Improving user reviews

[mhanratty]

As part of the research project I came across some helpful articles about improving customer reviews. From these articles I came up with some ways for us to improve our reviews on the Marketplace.

Ideas for Encouraging reviews:

• Add "Write a Review" to apps in "My Apps" list
• Contest ala AMO. Your app story, winner gets swag
• Recommendations could get tied to reviews - let people know and encourage them to review stuff.
• Feature a "review of the day" on feed. Also can feature on Twitter, Apps blog, Facebook, Email newsletter, etc.
• Roll out features (or apps to be reviewed) to contributors first
• Write a how-to guide on writing reviews, and share it with contributors: http://www.business2community.com/startups/10-tips-encouraging-customers-post-online-reviews-0844865#d6MTOhusA6LfsJ1e.99

How Yelp encourages thoughtful reviews: http://www.fastcompany.com/3027249/lessons-learned/how-yelp-encourages-users-to-write-more-thoughtful-reviews-even-on-mobile

• Don't say "x number of reviews for status"
• Modeling - show a recently written review that's of good quality before user writes their review
• Identity - real name, real photo

[pwalm]

These are great! And most of them are pretty simple, very easy to implement.

[pwalm]

I love this quote from the Yelp article: "It's important to keep the objectives a little bit fuzzy. You don't know exactly what the bar is, but you should know that the bar is high." That should be a goal, to impart to the user that great reviews are the norm on Marketplace. /me goes and leaves some reviews on Marketplace

[pwalm]

Filson does a pretty sweet job of encouraging great, in-depth reviews:

[pwalm]

Also: Buzzfeed's "click a word to rate" feature

[pwalm]

Note: this is more about converting users into leaving a (more structured) review, written or not.

[pwalm]

Feed block design for promoted comments:

[mhanratty]

David Bialer started a Google doc with thoughts on improving user reviews as well as links to articles: https://docs.google.com/a/mozilla.com/document/d/10aHvz3sftdeF-GRHt0xUzYsO3gf8hvDgXukCXji4Kg4/edit

[pwalm]

Keyword reviews idea we talked about for mobile:

[pwalm]

[brampitoyo]

Reading – Online reputation: it’s contextual (http://ethnographymatters.net/blog/2012/02/24/online-reputation-its-contextual/)

[brampitoyo]

1. A variation of Phil’s keyword reviews idea. The positives and negatives are presented side-by-side, with emotion emojis on the bottom. The idea is to qualify what you love and hate about an app, and to then express your feelings. For example, a user might hate that the app is slow, but overall, it still makes him happy.
2. This is a way to express your opinion by agreeing or disagreeing with other people. For example, we can present a five-star review along with a one-star review directly under it. We ask user of which opinion they agree with the most. Just tap once, and the app is reviewed. If the user doesn’t agree to either, he can either show more opinions (it will show another pair), or write his own.
3. A variation of the keyword review idea that uses a credit system. Everybody gets three votes to cast towards an app’s rating. This system allows user to cast one vote each towards beautiful, fun and so-so, cast all three votes towards funny because the app is incredibly funny, or cast two votes for one property and cast one for another.

[pwalm]

Online Reviews Research - Consumer

"How many bad reviews does it take to deter shoppers?"

( https://econsultancy.com/blog/7403-how-many-bad-reviews-does-it-take-to-deter-shoppers#i.1pczpv179ke3rt )

• 61% of respondents read online reviews of products and services
• 72% said they looked for product reviews on shopping websites
• Shoppers find the opinions of other consumers most trustworthy when conducting product research online.
• 64% said they trusted product reviews from other consumers, 28% were neutral, while just 8% find them to be unreliable.
• 69% believe it is important that a product has good reviews from other consumers
• This is an interesting one. Between one and three bad reviews will deter the majority (67%) of consumers from purchasing a particular product or service.

"Survey: 90% Of Customers Say Buying Decisions Are Influenced By Online Reviews"

( http://marketingland.com/survey-customers-more-frustrated-by-how-long-it-takes-to-resolve-a-customer-service-issue-than-the-resolution-38756 )

• 90% of respondents said that positive reviews influenced buying decisions, while 86% said negative reviews influenced buying decisions.

• 2/3 reported reading online reviews.
• Facebook was the leading place to read positive reviews, online review sites had the most negative reviews.
• 58% said they were more likely to share customer service experiences today than fire years ago. Of those who shared reviews, 45% used social media and 35% shared via online review sites.

