My visit to the Tide webpage began with a survey. Tide wants to know more about me as a customer! Oh, wait… they are data mining. The survey took a few minutes to load but I wanted to take it because I was curious about the question content. What information are they looking for?
The general feel of the site is cute and offers happy promises of stain removal. What they don’t tell you is that their products are not suitable for people with even mildly sensitive skin.
Still waiting for the survey to load so I begin to surf the site. Genius! The survey doesn’t load until they have seen what I am showing interest in on the website!
As always, the most useful information for me on this site is customer product reviews. This is probably the most attractive feature for me personally even though I know there is a possibility these reviews have been edited to show a product more favorably than was originally intended. The idea of truth in advertising is what appeals to me about this type of “information.”
I'm with you about being a little skeptical about customer reviews/recommendations sometimes. My dark side imagines employees or a marketing firm submitting ravingly positive comments for some sites or products.
ReplyDeleteAt any rate, there's little doubt that the most stellar comments are chosen to appear in public. But that, at least, is understandable.
User comments helped me make a decision about an online purchase just this week. The website www.fossil.com actually posted the derogatory comments about a specific item I was interested in which made it easier to choose between two similar items. While I still ordered from the same site, I picked the product with better customer reviews.
ReplyDeleteCustomer reviews I find helpful when entering industries I'm not familiar with, like electronics, or traveling to new places. The reason is that even if someone does not like a product, but they explain why, then it might be what I'm looking for. Same if they like something and say why they like it, that might be exactly what I'm not looking for.
ReplyDelete