PowerReviews and Endeca Partner to Deliver Customer-Guided Shopping Experiences Based on User Generated Content

Tag-based Reviews and Guided Navigation Experience Drive Social Navigation of Shopping Sites

http://www.powerreviews.com/social-shopping/news/press_endeca_partner_08212007.html

Cambridge, Mass. & Millbrae, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--PowerReviews™ (www.powerreviews.com), a leader in customer reviews and social merchandising solutions for online retailers, and Endeca Technologies, Inc. (www.endeca.com), an enterprise information access software company, today announced a partnership to enhance the online shopping experience by extending Guided Navigation®, search and dynamic merchandising capabilities through the use of “tag-based” customer reviews. Endeca’s signature Guided Navigation experience combined with PowerReviews’ tag-based customer reviews gives shoppers first-of-their kind abilities to explore, find and compare products by uniquely relevant criteria and peer recommendations. Shoppers can narrow product selection based on their specific lifestyles, intended uses and desired “pros” and “cons” in the product. The resulting experience offers a preview of the next generation storefront, and is designed to boost conversion rates, increase customer satisfaction and provide competitive differentiation over sites that simply offer product page level reviews.

Customer reviews and ratings have become an integral part of online shopping decisions – 71% of online shoppers read reviews before they purchase a product online, based on a recent Forrester Research study. In addition, customer reviews and ratings are rated the #1 most helpful website feature in making informed product decisions, with 92% of customers finding them extremely or very helpful in making online shopping decisions, according to an April 2006 study by the eTailing group and J.C. Williams Consultancy.

“Customer reviews have long played an important role informing the purchase of new products both on and off line. By working with pioneers like PowerReviews -- and combining the best of both technologies -- we’re now able to inject this valuable information seamlessly into the user’s shopping experience in ways that were not previously possible,” said Matt Eichner, SVP Strategic Marketing and Development, Endeca. “Our early work with PowerReviews highlights the extensibility of the Endeca platform and foreshadows innovations to come in the very near future.”

Social navigation is an emerging capability that leverages user generated content – reviews, opinions, recommendations, posts – to create new ways to explore, find and analyze information. In the case of Endeca and PowerReviews, this is achieved by leveraging user-generated tags (pros, cons, and best uses of products reviewed using PowerReviews) combined with product characteristics (price, brand, specifications) to present a cohesive and comprehensive collection of refinements and navigation options. This is made possible using Endeca’s core MDEX Engine™ technology, which takes PowerReviews’ ever-changing user-review content and displays dynamic refinements with the speed and flexibility to allow shoppers to choose the path that suits them best.

The first live example of this “tag-based” approach to social navigation can be seen on PowerReviews’ shopping research portal -- Buzzillions.com. Buzzillions demonstrates the ease and power of customer-guided shopping, utilizing the combined capabilities of PowerReviews and Endeca. For instance, the Digital Camera page on Buzzillions.com (www.Buzzillions.com/digitalcameras) illustrates how a consumer can find a digital camera that is ideally suited to him based on his photography lifestyle, interests and intended camera uses. With just a few clicks, the consumer answers questions relating to his affinity group (people like him), intended uses, pros he is seeking and cons he would like to avoid, and narrows the product selection from 536 digital cameras to a handful to look at more closely.

“As both a client and a partner, we have seen first hand the incredible opportunities this partnership creates with the use of social navigation on our shopping research portal Buzzillions.com,” said CEO Andy Chen. “And as we see it, we provide the “social” and Endeca provides the “navigation,” and together we provide the opportunity for any retailer to experience the customer satisfaction, trust and sales benefits first hand.”

About Endeca™
Endeca is a next-generation information access company, uniting the ease of search with the analytical power of business intelligence. Combining patented intellectual property, breakthrough science and a deep focus on user experience, the Endeca Information Access Platform helps people find, analyze and understand information in ways never before possible. Leading global organizations like ABN AMRO, Bank of America, Boeing, Cox Newspapers, Dice, The (US) Defense Intelligence Agency, The Home Depot, Hyatt, IBM, John Deere, The Library of Congress, Nike, and Walmart.com rely on Endeca to power business-critical applications that increase revenue, reduce costs and streamline operations. Headquartered in Cambridge, MA, USA, Endeca is a private company with worldwide operations. For more information: www.endeca.com or info@endeca.com.

About PowerReviews
PowerReviews is an enterprise solutions company that provides customer reviews and social merchandising solutions to multi-channel retailers, driving higher conversion and increased purchase satisfaction. PowerReviews’ patent-pending PowerTags™ technology captures customer opinions in their own words, making reviews more useful for shoppers, empowering them to make more informed and confident purchase decisions. Its customers include Staples, ToysRus, Ace Hardware, Ritz Camera, The Sports Authority, over 100 more. With the introduction of Buzzillions.com, the company has entered the consumer shopping portal market, leveraging its tag-based technology to introduce social navigation and affinity recommendations into the shopping research process for consumers. Based in Millbrae, California, PowerReviews is a privately held company with funding from leading venture capital firms Menlo Ventures and Draper Richards. For more information on the company, visit www.PowerReviews.com To experience the shopping benefits from Buzzillions, visit www.Buzzillions.com.

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Editor's Contact:

Lisa Tarter
TidalWave PR
415-440-4278
lisatarter@yahoo.com

Google Ads Could Go the User-Generated Route

from Mashable! by Kristen Nicole

It’s been noted that Google has filed a series of patent applications that hint at the company’s move into more user involvement for its ad distribution programs.

With three different patents, it’s clear that Google would like to leverage a very large user base for the purpose of providing more targeted ads in a more effective manner. Let everyone else to the targeting and delivering for Google. The first patent application describes User Distributed Search Results as a system for enabling you to find and share search results in an easy manner. I imagine this could be done by adding an “email this” link below Google search results, alongside the “Cached,” “Similar Pages” and “Note This” options.

The second patent would make sharing search results easy as well, by “Facilitating manual user selection of one or more ads for insertion into a document to be made available to another user or users.” Put simply, Google will make it easier to put search results into documents like email, bulletin boards, discussions, forums, blog posts, etc. An example provided outlined a book club organizer sharing pertinent information like an image of the book cover, and a link to amazon, where the book can be purchased.

These user-generated search results build on existing ways in which information is shared amongst people that communicate online, so I imagine that if this could be incorporated into some sort of grouped search result offering that would hold the most relevant information (i.e. local search results for a venue, along with contact information, map, hours of operation, parking guide, menu, other things in the area, and reviews) and could be inserted into an online document would be most helpful for a broad range of people. This particular patent seems to have a plan of being leveraged for the delivery of second-hand targeted ads, as the end user would click on the provided search results and receive the typical Google side-bar ads as well.

Google’s third application highlights the reward system by which users will be encouraged to utilize the new options that may become available to them. With this, you may get money, a credible reputation, or credit. I imagine that credit would somehow be involved with other Google products, like Checkout, and that any monetary rewards would operate under the same design as AdSense and AdWords, which overwhelmingly benefit Google.

Should these new options become available to the public, it could provide a great incentive for more businesses to sign up for Google Ads, knowing that the company is facilitating better sharing of search results. If the user base can be leveraged successfully, then these new options could work very well as a supplement of Google’s algorithms, granting a useful level of passive feedback and ultimately making online search easier across the board.

[via roughtype]