"Online Reviews: Do Consumers Use Them?"

( http://www.acrwebsite.org/search/view-conference-proceedings.aspx?Id=8455 )

• There is a sizable body of evidence which suggests that the influence of negative word of mouth information is more potent compared to positive word of mouth information in influencing purchase intentions of potential buyers.
• Research in marketing literature has been fairly consistent in assigning high credibility to WOM information in general and negative WOM in particular, because WOM sources have nothing to gain.
• In a study of unfavorable product ratings, it has been shown that when information about an object or firm comes through the opinions or recommendations of another person, negative information may be more credible and generalizable than positive information.
• Consumers who decide to patronize a retailer based on familiarity have stronger positive feelings and are less likely to trust negative WOM information regarding the firm compared to consumers who choose retailers based on price.

"2013 Study: 79% of Consumers Trust Online Reviews As Much As Personal Recommendations"

( http://searchengineland.com/2013-study-79-of-consumers-trust-online-reviews-as-much-as-personal-recommendations-164565 )

• More consumers are reading reviews as part of their pre-purchase research before selecting a local business to use. However, it also shows that they are forming opinions faster and needing to read fewer reviews before they trust (or don’t trust) a local business.

• Consulting reviews is now a logical step in the purchasing cycle for all types of products and services. The increased quality and availability of reviews makes the selection process easy for consumers.
• The path from reading online reviews to purchasing from a business is short, which means is crucial for local businesses to have a positive online reputation so they can convert “searchers” into customers.

• 67% of consumers read 6 reviews or less (up from 52% in 2012).
• Consumers are forming opinions faster now that they were 12-24 months ago.
• Businesses need a policy for responding openly to negative reviews and a process for generating new, positive reviews which drive those negative reviews further down the page and ideally out of sight!

• 73% of consumers say positive reviews make them trust a business more. They have a real, actual impact on purchasing decisions.

• WOM remains the strongest recommendation channel (72%).

• 79% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.
• Only 21% said they do not trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.
• Authenticity of reviews is a key factor in whether on not consumers trust them. the increase in respondents selecting this answer shows that consumers don’t blindly trust reviews and exercise judgement to determine is reviews are genuine.
• Younger consumers (16-34) are more trusting of reviews than older consumers (55+).

Online Reviews Research - Developer

"It’s time for Apple to allow developers to respond to App Store reviews"

( http://thenextweb.com/apple/2012/06/22/its-time-for-apple-to-allow-developers-to-respond-to-app-store-reviews/ )

• By a huge margin, the number one request by these developers was for Apple to allow them to respond directly to reviews on the App Store.
• If you frequent the App Store at all, you know that the reviews below app listings can be of varying helpfulness and accuracy. Sometimes they’re working on false assumptions of the app’s capabilities, sometimes they’re simple issues that could be fixed with a settings tweak. Sometimes they’re completely insane. And then there are the complaints that are completely valid, but that the developer may already be in the process of working on or submitting a fix for. The way that they’re sorted doesn’t even make sense either, as the ‘most helpful’ metric means next to nothing. Although a review must be filed by a customer that has purchased the app, the ‘upvoting’ of these can be done by anyone, including the developers themselves.
• This causes a natural corruption that can surface silly ‘this is crap’ remarks or just as inaccurate ‘best app ever’ remarks. And that’s not even attacking the ‘5 star ratings’ system at all, which has its own issues when taken as a sign of quality.

"App support gets social: Google Play launches the ability for developers to reply to user reviews"

( http://thenextweb.com/google/2012/06/21/app-support-gets-social-google-play-launches-the-ability-for-developers-to-reply-to-user-reviews/ )

"App Store ratings are broken, let's get rid of them"

( http://www.imore.com/its-time-admit-app-store-ratings-are-broken-and-get-rid-them )

• At their best, App Store reviews give customers an opportunity to share thoughtful feedback about what they like - and loathe - about the software they've downloaded. It's a great opportunity for others to learn what makes an app good, or to be waved off from a potentially costly mistake. At their worst, App Store reviews - more specifically the ratings - are used as punitive measures, sledgehammers that capricious users too often rely on to assault developers who don't live up to their arbitrary expectations.
• Users can assign a star rating - from one to five stars - with no context whatsoever. If an app crashes on you or locks up your phone, you can give it a one star review. But you can give it a one star rating if you don't like the shape of the app's icon or if you thought it was a stock market app and it turned out to be a recipe book instead.
• Another problem - and one that's been discussed before - is that developers have absolutely no mechanism to interact with customers who leave reviews, including those that have legitimate support issues. And customers who leave bad reviews have no incentive to go back and amend them - in fact, many may not be aware that it's possible to change reviews, as the feature is buried in their Account Details information.

