If you’ve ever bought anything, ever, you’ve probably experienced Wrap Rage. Wrap Rage occurs when you are reduced to a profanity-sputtering lunatic by the seemingly simple act of opening a packaged product. Parents know this rage well, and during the holiday season are more susceptible to it due to toy buying. The zip ties, the wire twisties, the sealed clamshells, the cardboard…all will lead you to the spiked eggnog fairly quickly. Amazon must have taken note of their customer complaints. Last week, they pledged to change packaging forever with what they’re calling “frustration-free packaging” thus ending the need for box cutters, Band-aids and Christmas morning sobbing. While it’s unclear still what products will eventually move towards this kind of improved packaging, what is evident is that toys are probably one of the biggest offenders. Buzzillions has a number of toys that are not only pleasantly free of the traditional packaging, but are also made of eco-friendly materials, like reclaimed woods and milk jug plastic. Not only are they excellent toys in sensible packaging, but they’re all highly rated. My personal favorite (something I got just the other day for my twins) tops the list below. I was able to open it in about nine seconds.

Ten green toys that won’t make you cry…

1. Recycled Plastic Tea Set: Durable and adorable tea sets, made of recycled milk jugs. And gloriously…no wire twisties in the packaging.
2. 27 Piece Cookware Dining Set: Play cookware for the little chef in your life. Also from Green Toys and also made of recycled milk jugs.
3. Wonderworld Washing Sink: Play washing sink made of eco friendly woods.
4. Imaginarium Chunky Wood Train: Natural wood and again, no batteries!
5. Plan Toys Logging Truck: And the irony prize goes to…the logging truck made of sustainable wood.
6. Plan Toys Sports Car: Earth friendly rubber wood. no gas required.
7. Wooden Parking Garage: Once there were parking lots, now it’s a peaceful oasis…made of rubber wood.
8. Kettler Fold n Go Frog Bike: Figuratively and literally a green toy, with recycled resins making up 98% of the plastic.
9. Imaginarium Natural Wood Blocks: Certified by the Forest Stewardship Council and much more attractive than the plastic alphabet blocks.
10. Discover Rig: Crafted of an eco friendly bio composite called sprigwood. Lights and sound effects generated by pushing, not batteries!

The last couple days we reached out to BabyCheapSkate, a popular mom blogger and long time Buzzillions user, to hold a giveaway on behalf of Buzzillions. We decided to give away two $25 cash prizes to two random people who write a comment on how they would use Buzzillions, what they think of it, what could be improved, and so forth. Reading all the comments has been really exciting for us, and it’s great how much time people spent exploring the site and telling us how they’ll use it for their new baby, or holiday shopping, etc.

You can see the contest here, and you can even comment for a chance to win because it doesn’t end until Monday!

Our second giveaway is being held on SisterlySavings and that contest is still running too :).

We love giveaways!

It feels like every day now we’re hearing about another bank going under or getting acquired, mass job losses, and the Fed spending our hard earned money to “save” the financial markets. While we don’t have much control over these economic disasters, ShopSmartMag.org published 7 sites that can help individuals spend wisely and take control of their own personal finances. 

ShopSmart magazine, a product of Consumer Union who also publishes ConsumerReports.org, named Buzzillions as the top User Reviews site, as it can “help you to find the best products and avoid the worst.”

Among other sites, ShopSmarter also listed Ebates.com for rebates, RetailMeNot.com for  coupon codes that actually work, Freeshipping.org for free-shipping coupons, amongst several others that you can read about here. 

If you’re a ShopSmart magazine subscriber, watch out for the article in their November 2008 issue. 

Recently we’ve had two widely regarded mom bloggers review their experience using Buzzillions. MomAdvice who writes helpful money saving tips, wrote a very flattering review about how she uses Buzzillions and how it helped her find the right GPS system. 

MomReviews also writes reviews on a wide range of products she uses, which is especially why she found Buzzillions to be unique for having reviews written by real people. She highlighted all the features we love seeing catch on with people, like the affinity recommendation wizard, review snapshot, and of course the discovery of highly reviewed products you never would have known about otherwise. You can read her review on us here. 

The other day Robert Scoble wrote a pretty good post about how some companies like Twitter gets a disproportionate amount of blog coverage compared to other companies like Meebo (who has a significant amount more engagement and traffic than Twitter) and is under represented.

His very realistic theory was that Twitter is a tool most bloggers actively use, thus have a strong bias to cover the company frequently, while Meebo isn’t a tool most technology centric writers use. The disappointing thing about this truth is that readers don’t get a diversity of startup and technology news, since the top bloggers end up covering the same story about every single (often uninteresting) move Twitter makes.

Recently we got coverage on VentureBeat “PowerReviews aims to become the AdSense of product reviews” which highlighted our goal to be the OS for retailers of every size to collect customer reviews. It got a decent amount of pickup, but it was definitely no $999.99 for “I am Rich” iPhone app story.

