers and brands supported by PowerReviews on more than 3,500 websites. Bazaarvoice, meanwhile, has served more than 125 billion pieces of customer-generated ratings and review content on more than 850 brand websites.

PowerReviews Integrates 'Like' Button With Its Own Platform

Linc Wonham — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Customer reviews and social commerce solutions provider PowerReviews has announced a new integration of the Facebook Like button with its own social marketing platform that top-tier online retailers such as REI and Evo have been quick to adopt. The integration is designed to give PowerReviews partners a richer and deeper customer engagement through increased interactivity with their products, services and brands.

The Facebook Like button is a social plug-in that enables users to share feedback with their friends on the social network, and it now acts as the perfect complement to the People Like Me functionality in PowerReviews’ leading suite of social commerce software. Used together, the two tools provide a powerful one-two punch that gives Facebook users a more significant online voice with greater influence over one another’s purchasing decisions.

PowerReviews’ innovative tag-based approach to collecting, organizing, structuring and analyzing user-generated content has increased customer engagement and sales for many of its retail clients that include Staples, Callaway, Jockey, Diapers.com and more.