Tag archives: reviews

Summary Engine

Posted by Shaun Abrahamson on Tuesday, 1 July 2008

Pluribo launched their summary engine yesterday and has been quite widely covered.  The first implementation is based on a Firefox plug-in, which you can use when browsing Amazon.com. Rather than having to read reviews, Pluribo summarizes the reviews and shows how the product compares to other products along the most critical dimensions (as determined by use reviews).

Another Firefox plug-in. Great, hopefully they will add a Facebook app, too. Does the world really need another plug-in, widgety thingy? Why would I use this thing?

The Pluribo team identified an interesting issue – that is, while there are more and more reviews on sites like Amazon, Newegg and even Walmart (powered by Bazaarvoice), you still have to read them to figure out what people think.

Now you might want to find the best. But is your best the same as my best? What happens if your version of best is “lightest” or “fastest”. The star rating doesn’t tell you this, so you cant cheat and look at that. You have to read through reviews which might not even talk about your best.

What Pluribo does is figure out criteria – i.e. what dimensions are people talking about. So if people offer their thoughts on weight, you can find the lightest. If people weigh in on other issues, such as “scratchiness” or the likelihood that the product will scratch – thats there too. So you might want to take that carry case after all.

This seems like it could make life really easy. Imagine standing in best-buy and asking – is this the lightest? You could summon Pluribo and get short summary, readable on a small screen.

Or what about manufacturers. If I am a product designer, wouldn’t it be nice to know the most important attributes which people are talking about? And which products score best for these attributes? Pluribo already knows. You have a permanent, always available focus group and Pluribo is constantly summarizing the results.

I’m excited to see what is next. Maybe Pluribo will summarize their reviews to see which dimensions users think are most important.

Posted in: Product Development, Quant | Tagged: , , , , , , | No Comments

WordPress vs Typepad – Game Over

Posted by Shaun Abrahamson on Monday, 16 June 2008

Google trends, WordPress in the red trunks. Typepad in the blue.

Alexa, WordPress is the top line, this time in the blue.

So, why did it take me so long to make the switch? Well, I had realized that I might be missing out. Certainly if I took the time to play with WordPress, more could be done. But I have tried desperately not to tinker of late and free up some time to focus on other things. And I have likely become a little dumber, technically, in the process, I suspect. But wordpress.com seemed like it might be worth a look.

But what pushed me over the edge this weekend, was quite simple. I had a CSS problem. Seemed obvious- was pointing to the wrong place, but it wasnt clear how it was changed or in fact how to fix. Help was helpless. Contacts failed to provide a number. I really am cheap to support- I try to figure stuff out first. In fact, I am often embarrassed to call. But I needed to call, to avoid the embarrassment of a non-functioning site.

When help did come, over e-mail. I was told, politely, that there was no problem. Ok. Contrast this with todays response from folks at WordPress.com (thanks Nick). When I mistakenly mapped my domain twice and paid twice, I sent a note asking for one of the mappings to be removed and credited – Shazzam! Quick response, all fixed.

I’ve never felt happier about a change.

I’ll be adding WordPress.com to my research about why great products and services dont need advertising. I would be interested in understanding from the Six Apart folks what they are doing to respond.

Disclosure: we have absolutely no relationship with either WordPress or Typepad. Just trying to keep the blog up to date and make a few changes here and there. And avoid some embarrassment (we always manage without technical difficulty, to achieve this on our own).

Posted in: Product Development | Tagged: , , , , , | 1 Comment

The Best Product Review Ever

Posted by Shaun Abrahamson on Monday, 21 April 2008

How do you know when you have succeeded with a new product?

Some clues:
1. grown men shout with excitement
2. you outperform products which cost almost 10x yours
3. even the most cynical reviewer expresses disbelief and admit that the liked your product

Its interesting, but there seems to be a growing recognition that less is more. I have been a longtime fan of 37signals because they do less. They focus on what you really need and throw away everything else. The end result is astonishing – people use and enjoy using the product. Sure other will claim they can do things that 37signals cannot. But who cares? Nobody really needed these things and they undermine the main purpose.

So what garnered the best product review ever. In this case its a car. Now I have mixed feelings about this given that I dont believe in encouraging people to drive more, much less for fun. At Mutopo, we like Zipcar. But if we werent saving the planet we would want one of these. Or we would simply want to rent one for a day – the Atom.

It follows all of our ideals
1. features had to fight to be included (windshield is optional)
2. built by a small team (7)
3. not expensive (relatively)
4. beautiful design, resulting from an inspired way to solve a problem

The result – the best product review ever. Words dont do it justice, at least not mine. So to see what we are talking about and hear the response it evoked, take a look at the video (I would have embedded, but the Beeb seems to have asked us to stop this, according to Youtube).

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Experience Creators

Posted by Shaun Abrahamson on Thursday, 3 April 2008

We are trying to understanding the intersection of a number of trends. So what better way to do understand than to try and write about it, right?

First, we have become unhealthily obsessed with reviews. It seems that everywhere we look, we hear about reviews. In fact, we have been making more and more decisions about what to buy based on what others had to say, for a long time with Amazon and more recently Newegg.

Amazon still seems to have cornered the market with customer reviews and were probably one of the earliest to understand their value. But when Walmart.com embraced online reviews almost 9 months ago, it was clear to many that something big was happening and today, if you look at walmart.com, customer reviews feature almost as prominently as price reductions or “roll backs”.

Looking at this from another direction, is there increasing focus on customer service or more broadly customer experience and making better products?  Almost 2 years ago, Adage ran a piece of how US R&D spending had been steadily catching up to advertising spending (not in all industries mind you, but certainly many high growth, competitive ones). The article is not directly accessible, but Joseph Jaffe was kind enough to capture the key ideas. This trend seems to be continuing, but we plan to investigate further.

From a less product centric perspective, important to the growing service section, Zeus Jones created a nice graphic showing the convergence of 2 previously siloed functions – namely marketing and operations (for example, call centers). Some companies have had this as religion for some time – for many years Intuit has made extensive use of their call centers to better understand what their customers need and what their product designers should be doing. But more recently, the CEO of one of the fastest growing online retailers, Zappos, explained how “…Zappos takes the money it would have used on paid media and pours it into the customer experience”.

We think what this means is that companies are finding that their products and services, simply need to be better. Because it is increasingly difficult to support bad experiences with great advertising. And competitors have to spend much less to rapidly gain market share – they just need great reviews!

(image from www.ivoshaap.com)

Posted in: Product Development | Tagged: , , | 2 Comments