Both Barrels Communications Ltd

Travel sites providing consumer reviews will be able to overcome the issue of fake reviews

Social commerce company Reevoo today announced a deal with Octopus, part of the Kuoni Group, to provide authenticated reviews of cities and hotels offered as destinations by Octopus. The deal heralds the beginning of the end for the problem of fake reviews, consigning to history the kind of allegations that have dogged some travel review sites.

“Travel review sites have been the subject of allegations regarding the authenticity of their reviews on several occasions. This is damaging for all parties because it plants doubt in consumers’ minds,” explained Richard Anson, Reevoo founder and CEO. “But Reevoo only collects reviews from authenticated customers. This, and our independence, means travellers and holidaymakers can be confident that, wherever they see the Reevoo brand, the opinions they are reading are from people who have been on a particular holiday, stayed at the hotel, or gone on that trip.

“As we roll out our service throughout the travel sector, consumers will be quick to cotton on to the fact that sites which continue to display unverified reviews may be making a conscious decision to do so, because they know it doesn’t have to be that way,” he added.

Reevoo’s strategy of proactively contacting people who actually stayed in a hotel or visited a particular city, to invite them to write a review, overcomes the problem of fake reviews. This strategy is at the heart of the Reevoo manifesto announced in September, which focuses on the authenticity of its reviews. The UK Government welcomed Reevoo’s initiative via the Consumer Minister Ed Davey MP.

Research also shows that the independence of reviews is an important factor in determining how they are perceived: consumers trust reviews and opinions provided by an independent provider such as Reevoo three times more than reviews provided by the brand which stands to benefit from them.

In addition to reading reviews, visitors to the Octopus site will be able to ask questions of previous hotel guests directly, via an “Ask a guest” button, helping to provide reassurance and encouraging them to make their booking. Consumers will also be able to rate their own experience with Octopus and see how other travellers rated Octopus, providing continuously updated ratings including the percentage of satisfied customers who would book again through Octopus. Yet more social functionality will allow Octopus to respond in real-time to questions asked or issues raised in reviews.

A spokesperson for Octopus said: “For many people a holiday is the biggest single purchase they make in any year, paying up to thousands of pounds. It is absolutely right that they should know what other people genuinely thought of their own, similar trip, without worrying that the review might not be all it seems. We’re delighted to be leading the way in our sector by making that possible with Reevoo.

“As for allowing people to rate us, we’re confident about putting our money where our mouth is. Knowing what people like and dislike about the Octopus service sits well with our business ethos of listening to customers and continually improving our service. Conversations about our service will happen with or without us, so it is far better to be part of them and to learn from them,” he added.

[ends]

Notes to editors
- Reviews for Octopus-offered hotels and cities are provided by Reevoo Mark.
- Service reviews will be provided by Reevoo Reputation.
- Reviews are ‘crawlable’ by search engines. This enables Reevoo Traffic to provide Octopus with valuable, user generated, constantly refreshed, keyword-rich content for SEO purposes.
- The product that allows potential guests to ask questions directly to past hotel guests is Reevoo Conversations.
- The product that enables Octopus to respond in real-time to questions and reviews is Brand Response.
- The research mentioned here is from a consumer survey carried out by Fly Research in September 2011, with 1016 nationally representative UK consumers.

Nearly one-fifth of IT professionals fear their businesses may never re-open for business or would fail shortly after a major security breach, as a direct consequence of that breach, a new survey shows. The IP EXPO security index survey was conducted among IT professionals from businesses of all sizes and sectors on behalf of Imago Techmedia, organiser of the forthcoming end-to-end infrastructure show IP EXPO, to illustrate the all-pervasive nature of IT security and how important it is to IT professionals in all roles.

“Respondents to our survey overwhelmingly agreed that IT security should not be viewed as an isolated activity, but would best be treated as an integrated part of businesses’ entire technology reviews and processes,” said Mike England, Social Business & Content Director at IP EXPO event organiser Imago Techmedia. “SECURITY 11 at IP EXPO is a not-to-be-missed event for vendors and end users alike, because it involves you in the security debate in its wider context, rather than addressing the issue exclusively from the perspective of an information security professional.”

Other findings include:
o 70% said they believed security would be best considered collaboratively and routinely across all aspects of ICT.
o 47% said they believed their own organisations needed more security-related collaboration between different ICT disciplines.
o 44% of respondents stated that at least a quarter of their jobs involved IT security. For 23%, security took up more than half their time.
o 23% of respondents said that their approaches to compliance compromised their security.
o 26% said mobile devices such as smartphones and laptops posed the highest risk of data loss to their businesses.
o 18% said memory sticks being used for data theft posed the highest risk to their businesses.
o 68% said they viewed IT security as “a necessary evil”.

