and the Most For Your Money winners are…

It’s been a tough year economically and everyone is watching their spending.  With the holidays right around the corner, it’s going to be even harder than ever.  That’s why Buzzillions has found the best deals in each category to help you with your holiday shopping.  These aren’t just the cheapest products, because what’s the point of getting a cheap product if it doesn’t do what you want?  These are products where you feel like you are getting far more value than what you paid.  These are products that are highly ranked yet won’t break the bank.  These are the Buzzillions Most For Your Money winners.

The Most For Your Money winners are determined based on user reviews.  To ensure the winners are relevant and not discontinued or out of stock, we only use reviews from January to September 2009.  Products in each category are then ranked with a special algorithm that incorporates star ratings, number of reviews and the reliability of the reviewers (reviews by “Verified Buyers” are given more weight).  A price comparison is performed on the highest ranked products to determine the Most For Your Money winners for each category.

***Note that these awards are NOT influenced by any sponsorship or payments. They are based solely on the product reviews of real consumers and price reported to us by retailers.

You can see all Most For Your Money Award winners here.

When browsing for products, look for the distinctive blue Buzzillions Most For Your Money badge, and you’ll know you’ve found a standout within a category.
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Some Award Highlights

Toys, Baby and Kids:

• Most For Your Money Standard Baby Stroller: Graco Glider Stroller
• Most For Your Money Car Seat: Chicco KeyFit 30 Infant Car Seat & Base
• Most For Your Money Ride-On Toy: Little Tikes Rockin’ Puppy

Sports & Outdoor:

• Most For Your Money Ski/Snowboard Helmet: Giro Bad Lieutenant Helmet
• Most For Your Money Backpack: North Face Terra 60 Backpack – 3700-3850cu in
• Most For Your Money Elliptical: Stamina Products InMotion E1000 Elliptical Trainer

Electronics:

• Most For Your Money MP3 Player: Apple iPod shuffle 1GB
• Most For Your Money Digital Point & Shoot Camera: Canon PowerShot SD1200 IS Digital Camera
• Most For Your Money LCD TV: Samsung LN40A450 40 Inch High Definition LCD TV

Home & Garden

• Most For Your Money Dishwasher: Frigidaire 24″ Tall Tub Built-In Dishwasher – White
• Most For Your Money Washer: Haier 6.6 lbs. Portable Pulsator Washer
• Most For Your Money Coffee Maker: Faberware Stainless Steel 8 Cup Yosemite Percolator

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Congratulations to all the winners. You can see all Most For Your Money winners here.

• 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

]]> http://blogs.buzzillions.com/2009/07/30/a-new-look-for-a-new-buzzillions/feed/ 3 http://blogs.buzzillions.com/2009/06/29/why-are-there-so-many-5-star-reviews-on-your-site/ http://blogs.buzzillions.com/2009/06/29/why-are-there-so-many-5-star-reviews-on-your-site/#comments Mon, 29 Jun 2009 15:21:47 +0000 Jean K http://blogs.buzzillions.com/?p=2257 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.

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 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.

Buzzillions has just implemented review comments.  When scanning the review snippets, you can see if anyone has commented on a review.

comments summary on review snippets

If you would like to add your own comment you can do this on the review page.  Simply click on the review title, More>> link, Read Full Review>> link or Comments link to get to the review page.  At the bottom of the review is a section where you can read current comments on that review as well as add your own.

add comments

Tech Closeup recently caught the Buzzillions team on camera doing what we do best.  Look closely & you can see our CEO’s (in)famous swagger. You heard it here first: read reviews, don’t get screwed!

• Find the product you want to review. The easiest way to do this is to go to Buzzillions, type the name of your product into the search box, and click “Search”.  Once you find the product in the list of results, click on it & go to the product detail page.

• Click the Write a Review link. Now that you’re on the product detail page you can find the link in the bottom right-hand corner of the “Review Snapshot”.

• Write your review. Note that you’ll need to login or sign up for a Buzzillions user account to do write a review (it’s free & easy).

Before it can go onto Buzzillions, your review has to be approved by our moderation team.  Check back in a few days to see your published review.  If you can’t find your product on Buzzillions let us know at feedback@buzzillions.com.

Keep the questions coming!

In the beginning, the concept was simple…Create THE product review destination so people could buy the right product confidently. The founding team of this company had created the review system for the Sporting Goods retailer Fogdog.com. In fact, I even got to speak to Amazon’s Jeff Bezos about it (albeit briefly enough that I know he doesn’t remember). He sat on our couch in the engineering dept and it was a ratty green couch so I liked him right away. That was it for our “friendship” but our common destiny was cemented. 

Now that we’ve passed Epinions in comprehensiveness and relevance, we’re setting our sites on how to provide THE single best website to the customer who just needs to get in the know before he or she buys. I’ve included some early screenshots to document our journey  (too bad the wayback machine is basically useless in the CSS era). Enjoy!

Original Concept (2006 – before the name Buzzillions):

Buzzillions concept (2006)

Private Beta site (Jan-Mar 2007 – website name still not chosen):

Buzzillions Private Beta (Jan-Mar 2007)

 Buzzillions Launch (April, 10th 2007):

Buzzillions Launch (April 10th, 2007)

Buzzillions 1st Birthday (April, 10th 2008):

Buzzillions.com today (April 10th, 2009):

Buzzillions today (April 10th, 2009)

A big day for us today (Oct 30, 2008)! In the last 6 months, we’ve done a ton of work getting feedback about Buzzillions.com. We’ve conducted usability tests where we observed people use the site in a lab setting. We’ve talked to scores of users about their experiences on the site and the challenges of online shopping in general… all in an effort to make the best website for “finding exactly the right product for you” (our mission).

From brainstorm sessions to design powwows to engineering all-nighters, the whole company came together to launch a site that helps consumers buy the right product the first time (especially in this economy).

But enough about us. None of this matters if it doesn’t make shopping research easier…especially when it comes to buying gifts. So, please take a spin on the site and come back and let us know if it does by posting a comment below.

You might also want to check out a review of the new Buzzillions in the Wall Street Journal today, titled Finding the Right Product Review for You. (the Mossberg Solutions column)

Here’s “What’s New”…

• Buzzillions Rank – To know how a product stacks up against the rest, every product on Buzzillions has a “Buzzillions Rank” – a score that incorporates the star rating, number of reviews and credibility of the reviewers. It’s much more reliable than the star rating alone. Top 10 Lists are then created for every category on Buzzillions using these rankings.
• Personal Reviews – Customer reviews are now organized by type of reviewer so shoppers can read reviews from people most like themselves. For instance, if you’re buying a gift for your sister who just had her first baby, you can read reviews for Jogging Baby Strollers just from First Time Parents.
• Personal Recommendations – Shoppers can find product recommendations from people like themselves (or the people they are buying for). (This functionality is significantly enhanced from the previous site.)
• Review Snapshots – We spent the most time on this, creating the best possible “snapshot” of what all the reviewers agree on. This is the big time saver in your research process, allowing you to scan dozens of products before you drill down to read individual reviews. (Some of this content existed before, but the Snapshot is a distinctive new research tool on Buzzillions.)

And lastly, we started from scratch and re-designed the user experience so it’s super easy to use, and it’s clear we are an independent product review site based on content from real people like you.

Thanks for being involved, and I look forward to reading your comments (even from our competitors).

Thanks,

Jim Morris

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