How to reduce risk when buying online products and services
Recently, one of our staff bought a cologne (Chemistry from clinique) for her husband for father’s day from an online shop (not mentioning the name because she is still sorting out the issue). The perfume, cheaper compared to other online merchants, turned out to be a ’fake’ . Anyways, to keep things short, the reason this person bought this was because of the reviews she read on their testimonials page. Obviously, even though the reviews sounded authentic, turned out to be made up. She found that out by googling one of the names of the companies listed there.
The risk of buying a bad product / service online reduces greatly when you have other people giving a positive review or a testimonial. But what if these are not original reviews and were made up by the seller of the service to increase his conversion rate. Conversion rate increases dramatically when you have positive reviews and online marketeers know that and use that to their advantage.
Validating these online reviews or testimonials is a challenge for the end consumer and hence trusting the seller or the service provider becomes a challenge. Buyers should look for verified testimonials. A video testimonial with the name of the person and his job, his company would be ideal. But that is hard for small companies to produce and maintain and even that might not be authentic. So what do consumers do ? Look for independent 3rd party verified reviews and testimonials.
A startup company is getting launched solving this very problem. The company (http://www.ReviewScale.com) helps in improving online reputation and builds tools to manage testimonials, reviews and rating and also has a process to independently verify them. I guess a service offering like that might help consumers from getting ripped by the online sharks.