“Given the attention and money poured into security for many years now, the headline figure comes as quite a shock,” said Mike England. “It is when we get into the detail, the myriad ways in which security is – or isn’t – addressed, that we see how such a figure can be reached. In many cases, responsibility for security is distributed throughout ICT departments, or even throughout businesses, and that’s why a whopping 70% of our respondents have stated a desire for organisations to address security from a holistic and collaborative perspective. This is a point our speakers and exhibitors will undoubtedly address at IP EXPO and SECURITY 11,” he added.

The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) UK & Ireland has joined the security roster as a strategic partner of IP EXPO at SECURITY 11. CSA UK & Ireland President Des Ward commented on the results of the survey: “Lack of collaboration and a perceived disconnect between security and business would explain the view of security being deemed ‘a necessary evil’, or even a cost of doing business online and consequently having little real business value. Businesses need to evolve beyond compliance risk management to information risk management in order to implement strategies that reduce the likelihood of breaches occurring, while at the same time affording a level of business agility fitting today’s interconnected society,” he suggested.

Of the main findings, Nigel Stanley, security practice leader at Bloor Research and IT Security Pathfinder at IP EXPO, said: “What’s clear is that even if someone’s job doesn’t directly involve security per se, everyone needs to be actively engaged in dealing with the problem. And the way that businesses are going about it is encouraging, because security management needs to be a two-way process with the users actively engaged in the process. Generally, taking compliance steps should enhance an organisation’s security – unless of course it is doing just enough to tick the boxes but failing to see the broader benefits of building a compliant business. However, reducing security posture to achieve compliance is bonkers.

“The IT security industry has been left wanting in respect of the consumerisation of IT that’s been fuelled by smartphone adoption. Only now are we starting to see management tools for these devices, so it’s no surprise that these have been identified by respondents as the biggest risk area,” he commented.

Nigel Stanley will also participate in an IP EXPO security panel debate sponsored by software provider ESET at 2:30pm on Thursday October 20th. The session, entitled “Securing the Road Warrior”, will look at the security issues faced by remote workers and the best practices employers should be aware of when connecting remote devices to the corporate network. Stanley will be joined in the debate by Steve Gold, technical editor, Infosecurity Magazine; Sarb Sembhi, director of consulting, Incoming Thought Security Consultancy; and Mark James, head of technical support, ESET UK.

SECURITY 11 is a new dedicated focus area at this year’s IP EXPO, examining IT security in this wider computing context. SECURITY 11 will feature exhibitors from the worlds of cloud computing, storage, wireless, virtualization and IP networking. Attendees can explore the impact security has on developing IT infrastructure and discuss the latest tools and procedures being developed to meet the security challenges posed by these disparate but interconnected technology areas.

SECURITY 11 was developed after delegates at last year’s IP EXPO revealed the extent to which security was linked to other decisions they would be making about their IT infrastructures. And, according to Gartner’s CIO Agenda survey, improving business continuity, risk and security is one of the top ten business strategies for CIOs this year.

[ends]

Notes to editors
1) Infosecurity professionals and others with responsibility for Infosecurity as part of their roles can register now for your free place at IP EXPO, 19th – 20th October, London’s Earls Court 2. After 19:00 BST on 18th October there is a £25 fee payable.

2) The Cloud Security Alliance, a new strategic partner for IP EXPO and Security 11, is involved with a number of high level infosecurity discussions at the show.

Meets Government requirement for a quality mark for web sites that have clear and transparent consumer feedback

Sony, Currys, PC World, Dixons.co.uk, Everything Everywhere, Best Buy UK, Jessops and Toshiba are among major retailers and brands that have given their support to a new quality mark and manifesto intended to protect consumers from misleading consumer reviews. The manifesto and quality mark are intended to renew consumer trust in such reviews, which has been damaged in the last two years by allegations of fake reviews, paid-for reviews, or the selective display of only good reviews.

Created by leading social commerce company Reevoo, the Reevoo Mark and its accompanying manifesto meet Government objectives for a quality mark to identify authentic social media content. Its desire for a self-regulating quality mark for consumer reviews was described in its consumer empowerment strategy document ‘Better Choices: Better Deals – Consumers Powering Growth’, which was published by the Department for Business, Skills and Innovation and announced by Consumer Minister Edward Davey in April.

The Consumer Minister said: “In the Government’s consumer empowerment strategy, Better Choices, Better Deals, we highlighted the importance of feedback and review schemes. Where the methods used in publishing reviews are robust, transparent and trustworthy they help consumers make decisions, and this in turn leads to businesses improving their goods and services. I therefore welcome this initiative by Reevoo, as informed consumers play a key part in a competitive and fair economy.”

Reevoo’s manifesto sets out the core values of the Reevoo Mark, a quality mark that reassures customers they can trust the online reviews on the websites of all participating brands and retailers. The promises contained in the manifesto provide explicit guarantees that all reviews provided by Reevoo are genuine, come from verified purchasers of that product, include both good and bad reviews, and are not paid-for.

