As someone who spends a lot of time researching and reading reviews, I’m sure you’ve run across one or two reviews where you made a mental eye roll and thought to yourself “this guy’s got it all wrong”. It’s always extremely frustrating to not be able to set the record straight. Well, now’s your chance.
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.
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!
Sometimes our site is not quite as self-explanatory as we think it is. Case in point, we got an email from a Buzzillions fan who has used our site numerous times for product research. His question? How in the world to write a review of his own. For all those who have wondered the same thing, but who have been afraid to ask, here’s the answer in three easy steps:
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.
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):
(we’d love to get your feedback in the Comments section below)
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).
The Buzzillions.com team generally stands back and lets the consumer do the talking. But from time to time we'd like to share our experiences in working with the thousands and thousands of consumers writing reviews everyday.
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