Buzzillions Blogs

Buzzillions has grown a lot in the past year. We’ve added a lot more features, including:

• Buzzillions Reviewer’s Choice Awards
• Search within Category
• Product Histogram
• Product Q/A
• Similar Products Module
• Review Face-Off
• My Lists
• Review Comments

In order to support all these cool new features while still maintaining site usability, we decided to overhaul the site design.  This has given us an opportunity to strengthen the branding on Buzzillions.  You’ll notice a new color scheme and header, as well as enhanced navgation as you browse the site.  We’ve tried to keep things simple, which is one of the things many of you said you liked about our site, but also added in some more color and pizzazz, another frequent comment about the site (too plain!).

So what do you guys think?

Old Product Page

New Product Page

Congratulations are in order for the Buzzillions team, particularly our design & development folks. Buzzillions was awarded the distinction of “Best in Class” for a Ratings/Review site in the Interactive Media Awards contest. IMA evaluates nominees based on design, content, usability and feature functionality. We’re thrilled to be recognized & hope to keep our 2-year winning streak going!

Official press release

A user recently wrote to Buzzillions to complain that the reviews for a product were too many positive  (5 star ratings) and seemed too well written to be from regular people.  So how can they be sure that manufacturers aren’t “stuffing the system with their self serving 5.0 reviews of themselves”?

First of all, Buzzillions never pays people to write reviews.

Secondly, all reviews submitted to Buzzillions (most of our retail partners too) are moderated by an expert team.  There is no automatic approval system.  Everything is looked over by a group of real people.  They make sure that the reviews follow our guidelines but they also make sure that the reviews are authentic.  Our moderators would never screen out negative reviews.

One thing you can look for is the “Verified Buyer” badge that appears next to a review.

This means that the review was actually written by a person that bought the product.  What happens is that when a person buys a product online, the retailer will send them an email a couple of weeks after delivery to ask them to review the product.  Note the retailer only asks them to write a review and does not pressure the person to write a good review.  Buyers who click through on the email link to write a review are those we can verify as actually having purchased a product.

Thirdly, you may have already noticed, but people are generally happy with products they have bought.  Makes sense given all the research that they usually do before buying them.  Chances are more than likely that they’ll really like the product they ended up buying.  In the rare case that they don’t, they tend be very angry.  This is a well documented phenomenon called “response bias”.  People are more likely to write a review if they feel strongly about a product, which is why you see so many 5 star reviews, few 1 star reviews and very little inbetween.  When you look at a rating system of 1 – 5 stars you might expect the 3 stars to represent average.  However, in reality the average is skewed positive and is closer to 4 stars.  This has been documented by a study of products on Amazon and you can see it at Buzzillions as well.  You can read more about this in a great article from 2007 by Farhad Manjoo.

Buzzillions provides you several ways to combat response bias in order to figure out the real value of a review.  If you click on the arrow at the top of the page next to “xx reviews” you can see the Ratings Distribution for that product and the Category Average.

The Ratings Distribution will show you if the reviews tend to be towards the two extremes or if they are more likely to be balanced.  Looking at the example above you can see most of the reviews are extremely positive and maybe should be read with a grain of salt.

The Category Average will tell you the average star rating for all products within the same category.  You can use this information to help judge the star rating of that product (or a specific review). In this example, you can see that reviews for all point & shoot cameras skew positive because the category average is 4.2.  Therefore when you read a 5 star review, you should keep in mind that although it is above average, it’s not that much higher than the 4.2 star rating for all digital point & shoot cameras.

Buzzillions is making it easier for you to research products before you buy.  We’ve launched a new feature called My List that let’s you quickly save products while you browse the site.  If you find a product you’re intereted in, add to My List so you can return to it later.  If you can’t decide between two products, add both of them to My List so you can compare them.

My List will appear at the bottom of every page on Buzzillions so it’s always easy to access but stays out of your way while cruising the site.

My List appears at the bottom of every page

You can add products to My List by using the button the results page or product page.

Use Add to List from the results page

Use Add to List from the product page

The items will then appear in My List.

My List with products

You don’t have to be logged in to use My List.  And we’ll keep track of your products so that next time you visit our site, they’ll still be there waiting for you.

If you’ve ever read product reviews, chances are you’ve been overwhelmed by the number of four and five star reviews you’ve encountered.  On Buzzillions, the average product is rated a whopping 4.2 out of 5 stars.  Sometimes rosy reviews are helpful, but sometimes you want to know the downsides of a product before you can make a decision.  That doesn’t mean that you’re a glass-half-empty person, it simply means you’re doing your homework.

“If you wish to move your marriage a teeny bit closer to the edge of divorce, purchase this chair.” – Annoyed Father Upper Midwest

“I purchased the pull-up unit as soon as I saw it advertised. I never dreamed it would almost kill me.” - James from Bartlett, Tennessee

We know that one of the reasons people read product reviews is to find out which products to avoid. You have a product in mind & you want to make sure that there aren’t any fatal flaws before you part with your cash.

We also know that lots of Buzzillions users use our site to determine if the negative qualities of a product apply to them.  If a dishwasher is bad for pots and pans, but you wash your pots and pans by hand, maybe it’s still a great dishwasher for you.

We’re not in the business of bashing products, but we are serious about helping you find negative feedback from users. Here’s how to find what you’re looking for:

Low ranked product sort: Normally, when you get to a category or search results list, products are sorted by our Top Rated algorithm. Use the drop down menu to re-sort the results to give you the lowest rated products first.

Because we want to represent the consensus of consumer opinion, not one person’s opinion, 2 star product with 100 reviews might be ranked lower than a 1 star product with only one review.

Review sort bottom ranked: The default sort for reviews on the product detail page gives you the most helpful reviews first. Want to see the negative reviews first? Use the  drop down menu.

Review histogram: Sometimes products have mixed reviews, making it difficult to separate differing tastes from actual product flaws. Take shoes for example. A shoe might have high reviews & low reviews. Upon reading the low reviews, you find out that people rated it low because they run wide. This might be a benefit for some & a negative for others. On the product detail page, you can see at-a-glance how many people rated a product 1-star vs. 5 star.

Most helpful negative review: If you only read one review, the most-helpful negative review should be it.  Our review face-off highlights the most helpful reviews for the product: one positive and one negative.

For more negative reviews, check out our hall of shame, the “Great Rants” {link} in our Review of the Day blog.