Richard Anson, co-founder and CEO of Reevoo, said: “We share the concerns of Government that confidence in online reviews could be damaged. It’s all very well telling people they can trust reviews; now this manifesto makes it totally clear why they can trust our reviews. And the Reevoo Mark says ‘the manifesto applies here’.”

“Reviews are terrifically powerful and extremely valuable – they play a vital role in helping people decide what to buy based on real customer opinion. This is a real step forwards for consumers, who can now buy with more confidence, secure in the knowledge that they can trust the information they use to make their choice.”

Reviews are immensely influential, with 81% of online shoppers claiming they use reviews to decide what to buy (YouGov, 2010).

Signing up to the manifesto and use of the Reevoo Mark also assures the authorities that the retailer or brand is fully compliant with the letter and spirit of the ASA’s current guidelines that stipulate user-generated-content on sites must be ‘legal, decent, honest and true’.

Notes to editors
There have been a number of allegations over the last two years regarding bad practice in the field of user-generated-content. These include the well-publicised allegations against a well-known hotel recommendation site that unverified purchasers were leaving reviews; allegations of payment for reviews and allegations of fake reviews or cherrypicking and only showing good reviews.

Online shoppers are clearly aware of these incidents: research by Reevoo in January 2011 suggested that 38% of online shoppers are unsure who writes reviews and whether they can be trusted; 35% expressed concern that positive reviews are paid for; and 30% worry that only good reviews are shown.

The manifesto states that consumers can trust Reevoo reviews because, together with their partners, Reevoo will always strive to ensure that:
1. All of our reviews are from genuine, verified purchasers.
2. No fake reviews ever make it in.
3. We show the good with the bad. We do not tolerate anyone editing or removing negative reviews or showing only the reviews they like.
4. Our reviews cannot be manipulated.
5. We are always transparent: where a response is from a brand or retailer this will be crystal clear.
6. Our reviews remain impartial and independent.

About ‘Better Choices: Better Deals’
The Government launched its consumer empowerment strategy, ‘Better Choices: Better Deals. Consumers Powering Growth’ on 13th April 2011. The strategy sets out what Government and others can do to help increase consumer power in a rapidly changing and demanding economy. It aims to put consumers in charge so that they are better able to get the best deals for themselves, individually and collectively. It also looks at ways of helping the most vulnerable and disadvantaged who may not otherwise benefit from rapid technological and social change.

An innovative non-regulatory approach, working in partnership with businesses, consumer groups and 3rd sector bodies, it will contribute to economic growth by putting information and influence into the hands of consumers.

Download Better Choices: Better Deals – Consumers Powering Growth (PDF, 761 Kb)

Social commerce solutions are delivering substantial, measurable business benefits despite the current economic situation, figures show. Reevoo partner Jessops reports that social commerce tools have driven conversion rates up by 10 to 15% and that the level of business conducted online has increased from 8% to 28% in just 18 months. Another partner, Dixons Retail, reports that customer satisfaction with its ecommerce site has improved by 6% in the last nine months alone thanks to its social commerce-enabled site.

Such figures, against a backdrop of challenging economic conditions, are commonplace among retailers and brands that are successfully adjusting to changing consumer purchasing behaviour, according to Richard Anson, founder and CEO of social commerce company Reevoo and one of Europe’s pre-eminent social commerce experts.

“Over the past five years the consumer purchase journey has changed hugely; we now refer to it as the social purchase journey. People interact with each other, with brands, and with social content via the web, mobile, Facebook and in-store for example. But the critical fact to grasp is that there is no single, controllable journey; customers can choose to use any channel, at any point in their decision-making, and at any time,” he said.

“This change brings a huge opportunity for brands to inject trust, and trusted social content, at all touchpoints, in order to influence consumers in a trusted, transparent manner. Retailers like Jessops and Dixons Retail, which are embracing the social purchase journey, are enjoying positive benefits even in these difficult times – and it’s Reevoo’s mission to bring these benefits to as many retailers and brands as we can,” he added.

Aiming to make sense of the consumers’ new shopping habits for hard-pressed retailers, Reevoo has published a new ebook detailing the intricacies of the new social purchase journey. The ebook is freely available [registration required] from the Reevoo website: http://b2b.reevoo.com/social-purchase-journey

Esther Soto, Head of Ecommerce Strategy at Dixons Retail, said: “Customer decision making and purchasing has changed, in three main ways. First: our customers are being much more careful when they purchase a product, and they’re researching much more than they used to do. Secondly, the traditional concept of a shopping journey doesn’t really exist anymore. What [our customers] have now is a number of touch points, and they interact with us when and how it suits them. On top of this, mobile and other alternative channels have just added a layer of complexity.”

