How To Attract Consumers By Providing The Information They Want

Before the globalization of the 21st century, consumers typically needed to purchase a product in order to explore its quality. Their willingness to purchase that product revolved in large part around the trust the company had already built based on past performance. Essentially, a lack of information that is now available online forced consumers to assess product quality through personal experience.

With the advent of globalization and the internet, review sites and apps fundamentally changed the way this demand worked. Information became available through reviews that other users shared based on their experiences. A huge number of consumers now had access to information before investing in a product. Demand shifted from consuming content to judge its quality to consuming quality content based on the reviews and recommendations of others.

For product makers, this meant a decline in the number of people who made that initial investment to find out the value the product provided — they would now be more likely to wait for someone to post a review before making that investment.

Consider this paradigm shift in user demand and marketing.

As word of mouth became a tool for consumers to decide whether or not they would purchase a product, the old marketing techniques of flashy advertising and creating hype around brand name were no longer enough. Top companies began supplementing their marketing strategies by utilizing word of mouth to reach the masses.

Today, I’m seeing a surge in paid reviewers who are hired or given free merchandise (often the product itself) in exchange for a positive review, especially on social media. For social media users, these brand ambassadors serve as sources of information that help them identify top products. Users are looking for platforms dedicated to providing key insight and product reviews, not only to discuss but to assess if a product is worth their money and time. Companies look to social media influencers as marketing tools, reaching out to them to request positive reviews in exchange for compensation.

Let’s consider an example that exemplifies this paradigm shift: In 2007, GameStop employee Jeff Gerstmann was terminated for negatively reviewing a game. This led to discussions on conflict of interest and more — but what is the key takeaway for our discussion? It became obvious that reviews were a source of marketing and companies wanted to use them to show their products off in the best possible light.

Where do review platforms go wrong?

One of the most fundamental mistakes platforms can make involves the rating matrices they implement to give an overall rating for a product or app. When creating a review platform or system on your site, it is important to create sub-components of the product that can be reviewed. To continue the gaming example, these components might look like: gameplay, animation, sound effects, fluid user experience, etc.

If a platform includes an overall rating system without the option to add nuance through the sub-components of the product, it creates an arbitrary rating system that might not be reflective of the rating a product deserves. For example, DSW allows consumers to give shoes an overall rating, as well as a rating based on fit, width and comfort. This gives consumers more information when assessing the product, and also prevents the entire rating from being lowered because, say, the fit was a half-size too small.

Another mistake that is often debated involves the weighting system as it applies to ratings. The question is, should ratings from all users be considered equally and result in an average rating, or should the history and credibility of a user have an impact on the weight of their rating? In my experience, layman users are the majority and thus have a huge impact on a product’s rating.

Alongside implementing a component breakdown for ratings, consider creating different avenues for both professional reviewers and casual reviewers to ensure that there is more information available to those who looking to judge whether they are willing to spend on a product or not. Another option is to include information about how long a reviewer has been a member of that review platform to build trust.

How can review platforms evolve to revitalize their popularity?

As a mobile app developer, my company recently worked with a client on a game review app with the goal to provide a system that would allow users to access review-based information in the most nuanced manner possible. To that end, we included individual component ratings and a separate rating system for professional critics versus the average user.

This led to more diverse reviews and reviews that were representative of the individual reviewers, allowing for a more holistic understanding of a particular product or game. I believe that such considerations and technical details are necessary to create an industry standard and a one-stop solution for those looking for reviews and recommendations from the best critics and users in an industry.

As a business leader, if you’re looking into developing your own review app or platform for your products, here are some things to keep in mind:

• Your review system should be more than just a star rating or a single number. Provide an overall product rating, as well as sub-components to give consumers more information.

• Product review expertise can vary immensely, from professional critics to common users. It’s important to take that into account when developing your review matrix and system.

• Provide a space, essentially a comment field, for users to share the reasoning behind their reviews. That way, they can rave about their five-star experience or explain what was missing after leaving a three-star review. In addition to providing users with more detailed information, this gives you an opportunity to respond and try to fix what went wrong, which is essential for winning back lost reputation points within the community.

Remember, consumers are no longer buying products to test them out themselves. They look to trusted reviews first, so get ahead of the demand for value.

Source: Forbes.com

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