Online Reviews - Do they work?

Posted on April 16, 2008 by Chris

thumbs down Online Reviews Do they work? A month or so ago I bought a new kitchen table at a major online furniture store. A couple of weeks later the item we ordered showed up by UPS freight and it was exactly what we expected. So good product, good service at the right price = happy customer.

Earlier this week I got a call from the quality assurance department at the same online retailer inquiring as to my experience ordering from their store and whether I had any suggestions as to how it might have been better. I didn’t (everything went fine) but the phone call was nice to get. Obviously they care about how their customers view them which is somewhat unique even in today’s tough market environment.

What was interesting is that they offered me $20 in cash if I was willing to leave an online review of their store on any of the major price comparison sites. They didn’t require a positive bias, just that it be an honest review and reflect my experience with them. Now, $20 = 4 expensive yet addictive Starbucks mochas so since I had only positive things to say anyway I took them up on the offer.

But it got me thinking as to the value of online reviews in general. My premise for years has been that you only get two types of online reviews - very positive ones (regardless of the score, the writers are usually satisfied) or very negative ones (where the writers have an axe to grind…often justifiably). Obviously in the above case the store was trying to influence a positive online bias as I doubt they were offering cash to customers who were dissatisfied.

So with sellers trying to game reviews and the reviews themselves being bipolar for the most part, how much value to they really add? Couple that with the fact that the more reviews that get posted on a specific item, the bigger the chance you’ll get equal negative and positive ones. My conclusion is that the summary scores for reviews (all those stars on listings) tend to be useless and that the quality of the review is entirely based on what the person wrote.

So we need a better way to extract the real meaning from all those online reviews and work out which ones are designed to game the system. I haven’t figured it out yet but if I do, watch for a startup based on the solution as there is a real need. Maybe the real value is when things turn really negative as it allows you to avoid bad products or services. So negative reviews work and positive reviews don’t.

So we need a negative review search engine…maybe www.stuffthatsucks.com? (I checked…already registered).

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