Chris Scott, eBusiness Marketing Manager (Northern Europe), describes how Toshiba – a brand, rather than a retailer – has responded to the changing customer purchase journey. “What we’ve seen over the last 18 months is that customers are expecting all product information in one location. We’ve responded to this change in the customer journey by providing shoppers with all of the information they need to make a purchasing decision – reviews, ask-an-owner, videos and retailer links – to make the customer’s life easier. It’s about brand engagement pre-purchase. The result is that consumers stay on pages longer and propensity to buy has increased. We’re also seeing mobile becoming increasingly important: over the next two years, we believe 50 – 60% of our users will be on mobile devices.”

Sean Emmett, Marketing and Ecommerce Director at Jessops, said: “People used to use Jessops to research products, but didn’t always go on to buy from us. We’ve increased the amount of advice, reviews, and content on our site so that when customers do their research at Jessops they then go on to actually purchase either online, or through our stores. The big advantage for Jessops is that a lot of customers still prefer to actually come in store to make the final purchase: we find that over 60% of our orders are actually researched and placed online, and then collected in store. Providing the best multi-channel experience is great for Jessops because it allows us to continue their journey, adding further advice and value to the customer when they pick their camera up from our stores.”

Dixons Retail’s Esther Soto says that Dixons will be keeping its foot on the pedal in terms of staying ahead of the game with social commerce: “The market continues to evolve, so we need to be agile and nimble enough to adjust to what our customers are demanding from us at any given time. We will continue to partner with experts like Reevoo to make our customer experience as enjoyable and effective as possible.”

Notes to editors
1. For more extensive quotes from Dixons Retail, Jessops and Toshiba, watch this video (5 minutes)
2. For images that help to illustrate the social purchase journey, see below.
3. Reevoo’s freely available ebook on the social purchase journey contains many more quotes which may be reproduced, in context and with suitable reference. Quotes include:
- “The reality is that just like most other things in life, there is no one thing that makes something happen. People use a variety of methods to make decisions using a combination of tools and resources.” – Frank Reed, Marketing Pilgrim
- “Customers have been providing user-generated content for a decade through reviews, forum posts, uploading photos, etc. Sharing tools now enable more eyeballs to see this fab content, and, even better, the eyeballs know the fingers who created the content.” – Linda Bustos, Get Elastic
- “In highly complex sales situations, participants in the buying process come and go. They may enter the process at the stage of needs specification, only to depart when alternatives are evaluated, or they may participate only when demonstrations are given, for example.” – Dr Jeff Tanner, MyCustomer

Reevoo Analytics offers brands and retailers unprecedented levels of actionable insight into the effectiveness of their social commerce strategies

Europe’s leading social commerce company Reevoo today launched a sophisticated analytics dashboard that delivers unprecedented levels of insight into the performance and impact of reviews and social commerce strategies. Consumer electronics manufacturers Sharp and Sony, and the UK’s biggest retailer Tesco all report measurable performance improvements that they attribute to the new data now available to them.

Reevoo Analytics tracks social commerce activity in real time, ensuring that user-generated content such as reviews work harder for brands and retailers. Through customised reporting tools, tracking of ‘review impact’, monitoring of social content trends and the identification of previously unseen opportunities, its enhanced social commerce analytics suite provides powerful, actionable insights into the performance of social commerce strategies.

Leading consumer electronics brand Sharp has been using Reevoo Analytics since June. Pete Braithwaite, Ecommerce & Online Systems Manager, Sharp, says: “As a customer-focused company, it is imperative that we have as much feedback from consumers as possible to shape future product development and the services we offer. Reevoo ensures we have huge amounts of customer opinion and now with Reevoo Analytics this information is clearly presented, easy to analyse, and we can instantly and directly respond to our customers. It’s terrific to be able to quickly get an overview of customer sentiment on a global level and then drill into a particular category, individual product and even individual product reviews. We can also see at a glance which of our products are best rated and which have room for improvement with the reports, allowing us to provide valuable feedback to our product development and marketing teams. The whole package delivers real value and ensures our online performance is improving daily.”

Anna Burrell, Web Development Manager, Tesco.com, said: “In a short period of time, our trading teams are able to make better stocking and procurement decisions based on Reevoo Analytics’ product reports, which indicate the best- and worst-rated products. The KPI summary, which is constantly updated to show how we’re doing right now is also very valuable because we operate in an online, real-time environment with a low margin for error.”

Sony already uses other Reevoo products in twelve countries across Europe. Manuela Futschik, Communication Manager, Sony Switzerland & Austria, said: “Our site only went live recently, yet already I can track weekly trends and progress on coverage. When dealing with a huge number of product SKUs, the KPI summary is invaluable because everything can be sorted according to the criteria that matter to me, so I can quickly find the information that I need without having to scan through reports manually. The single ‘dashboard’ also makes it easy to manage multiple countries.”

