Web Shoppers Trust Customer Reviews More Than Friends
September 10, 2009
Social networks, expert opinions also influence purchases

By Alex Palmer

Online shoppers trust the online reviews of strangers more than the recommendations of their friends, new research finds.

“Conversations Among Consumers,” a new report from online retail marketer Ripple6 and the e-tailing group, finds that shoppers buying products on the Internet are influenced both by online social networking sites and face-to-face conversations with friends. But when it comes to whose opinions influence the shoppers, strangers have as much if not more impact than friends.

The survey, which drew on the responses of 1,000 online shoppers, found that while 46 percent of e-shoppers find value in product recommendations from their friends, 47 percent look to onsite customer reviews when making a decision.

Online consumers also look to expert information (43 percent), information from individuals they consider “like me” (40 percent) and product comparison tools (38 percent) to help decide what to buy.

Two-thirds (67 percent) of respondents spend at least one hour per week on social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. Forty-three percent said they make purchases as a result of time spent on these sites. Sixty-five percent of respondents see value in connecting directly with other shoppers who bought similar products.

Representatives from the e-tailing group and Ripple6 believe these results point to consumers’ desires for more online communities where they can share recommendations and opinions about their purchases. In a statement, Ripple6 CEO Sang Kim said, “This research confirms that most of the things consumers find valuable are those delivered by community.”

But friends still play an important role in influencing consumers. Eighty-three percent of online shoppers said they are interested in sharing information about their purchases with people they know, while 74 percent are influenced by the opinions of others in their decision to buy the product in the first place.

Nielsen Business Media

A good article in Business Week, Will Work for Praise, on motivating content creators with evidence that status is more powerful than cash for getting users to create content.
From my perspective there are a whole host of ways to encourage users to participate and engage in a site through content creation.  I met with Tim Chang, principal at Norwest Venture Partners a few weeks ago.  We were talking about game development and how effectively tapping into the seven deadly sins play a huge role in game engagement.   Community engagement is no different.  We need to give our users a reason to play games, write reviews and help create the StyleHop community.  For all these, tapping into base desire is critical.

What many startups miss is that while the promise of status is a powerful and important motivator, it’s not the only one.  We are developing our community with a mix of incentives that tap into desires for status, greed (read discounts) as well as positive influencers like contributing to our mission of democratizing fashion.

Focusing only on status and creating mavens is a natural mistake of many fashion sites…..the mavens and wannabe-mavens are the first ones to come to your site and they are the most enthusiastic.  However, this is a trap.  You can’t forget that big destination sites need to help everyday folks solve problems – that’s job one.  While mavens can help support this goal with original content, their deep interest in being heard can often times overwhelm broader goals.  Many social shopping sites are peaking out on traffic because they are leaning too much on helping the maven’s build status – There are too many sites where we go and feel like we are being bombarded by experts.  It’s like that great boutique you want to love but you don’t go in because the sales people are too pushy.

Fashion shopping destination sites need to make shopping for fashion easier if they want a mainstream audience.

Social Media expert, Noa Gafni, recently covered us in her blog, Webutantes.

I’ll be giving a product demo of StyleHop at Web2NewYork’s networking party tomorrow, November 18th.

Here is an interview I did with Web2NewYork’s Peter Verkooijen:

Everyone is talking online about “creating community” within social networks for their brands.  It’s starting to sound hollow isn’t it?
Here is a link about the topic with my comment directly below.

The value of social networking and fashion shopping goes well beyond providing a sense of connectedness.  The truth is, shopping for fashion is really difficult.  Women have to identify the current trend, think about the occasion they are buying for, identify who will be their “fashion peers” at this occasion and consider their own personal preferences and fit issues.  This is all just to identify what they want/need!  Then it gets really hard – Women must go out into the world to find the one item among all the retail outlets, brands and channels that matches their need.   For many women this is just too much work!  It’s often far from fun.

What’s missing in the fashion ecosystem is a destination where women can go for specific unbiased style-level advice and recommendations.  Much like the role Amazon plays for books, Yelp for local retail and TripAdvisor for travel, fashion needs a place consumers can habitually click to make shopping decisions more quickly and confidently.

And, yes, we’re working on this problem at StyleHop