What do you think about the news, analysis, and coverage of technology in the blogosphere?

On Tuesday Google Insights launched, a tool you can use to “See what the world is searching for.” I played around with different keywords to realize that there are so many possibilities with this tool for marketers, advertisers, and any company with a desire to understand search behavior to choose advertising messaging, seasonal planning, follow product/brand trends, and on and on.

A great example on their “How can I use Google Insights for Search?” page, they showed how while “fuel efficiency” is a growing concern for people, “car safety” gets a significant amount of interest which an auto advertiser would want to include in advertising campaigns:

I can think of many ways for Buzzillions to take advantage of this tool from buying keywords, to messaging, and seasonal features in the future..back to school is right around the corner!

We sat at our desk pounding away at our keyboards and managing the online content for Buzzillions. Somehow the Content Team ended up talking about Axe. Yes, Axe shower gels, the deodorants, the body shots. While comparing the smells of these Axe products, my colleague Pete revealed his dismay for Old Spice, because it gives him rashes.

Perplexed, we hopped on to Buzzillions and we researched the product to see if anyone else has that issue. Pete found the product and we read the reviews. Someone else actually had the same issue. Bingo Neat-o! Buzzillions really does empower[s] consumers by providing the purchasers’ experience with legitimate data.

This experience led me to think, “What does empowering the consumer mean?” Empower, (in street terms), means to give an edge to. Empowering consumers, from a sociological perspective, means providing legitimate data for consumers to make educated purchases. Data needs to be managed to ensure quality. Buzzillions now has over 2.3 million reviews. These reviews are managed by the 30+ member Moderation Team led by our fearless leader Lily. They scan the reviews to ensure that the data is coming from legitimate sources, and they follow strict guidelines that ensure useful comments.

In the end process, consumers can draw data from the reviews and make their own conclusion on whether the product is worth their hard earned money. The clean data can help answer many questions that a common consumer has. What type of person is this product made fore? What are some of the cool features? Are there common issues with the product? Should I get a warranty for the item? How good is the quality of the material? Is there a possibility that Old Spice might cause a rash on me? (It did for Pete.)

So Buzzillions is in some way a database for people to research and buy their product in a streamlined process. It offers a way for a community to get useful data to buy products that they will be satisfied with. Since I’ve been informed of the possibility of Old Spice causing rashes, I think I will stick with Axe. It smells really good. Trust me, check it out here.

Bert

In an actual store, you have to decide how to arrange your merchandise. Should items be arranged by type? Or use? Do running shoes go in the shoe section? Or should all the running equipment be kept together? How do most people shop? What helps them find things easier?

These are all questions a store has to think about in order to keep shoppers as happy as possible. However, everyone is a little different and no matter where items are placed, not everyone will be able to find it with the same ease.

The advantage of being an online store is that we can place products wherever we want. We’re not limited to just one aisle in a store; we can put products in as many areas as we think will be useful. So we can put running shoes with shoes and also with other running equipment. We can put hiking clothing with clothing and also with other hiking equipment. You shouldn’t even need to think about where to find something. Wherever it could be, it should be.

No more “it’s in aisle 3 next to the canned tomatoes”.

Shawn Collins of AffiliateTip wrote a great post today highlighting our success metrics which helped us win the Innovative Publisher of the Year Award.

Take a read to see some interesting stats about our best performing affiliate partners including OneStepAhead, BiggerBras, REI, and Overstock (in that order), our conversion rate, and our performance rank in affiliate networks.

Factoids from Innovative Affiliate Buzzillions.com

There’s a lot of great buzz around consumer reviews lately, as more market researchers and retailers see the benefits of giving customers a public voice. I had a great exchange of ideas recently with Paul M. Banas who writes a top content marketing blog Insight Buzz on the topics of consumer reviews and social elements of online retail.

There have been many studies done on the influence of consumer reviews, such as the Deloitte stats Paul pointed out: “we find the 82% of online shoppers who read reviews say reviews have a direct influence on what they buy, either changing their minds on which product to buy or to provide reassurance on purchasing their original choice.”

This leads into what kind of consumer reviews people trust and why. Jeremiah Owyang delves into this in his post citing a study that shows people trust the opinions of their friends or acquaintances who have used the products themselves most, and the opinions by bloggers least:

So when it comes to consumer reviews, it’s interesting that people trust consumer reviews on a retailer’s site (60%) more than consumer reviews on a content site (52%). Buzzillions is in an interesting mix between the two, since we aggregate consumer reviews from all of our retail clients, yet we are considered a consumer reviews site.

The stats show that consumer generated reviews overall are trusted a lot more than editorial/expert reviews, discussion boards, and especially reviews by bloggers, and Jeremiah emphasizes the need for product manufacturers and marketers to recognize this as a big priority.