Reevoo Analytics enables:
- tracking of incremental sales and accurately calculates the impact of reviews on revenues
- key metrics to be viewed in real-time and/or downloaded and shared
- trends to be monitored through highly visual snapshots of daily, weekly and monthly figures
- identification of less obvious, hidden opportunities
- reviews or comments requiring attention to receive a rapid response

Its online dashboard displays a real-time snapshot of incremental revenue driven by reviews, and provides instant access to key metrics including conversion uplift, review collection, product coverage and consumer engagement, as well as instant online access to product, category and overall review performance reports.

Richard Anson, founder and CEO of Reevoo, said: “Reports generated by Reevoo Analytics are easily customised by changing parameters including reporting period, product set and more. This makes it extremely simple to monitor top-line figures, track trends over time and – perhaps most importantly – to take immediate action to remedy negative trends. In a real-time environment, what can be more vital or valuable than being able to respond and react, also in real-time?”

[ends]

More about Reevoo Analytics
Other features of Reevoo Analytics include:
- tracking and reporting on best/worst performing products
- benchmarking of review performance against other retailers and brands
- the ability to view and manage all your consumer reviews and comments, and easily respond to reviews that have been marked by the Reevoo team as requiring a Brand Response. Reviews may be easily sorted according to several criteria.

The dashboard gives a powerful and quick overview of the status of social commerce content. Its ability to drill into specific time periods makes it simple to track e-commerce activity against specific campaigns or launches, or can be used to support required reporting periods.

About Reevoo
Reevoo (http://b2b.reevoo.com) is Europe’s leading provider of social commerce solutions. Reevoo has been deployed by more than 140 major brands including Sony, BestBuy, Tesco and Dixons helping them to achieve average sales uplifts of 18% through boosted conversion rates and increased order values, turning browsers into shoppers.

Reevoo has solicited more than 2,500,000 pieces of independent, impartial social content from genuine customers. To help consumers make their purchase decision, Reevoo provides easy access to this content more than half a billion times every month to shoppers across the Reevoo network.

Reevoo’s consumer website (http://www.reevoo.com) also presents shoppers with everything they need to decide what to buy, including impartial customer reviews, price comparison, expert advice, product information and voucher deals.

Harnessing social media the key to “quality, unique content”

Europe’s largest social commerce company Reevoo and its SEO partner Distilled have published a whitepaper outlining the SEO best practices that must now be the highest priority for online retailers in the aftermath of Google’s Panda/Farmer algorithm update.

Panda/Farmer is widely reported as negatively impacting the search ranking results of several prominent online retailers. The whitepaper provides all existing online retailers with executable SEO tactics that enable them to mitigate the effects of the February 2011 algorithm update, and provides invaluable advice for any retailer starting from scratch and intending to design a site that will work well in the new world of search.

One of the effects of Panda/Farmer is to filter out websites that appear not to produce their own content, choosing instead to copy content from somewhere else and republish it. This is a contentious issue for online retailers which, with thousands of products, often resort to publishing either stock manufacturers’ descriptions of products, or content that other retailers are also likely to access and put online. Google also increasingly appears to reward websites that appear genuine and trustworthy to the user.

Will Critchlow, founder of Distilled, says: “The importance of quality, unique content has always been apparent in the SEO industry; indeed, when asked to advise webmasters on what SEO tactics they should employ, the answer from Google typically includes the words ‘quality, unique content’. Getting quality, unique content onto individual product pages has always been a problem for e-commerce websites, and Panda exacerbates the difficulties.”

Richard Anson, CEO of Reevoo, continues: “The problem isn’t one of knowing what to write, it’s more one of scaling the content across thousands of products. While a good e-commerce team can write about the products they sell, writing enough content to cover a growing inventory of products isn’t likely to be the best use of their time.

“It’s also hard to imagine that a team could write infinitely without resorting to stereotypical descriptions. And it ignores the fact that worldly-wise and savvy consumers need to be persuaded by people – not the retailer itself – that what they see and read is accurate and trustworthy,” he says.

Distilled and Reevoo have collaborated to combine the best in search expertise with Europe’s finest social commerce thinking. Through examples and case studies, the resulting whitepaper explains exactly how product reviews and other user-generated content can bring a variety of SEO benefits to retailers and manufacturers – and turn Google’s Panda update into a friend rather than an enemy.

It outlines the opportunities and best practices for improving product and category pages, targeting additional long-tail keywords and gaining more exposure in the search results.

The Distilled/Reevoo whitepaper – entitled ‘User Generated Content for SEO’ – is freely available to download from here.

[ends]

All company, product or service names mentioned herein may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

Notes to editors
The Distilled/Reevoo whitepaper is freely available to download from http://www.reevoo.com/b2b/user-generated-content-for-seo-ebook-2/.

About Reevoo
Reevoo (http://www.reevoo.com/b2b) is Europe’s leading provider of social commerce solutions. Reevoo has been deployed by more than 120 major brands including Sony, BestBuy, Tesco and Dixons helping them to achieve average sales uplifts of 18% through boosted conversion rates and increased order values, turning browsers into shoppers.

