Review sites are cropping up all over the internet at a speed which is dizzying. How can this be the case? Is there lots of money to be gotten from them or are the owners making these sites up for altruistic reasons?
Put simply, there are a myriad of them because it’s great for business. No matter what type of business you are involved in, these review websites are now an ever more important part of your marketing mix. We are living in a world which is getting more and more distracting through a bewildering array of choice given to us daily.
We as a consumer society just do not have enough time to methodically look into the purchase choices we want to make and therefore we need to make shortcuts in our decision making.
Can you remember the last big thing you bought. Did you just whip out the credit card on the spur of the moment and make a purchase. I doubt it – I’m betting you probably asked around with friends and neighbours to solicit their advice and see if any of them had previously bought the item in question.
You were looking for their advice and their opinions matter.
Whether you like it or not, we are all very similar when it comes to this buying decision making process. We are at heart a mass marketing organism and are persuaded by other peoples outlook – even the opinions of complete strangers!
There are web review sites on every conceivable subject known to man, from cause related marketing through to the best types of cameras you should buy. You can conduct a quick search on Google and you are almost assured to locate some useful reviews in short order.
Does this mean you trust all the reviews you read? Of course not. There are plenty of nefarious people out there giving reviews with their own agenda. You must not simply rely solely on the say-so of a single review. Instead, put the review in context, try to obtain some more reviews (perhaps put in some more searches with phrases like “scam” for example to find some differing viewpoints.
Review websites work, have worked and will work because they offer us the alluring promise of finding out useful information about things we are interested in and saving us the most important resource we have – time.