Two pioneers in the harnessing of user-generated product content for e-commerce Web sites have teamed up to offer a new solution that integrates product reviews and product discovery.
Aggregate Knowledge, San Mateo, CA, provides real-time collective merchandising and navigation capabilities based on how users are shopping, allowing for an improved product discovery experience. Bazaarvoice, Austin, TX, offers a hosted customer ratings and review service. Yesterday, they announced that the two services will be integrated into one solution for their mutual e-commerce customers.
“Product discovery gives users a reason to consider and, combined with top-rated products, gives them another reason,” said Sam Decker, vice president of marketing and products at Bazaarvoice. “When you add ratings to the merchandising of those products, you expose an authentic justification for a shopper to consider that product,” he said.
By delivering customer-driven product discovery and user-generated reviews, the companies hope to more closely emulate a natural, offline shopping experience.
For example, a user looking for a digital camera would see a “Discovery Window” displaying a dynamic series of related products identified by others who had also considered that same camera. Included with the various product recommendations would be reviews and rankings provided by a retailer’s own customers. The solution is currently in beta testing.
The benefits to multichannel merchants could be significant.
“Multichannel merchants who use the Web site both for discovery and for sales benefit by more page views per session, more SKUs exposed from the catalogue and improved conversion rates,” said Paul Martino, CEO of Aggregate Knowledge.