Reevoo has solicited more than two million independent, impartial reviews from genuine customers. To help consumers make their purchase decision, Reevoo provides easy access to these reviews, displaying more than half a billion reviews to shoppers every month across the Reevoo network.

Reevoo’s consumer website (http://www.reevoo.com) also presents shoppers with everything they need to decide what to buy, including impartial customer reviews, price comparison, expert advice, product information and voucher deals.

About Distilled
Distilled (http://www.distilled.net/) is a leading SEO consultancy with offices in London, New York City and Seattle. Working with major brands, international companies and high-growth startups, and running advanced SEO conferences in the UK and US, Distilled’s consultants are considered at the forefront of SEO research and knowledge.

Austerity is the nation’s new favourite brand for appliances, gadgets, gizmos and toys as the reality of reduced personal incomes starts to hit

The UK’s love affair with gadgets, toys and gizmos shows few outward signs of running out of steam. But over the last 12 months, ‘austerity gadgets’ – appliances, toys and gizmos from less well-known manufacturers – have become the nation’s new must-haves, according to new statistics from Europe’s largest social commerce company, Reevoo.

In eight out of the 19 gadget and appliance categories that it monitors, Reevoo found that the product rated most highly by real owners in the last 12 months is either a model from a less well-known, less-expensive brand than the obvious ‘market leader’, or is a budget version of a product from a leading manufacturer.

The eight categories in which the best-rated product is not from the obvious brand leader or is a budget model, are: Compact camera (Casio Exilim EX-H5), Coffee maker (Essentials C12FCB10), Cooker/oven (Beko OIF22300XR), Dishwasher (Beko DFN1000X), Fridge/freezer (Daewoo FRNY22D2W), Mobile phone (Nokia 2323 Classic), MP3 player (Apple iPod Shuffle 4th generation), Printer (Brother HL3070CW), Vacuum cleaner (Numatic Hetty).

“We’ve been running this analysis for several years, and these results are quite unprecedented,” said Reevoo CEO Richard Anson. “There are only two plausible explanations. Either the brands that people previously perceived as being less desirable have suddenly become very good, and very cool to own. Or, more likely as we all have less money to spend, value has become the most important criteria by which people measure how good their purchase is – as or more important to them than functionality, style, design or cool-ness.

“Who would imagine that the best-rated mobile phone would be a three year old Nokia [the Nokia 2323 Classic] available SIM-free for just £40? It’s incredible to say it but, with everyone poorer yet no-one wanting to go without ‘toys’, we’re into an era of austerity gadgets,” he added.

For the full list of best-rated products in all categories, visit Reevoo (http://www.reevoo.com/b2b/news-events/best-and-best-value-products-according-to-reevoo-data/).

Of the less well-known appliance manufacturers, Beko consistently rated well with Reevoo reviewers. Overall, owners rated products from Beko most highly in two categories – for dishwashers and ovens/cookers – while its products were also rated as the ‘best value for money’ in four categories washing machine, dishwasher, fridge-freezer and ovens/cookers.

One or two obvious favourites do make the list. Apple may not usually be lauded for good value for money but, in the MP3 player category, its iPod Shuffle is at the bottom of the range in specification and price. Its high rating suggests shoppers recognise it as a great-value, entry-level MP3 player, providing all the usual usability and style that people have come to expect from Apple but at a much more affordable price.

London-based Reevoo, founded and run by successful British internet entrepreneur Richard Anson, develops social commerce technology. Its software enables online retailers including Best Buy, Jessops, Dixons and Tesco to invite real customers to rate products they have actually bought, so that other potential buyers can read real reviews before they, too, decide which product to buy.

Reevoo trawled and analysed all of the reviews it has collected for all of its partners during the last 12 months – some 650,000 reviews – to determine which electrical appliances and gadgets are rated most highly by real people that actually bought and own them.

Ratings and review sites like Reevoo often enable consumers looking for a great deal to find premium products at low prices by displaying current prices from multiple retailers and allowing the consumer to choose which retailer’s site they want to visit. Reevoo also offers discount voucher codes, enabling customers to reduce the price they pay still further.

[ends]

All company, product or service names mentioned herein may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

Notes to editors
1. For the full list of best-rated products in all categories, visit Reevoo (http://www.reevoo.com/b2b/news-events/best-and-best-value-products-according-to-reevoo-data/).
2. Best-rated products were calculated by examining the scores from all published reviews written by UK consumers in the 12 months from April 2010 to March 2011, and refer to the product with the highest overall rating in that category. Best-value products were calculated from the “value for money” ratings for the same body of reviews, and must have a price in the lowest third of the current range for that product type.
3. Using Reevoo’s proactive reviews collection strategy, only verified purchasers of a given product are able to leave a Reevoo review for that product, the retailer from which it was purchased, and the item’s manufacturer – eliminating the problems of ‘fake’ reviews and ensuring the validity of Reevoo’s statistics.

