Creating Communities Through Customer Reviews Can Boost ROI

A popular e-commerce trend right now is to put customer reviews directly on the company Website so that potential customers have the opportunity to review one’s products before making any purchase decisions.  A recent Forrester report showed that 36% of consumers have more trust in Websites that offer consumer-generated product reviews.  Many e-retailers have taken this to heart and have put it into action. 

One particularly successful case is that of John Lazarchic, Vice President of e-commerce at Petco.  He recently discussed his company’s decision to hop on the customer-review bandwagon, a practice that numerous retailers have begun to pursue.  Lazarchic explained that his primary motivation in doing so was to “enhance customer trust and the Website experience” saying that “ROI was not the main objective.”  How novel:  Putting customer service before ROI metrics.

This may not work for every type of business, but if you know in your gut that it will probably work for your’s, then just go for it, if only temporarily.  Lazarchic had the insight to recognize the true nature of his business; there are few social phenomena more democratizing than pet ownership.  Lazarchic knows that pet owners talk to each other, and if you can give a home to that dialogue, you have instant access to an insanely varied demographic that comes down to the single common denominator of loving their ball of fur.

Lazarchic’s way of thinking is quite a concept: putting customer service and gut instinct first and figuring out ROI later.  Many CEOs and marketers cringe at the thought of trying something that can’t effectively be measured, but when you have confidence that your brand is one that can genuinely create communities of like-minded individuals, and you know that tools exist that have been shown to do that, then marketers should be permitted to go with their gut, at least for a limited time, to prove that if you build a compelling program ROI is sure to follow. 

Social networking developed partly outside of the commercial realm, but there are now retailers who know that if you can build it into the existing e-commerce model, you’re offering a lot more reasons for consumers to spend time on your site.  I’m not saying that you should try to compete with “old school” social networking sites like MySpace or Facebook.  But if you can provide a one-stop shop for both the emotional (“look at how fat and happy Mr. Biggles is”) and the purely pragmatic (“I need to buy a 25 pound bag of kitty litter”), it’s your brand that’s ultimately going to stick.