|
|
 |
 |
 |
|
September 2005Wow...It looks like many of my thoughts on product reviews, published and unpublished, are already being realized at DontBuyJunk.com... this is even more surreal than the Peanut Gallery paper. Wow!
Wow...
Product Review Mini-Series: NumbersReview Statistics Yesterday, we examined the features of various product review formats. How do the various user-review resources stack up against each other? I do not have a definitive answer, but I did gather some data while researching cameras (Canon SD500, Canon SD400, Canon SD300, Canon S2 IS, Canon G6, Canon S70). Admittedly, with a small sample size and one product category, the results might not be ultra-representative... this is just an exploratory experiment to see if anything interesting turns up. + + + First, can we learn anything by looking at the distribution of product ratings?
All of these cameras were highly rated, so there is not as much difference as there could be. If I had it to do all over again, I would have tried to find products with divided opinions. The only notable difference here is the relatively high amount of negative ratings at Amazon.com. Diversity of opinions is valuable, so at first glance this appears to be a plus for Amazon. However, there might be some differences in the reviews hosted by retailers and reviews hosted by independent sources. While some would say there is plenty of incentive for retailers to have uniformly positive reviews, in some ways, opposite forces are at work at Amazon.com. I saw several instances where a reviewer's negativity was directed at the retailer, for issues ranging from pricing to shipping, and not the actual product. + + + How about the average length of reviews at these sources? Any differences?
Wow. It is hard not to notice the eye-popping length of reviews at Shopping.com. What this means is that if a shopper is looking for as much in-depth information as possible, it is impossible to ignore Shopping.com. To varying degrees, the can't-ignore-dynamic applies to all of the major review sources. In other areas, such as product attribution, it is possible for a site to have comprehensive coverage, relative to the other sites, so a shopper only needs to visit one site. But there is no way for one site to acquire a monopoly on unique perspectives. Thus, for any given product, any of these sites could prove to be indespensible. + + + more later...
Product Review Mini-Series: Numbers
Short Q&A with Siva Kumar of FatLensHot on the heels of his article on comparison shopping at Forbes.com, Tom Taulli has a short Q&A with Siva Kumar of FatLens at Taulli.com.
Short Q&A with Siva Kumar of FatLens
Product Review Mini-Series: FeaturesReview Features Below is a line-by-line comparison of the features of product review formats at the major shopping engines.
Most sites are using extra sections such a Pro and Con, which brings me joy. But these are of limited value, at least for products with many reviews, if there is not any kind of alternate "summary skimming" navigation scheme, IMHO. Only a few sites support follow-up comments, which would seem like a logical early step in fostering community. + + +
All of these sites include an overall rating, and all of them except for one (CNET) base it on a 1 to 5 scale. Nearly half of the sites have some kind of sub-ratings. Most of them, such as quality and value, are generic. More interesting, in my opinion, are the category-specific ratings at Shopping.com, such as Battery Life. Better yet, would be if category-specific ratings could be sliced and diced like any other product attribute... + + +
I cannot understand why any site would not have the option to sort a search by the highest-rated products. Why not? Sorting the reviews within the product-view is not a big deal, unless there are many reviews, in which case it is handy. + + +
The time spent with product is an interesting qualifier. Perhaps other user-information such as product expertise level could also be useful? [i.e. novice, intermediate, expert] + + + more later...
Product Review Mini-Series: Features
Product Review Mini-SeriesI was going to put together a week's worth of posts about product reviews, but no sense in trying to get too cute. the revised posting schedule: Wednesday: Features... a line-by-line look at features of reviews at the major shopping engines. Thursday: Statistics... crunching the numbers on a small sample of reviews from several sites. Friday: Pot Luck... anything is possible on Fridays, I don't know yet.
Product Review Mini-Series
HehI was planning to introduce a cool new idea in my series of posts on product reviews, until I saw this post on Geeking with Greg. Mining the Peanut Gallery:Opinion Extraction and Semantic Classification of Product Reviews (.PDF) Figure 2 on Page 8 is so similar to one of the visuals I've been carrying around in my head since at least May 25 that it is... surreal. Even more surprising is the fact the paper was published in 2003 (!) Granted, I would have only had the idea, and would have left the rest for somone more technical to figure out. :-) Ah well, I'm sure there is more than one way to solve this problem...
Heh
Reading vs. CollaboratingPeter Caputa clarifies what I've been thinking about lately. "Lately, I've been a lot less concerned with readers and more concerned about collaborators. I've started cutting back on who I read. I am only reading people that read me and who link to me and who engage in conversation through the blogs and other means. I am making my blog more about getting to know people in a more meaningful way and supporting their initiatives and less about my writing." Great food for thought on a Monday morning. more here
Reading vs. Collaborating
Panel: Business Models in Vertical SearchBarney Pell is moderating a panel on vertical search that is sponsored by the MIT/Stanford Venture Lab (VLAB). Hopefully, he will be able to post a follow-up summary at his blog...
Panel: Business Models in Vertical Search
Integration of Shopping Engines and Shopping Carts?I was recently contact by a shopping-cart developer who wanted to make it easy for his clients to connect with the comparison shopping engines: "I am writing you today because I want to re-engineer my company shopping cart to automatically include the data feeds for the various shopping search API's, as a means of getting their products in to the shopping engine sites (assuming that they sign up). I have written to all of them but have not gotten any responses regarding getting the XML mappings to build into our system." I'm surprised we do not see more cart-level integration. Hey, shopping engines, are you interested? If so, drop by the comments section and point to an detail page or a contact person, eh?
Integration of Shopping Engines and Shopping Carts?
FatLens to expand into more online shopping categories"Following the market success of its unique event ticket shopping search site, FatLens today announced an expansion of its patent-pending technology to address more e-commerce categories for the 2005 holiday season. In October, the FatLens site will preview shopping search for six popular categories -- clothing, accessories, shoes, luggage, jewelry and electronics. The new shopping search capabilities will be demonstrated for the first time to DEMOfall attendees this week." source: press release via: Search Engine Watch
FatLens to expand into more online shopping categories
AlohaI think I've come to terms with the upgrade to MT 3.2, and the unintentional re-writing of the archived URLs. The old links still work, but who knows for how long. Ehhh, I guess it is less of an issue for blog sites, with RSS and all... This week, I'm going to catch up on posts that have building up the past two weeks. Then, in another week or two, I'm going to post the five-part series on User Reviews, by far the biggest research project undertaken on this blog. From there, who knows. Maybe I'll continue to be interested in comparison shopping. Maybe I'll embark on new, related journeys. Or maybe I'll finally determine this is not a productive use of time, and ride off into the sunset. Fun month ahead...
Aloha
|
(1)