Lack of reviews culture across most of continental Europe is now kein Problem/no problem/pas de problème, says Reevoo

Social commerce company Reevoo has developed an automated review translation tool that enables reviews from one country to be translated and used in other countries where the same product is sold. Reevoo’s new software has been piloted successfully by Sony across eight of its European websites, helping Sony to overcome the lack of an established reviews culture across continental Europe.

Reevoo used machine translation to supplement valuable and irreplaceable local language reviews, giving Sony a clear advantage of volume at launch. The near-instantaneous translation of reviews enables products to benefit from a high volume of reviews during the earliest part of their lifecycle, when products are at their most desirable and profitable. Reevoo’s use of machine translation also maintains vital objectivity in the process of translation, meaning there is no inadvertent interpretation of the voice of the consumer by a human translator.

Reevoo’s software employs Google Translate, a free translation service that provides instant translations between 57 different languages and can translate words, sentences and web pages between any of the supported languages. Using the Google Translate AJAX API, Reevoo’s developers created a tool that enables users to translate reviews into their native language.

Since the start of 2011, the ReevooMark™ service – complete with new translation tool – has gone live on Sony’s German, Italian and Dutch sites, with Reevoo already providing tens of thousands of ‘additional’, translated reviews. Reevoo’s ability to deliver ‘international network reviews’ means that hundreds of Sony products in these countries, which would otherwise have had no reviews at go live, have had reviews right from the first day of launch. In Germany, the proportion of products ‘review-less’ at launch was 34%, while in Italy and The Netherlands the figures were 35% and 30% respectively.

In fact, Sony’s German site had 511 local reviews at launch – but 58,395 network reviews. In Italy, the figures were 283 and 45,733, while in The Netherlands it was 375 and 49,100. Expressed differently: of every 114 reviews on the Sony Germany site, 113 were international network reviews made possible by Reevoo’s new software. Across all eight Sony sites on which Reevoo’s solution is deployed, nearly half a million international network reviews have been delivered.

The average number of network reviews for otherwise review-less products on Sony’s German site was more than 24; in Italy, 22; and, in The Netherlands, 41.

Kyle McGinn, chief technology officer for Reevoo, said: “For some time Reevoo has been the only social commerce solution that syndicates reviews of any given product across all partner sites – the ‘network effect’ – and now we have the only solution that delivers an ‘international network effect’.

“On average 78% of Sony products across the eight countries benefit from reviews, with a maximum of 94% – compared with a typical average for a similar business of below 20%. It’s impossible to overstate how important this is: the majority of products are most profitable in the first few weeks of sale, so brands like Sony need reviews quickly.

“Just from a volume perspective, what we’re doing is only possible using machine translation, but equally significantly it maintains the integrity of each and every review. Human translation is necessarily subjective, and risks turning something from a real customer review into a piece of marketing collateral,” he added.

Simon Moutzouris, Social Media Manager at Sony Europe, said: “Sony’s objectives for the roll-out of ratings and reviews across its European sites were for both the deployment and the ongoing function to require as few of our resources as possible, and for all the international sites to have reviews from day one. Because of the way that ReevooMark is deployed, and because Reevoo developed the translation tool, both of these were achieved.”

[ends]

Notes to editors
Try out Reevoo’s tool: visit http://mark.reevoo.com/reevoomark/de-DE/product?sku=DSCHX1.CEE8&retailer=SGM&badge_style=sonyde230by45 and click on ‘Reviews from other countries’ (from top tabs).

Devastating impact of passive reviews on sales conversions clearly revealed

Social commerce company Reevoo today highlighted the perils to retailers and brands of relying solely on ‘passive’ customer review systems. Passive review collection systems – in which anyone may leave a review via a feedback form – generate six times as many extremely low scores of 1/10 in comparison to proactive review collection systems. Since such low scores trigger conversion rates 5x lower than good scores, the inevitable result of passive systems is damage to retailers’ brands and to their bottom lines.

Figures collected by Reevoo show that, compared with systems in which all purchasers of the product are proactively contacted, passive review collection systems have a remarkable negative bias [see accompanying graphs]. Passive reviews generate:
- 6x as many extremely negative scores of 1/10
- 4x as many scores of 5 or less
- 20% fewer consumers giving extremely positive scores of 8, 9 or 10.

The subsequent impact of poor ratings on sales is dramatic. Reevoo’s own statistics – which come from analysis of its records of more than £1bn of transactions every year – show that:
- for products scoring 6 or below, the average conversion rate is 0.6%
- for products scoring over 6 but under 7.5, average conversion rate is 1.9%
- for products scoring 7.5 to 9 the average conversion rate is 3.3%.