[pwalm]

From The 90-9-1 Rule for Participation Inequality in Social Media and Online Communities:

How to Overcome Participation Inequality

You can't.

The first step to dealing with participation inequality is to recognize that it will always be with us. It's existed in every online community and multi-user service that has ever been studied.

Your only real choice here is in how you shape the inequality curve's angle. Are you going to have the "usual" 90-9-1 distribution, or the more radical 99-1-0.1 distribution common in some social websites? Can you achieve a more equitable distribution of, say, 80-16-4? (That is, only 80% lurkers, with 16% contributing some and 4% contributing the most.)

Although participation will always be somewhat unequal, there are ways to better equalize it, including:

• Make it easier to contribute. The lower the overhead, the more people will jump through the hoop. For example, Netflix lets users rate movies by clicking a star rating, which is much easier than writing a natural-language review.
• Make participation a side effect. Even better, let users participate with zero effort by making their contributions a side effect of something else they're doing. For example, Amazon's "people who bought this book, bought these other books" recommendations are a side effect of people buying books. You don't have to do anything special to have your book preferences entered into the system. Will Hill coined the term read wear for this type of effect: the simple activity of reading (or using) something will "wear" it down and thus leave its marks — just like a cookbook will automatically fall open to the recipe you prepare the most.
• Edit, don't create. Let users build their contributions by modifying existing templates rather than creating complete entities from scratch. Editing a template is more enticing and has a gentler learning curve than facing the horror of a blank page. In avatar-based systems like Second Life, for example, most users modify standard-issue avatars rather than create their own.
• Reward — but don't over-reward — participants. Rewarding people for contributing will help motivate users who have lives outside the Internet, and thus will broaden your participant base. Although money is always good, you can also give contributors preferential treatment (such as discounts or advance notice of new stuff), or even just put gold stars on their profiles. But don't give too much to the most active participants, or you'll simply encourage them to dominate the system even more.
• Promote quality contributors. If you display all contributions equally, then people who post only when they have something important to say will be drowned out by the torrent of material from the hyperactive 1%. Instead, give extra prominence to good contributions and to contributions from people who've proven their value, as indicated by their reputation ranking.

Your website's design undoubtedly influences participation inequality for better or worse. Being aware of the problem is the first step to alleviating it, and finding ways to broaden participation will become even more important as the Web's social networking services continue to grow.

( http://www.nngroup.com/articles/participation-inequality/ )

[brampitoyo]

Encouraging more empathetic and helpful reviews

From _Meet Facebook’s Mr. Nice_:

“[…] I believe the success of social media largely depends on solving this problem and teaching users to be kinder and more empathetic.”

[…]

On Facebook, teenagers are presented with more options than just “it’s embarrassing” when they want to remove a post. They are asked what’s happening in the post, how they feel about it and how sad they are. In addition, they are given a text box with a polite pre-written response that can be sent to the friend who hurt their feelings. (In early versions of this feature, only 20 percent of teenagers filled out the form. When Facebook added more descriptive language like “feelings” and “sadness,” the figure grew to 80 percent.)

“We’ve played around with having pre-populated messages versus no message at all,” Dr. Brackett said. “If kids are given a blank box, often times they are going to say things that are not going to be helpful,” including cursing at their friends. When Facebook offered more developed responses like “This post is mean. It makes me feel sad and I don’t want it on Facebook,” 85 percent of teenagers who wanted a post removed sent a message.

This article validates a few of our ideas:

1. Blank boxes often lead to unhelpful or even bad quality responses. Use templates to help mitigate that.
2. Allow users to express emotions in a rich, descriptive way. Body language, tone of voice and subtle emotions are lost when you read “This app sucks!” or “Great”. Our emotion-centric ideas can be tried may not be a panacea, but it’s heading in the right general direction.

[pwalm]

:arrow_up: THIS