It's a Jungle Out There: Spotting Fake Reviews

Tom Harnish — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 13:00:07 +0000

It’s an old admonishment, but now, more than ever, you really can’t believe everything you read. Exploring the jungle of the web, I’ve found a lot of places that look intriguing, but are actually traps for the unwary.

No, I’m not talking about poisonous multi-level marketing come-ons, or religious or political voodoo diatribes. I’m talking about reviews touting Amazon products, forum discussions endorsing hotels or restaurants, and even blog posts offering apparently sensible advice — all written by people who were paid to say it. In fact, what you read may be someone else’s words, stolen, rearranged, and used with new meaning to fit the site or circumstance. (See also: 6 Ways to Spot Work-at-Home Job Scams)

I was looking at freelance jobs offered at vWorker and Upwork. As I thrashed my way through the sites, chopping away at the underbrush so I could see the treasures, I found all kinds of task-oriented work such as designing logos, building websites, collecting data, transcribing documents, and writing stories. But, like any public market, you may find both jewels and junk.

One employer was looking for someone to write 20 "articles" for a shopping website with titles such as “I’m looked (sic) to buy the best LCD TV.” The writer, paradoxically, had to promote a certain model and brand, not ask for advice, and make it appear to be a genuine question from a genuine forum member.

So how can you protect yourself?

If someone’s forum post or comment sounds more like a sales pitch than a question, search for that person's online name, and see if he's infested other places on the web with their poison. Include "scam" in your search, and see what pops up.

Whenever you log onto the Internet, imagine yourself as an explorer in an information jungle. Before you is a whole world of exciting places to explore, but many are not what they seem. Take precautions, and it can be a wonderful visit.

This article is from Tom Harnish of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread:

Pros and Cons of Online Customer Product Reviews

Julie Rains — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 23:20:06 +0000

Link:

http://www.openforum.com/idea-hub/topics/marketing/article/pros-and-cons-of-onli...

Making a purchase decision on an e-commerce site can be agonizing for me. I can't detect sturdiness, read the care instructions, or figure out the fit from a digital image. Further complicating my decision-making processes are unusual methods of presentation: One company offers product descriptions that are the same for all items in one category; another gives sizes in terms of clothing but not body measurements.

How should a cautious e-shopper like me choose? Sure, I can talk with a customer service representative, which is useful but often time-consuming. Getting insights from fellow shoppers who may have the same needs and concerns as I do is invaluable: enter customer-written product reviews.

There are pros and cons to product reviews, not only for shoppers like me but also for e-commerce businesses:

PROS

Drive sales and reduce returns:

Give shoppers a feeling of security by reading about others who have purchased and used products that they are considering
Offer insight into most appropriate applications of products
Provide additional resources to customers that can improve the product experience (for example, a reviewer provided installation instructions and pointed to an online product manual not included with the original item), potentially reducing returns
Improve overall credibility of e-commerce business by allowing contrary opinions on the website
Bring out positive attributes relevant to consumers but possibly not covered in original product descriptions

Improve marketing and merchandising:

Expand methods of filtering (or sorting) products by ratings
Provide content for promoting products based on customer ratings
Give merchandising teams insight into aesthetic design and functional features of most significance to customers
Aid marketing team and copywriters in improving product classifications and descriptions based on common uses and desirable features of products cited by customers

CONS

Give shoppers a skewed impression of a product if there is just one review or rating, especially if the review or rating is not positive
Allow disgruntled customers to publish vindictive or damaging information
Increase shoppers' wariness of items with a prominent "be the first to review this product" notation, which may further stall sales of slow-moving products
Require resources to monitor either individual reviews or the product-review system as a site feature
Seem irrelevant if a solitary review was posted years ago

By asking customers to submit reviews of recently purchased products (typically, by sending a follow-up email), e-commerce businesses can increase the number of reviews on their sites. Generally, this approach will lead to a more reliable portrayal of product quality and usefulness. These requests can engage customers and convey the site owners' desire to improve the shopping experience.

More sophisticated systems have capabilities that can mitigate many of the cons relating to product reviews. Features may include mechanisms for allowing site visitors to rate the helpfulness of customer-generated product reviews; add comments to reviews; and flag inappropriate comments.

Shoppers can easily get bogged down by analyzing customer-generated commentary, hesitating to buy an item that seems like a good purchase but doesn't consistently get positively glowing reviews. Tools that can help shoppers sift through this information include summaries of reviews and ratings; prominent displays of "most helpful favorable review" beside "most helpful critical review"; overall score accompanied by ratings in categories such as ease of use, features, quality, features, and value; forms that bring attention to key concerns of shoppers with pros, cons, and best uses along with summaries of reviews, such as those found on FetchDog's website.

To create context and show the perspectives of contributing reviewers, personal information such as age, gender, and interests relevant to the product might be displayed next the review (for example, a customer creating a review of a certain tent on REI or backpack on L.L.Bean might indicate the depth and ruggedness of their experiences). Links to other product reviews may be provided to give a broader picture of individual likes and dislikes (for example, links to book reviews posted by customers on Amazon.com). In addition, contributors may be ranked or given badges to denote credibility.

Other cool features include the capability to upload photos and videos to accompany reviews, and the opportunity to share reviews on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Digg.

If your e-commerce business isn't ready for customer-generated product reviews, consider these alternatives to helping customers make good but quick purchasing decisions:

Customer testimonials and simple return policy to give shoppers a feeling of security
Detailed product descriptions that indicate best applications of products, convey unique features, and basic or premium value
Hand-picked product offering of best items rather than multiple SKUs

This article is from Julie Rains of Wise Bread, an award-winning personal finance and credit card comparison website. Read more great articles from Wise Bread:

online reviews

It's a Jungle Out There: Spotting Fake Reviews

Pros and Cons of Online Customer Product Reviews