Reevoo, Europe’s largest social commerce company, is a strong proponent of proactive review collection. CEO Richard Anson said: “Choosing the right system can mean the difference between a product receiving a glowing 8/10 score, driving sales and improving conversion – or an undeserved score of 4/10 that misleads consumers, damages your brand and costs you sales.

“The confusing polarisation of opinion that you see with passive systems – where readers are confronted with nothing but very positive and very negative reviews – is no help at all to consumers. In fact, consumers are likely to stop paying attention to your reviews altogether, ensuring you won’t see any of the benefits to your conversion and sales figures, and the effort you put into collecting them is wasted. Anything other than a proactive approach is pure folly,” he added.

Passive review systems make no effort to solicit reviews from customers, instead relying on site visitors to leave reviews and with no checks to ensure that ‘reviewers’ are genuine customers of the product. Unfortunately, because anger and disappointment are great motivators, unhappy customers are far more likely to write reviews in passive systems than happy ones, resulting in much lower scores and more negative reviews.

By contrast, proactive review systems like that operated by Reevoo reach out to all customers to request reviews. The benefit of proactively soliciting reviews from customers is two-fold: capturing the opinions of these purchasers makes reviews more reflective of the true range of consumer opinion and removes the inaccurate negative bias results in higher average review scores.

Developing trust in online markets, and ensuring that continuing innovation in the UK’s £50 billion online economy is met with strategic enforcement to tackle emerging or complex fair trading issues, is one of the OFT’s focus areas during 2011-12.

‘Measurement of impact’ a key element of the project

Kitchen appliance manufacturer Breville is to add Reevoo’s ratings and reviews solution to its web site. The new system will replace the previous complex, manual and labour-intensive process of maintaining ‘Buy’ links to Breville distributors across the web; instead, automated, Reevoo-provided links will direct consumers to the best places to purchase Breville products at the best prices, providing a marked improvement to the site’s usability and manageability.

Breville’s solution – ReevooMark™ – will display reviews for Breville products aggregated from more than 120 locations around the web. This will enable visitors to the Breville site to see Reevoo scores and detailed reviews for any Breville product without navigating away from its product page.

James Sizer, communications manager at Breville, says: “Our objective with reviews is to provide some additional peace of mind for customers as they make purchasing decisions. We want reviews to help customers make informed selections and choose the right product for themselves, ensuring satisfaction and encouraging brand loyalty.

“We’re also aiming to increase sales conversion for our retailers, because consumers will be making educated, informed decisions based on trusted, independent reviews from their peers. We also believe that the sharing of reviews via Reevoo will encourage a community aspect on our site. This will help us to understand consumer perception and needs, something we can feed into future product development,” he added.

Measurement is a key part of the project. Breville monitors every click on its site, enabling it to measure how many people decide to look at the Reevoo reviews on each product page and to track where the visitor goes next. “If the visitor then leaves our website via an external link to a retailer, we will consider the Reevoo review to have had a significant impact upon their decision making process,” explains Breville’s James Sizer.

The Breville range comprises approximately 150 products, of which a quarter will have reviews at launch. The long term aim is to feature Reevoo reviews for every product. “Over the next 12 months we’ll be able to measure the impact the Reevoo reviews have had on visitors, and to measure those products with Reevoo reviews against those without,” concludes Sizer.

Breville will also be displaying the Reevoo “Just Buy This One” badge on any products which have been chosen by Reevoo reviewers as ‘Best Buys’. For example, this Breville kettle is presently ‘best kettle’.

[ends]

About Breville
Breville is a leading brand in the small electrical appliance industry and holds the Number 1 position in several product categories including kettles, juicers and sandwich toasters. Breville’s success is driven by innovation and design, as well as a determination to provide great looking, high quality products. Breville and TV chef Antony Worrall Thompson have been working in partnership since 2000 to deliver a range of professional quality, easy-to-use food preparation products for homeowners. Worrall Thompson is host of ITV’s Daily Cooks Challenge and calls upon 20 years of experience at the highest level of cooking, having released best-selling books and owned a number of top UK restaurants, as well as making his name on the top cookery TV shows. Stockist information: 0800 525 089; visit www.breville.co.uk for more information.

About Reevoo
Reevoo (http://www.reevoo.com/b2b) is Europe’s leading provider of social commerce solutions. Reevoo’s social commerce services have been deployed by more than 120 major brands including Sony, BestBuy and Tesco, helping them to achieve average sales uplifts of 18% through boosted conversion rates and increased order values, turning browsers into shoppers.

Reevoo has solicited more than two million independent, impartial reviews from genuine customers. To help consumers make their purchase decision, Reevoo provides easy access to these reviews, displaying more than half a billion reviews to shoppers every month.

Reevoo’s consumer website (http://www.reevoo.com) also presents shoppers with everything they need to decide what to buy, including impartial customer reviews, price comparison, expert advice, product information and voucher deals.