g4

Recommendation community at a glance

Site Genre: Pattern Group g

magnify imageFigure G4.1 Amazon.com‘s recommendation community provides content for customers. This review content comes from other customers, and it gives the site research value, thereby making it a destination as well as a shopping site.

Background

In PERSONAL E-COMMERCE (A1) we discussed how COMMUNITY CONFERENCE (A3) tools could augment the shopping experience. This pattern provides the core for giving customers a voice on an e-commerce site and describes how customers‘ opinions can be used to provide recommendations for other customers. This pattern can be used in conjunction with FEATURED PRODUCTS (G1), CROSS-SELLING AND UP-SELLING (G2), and PERSONALIZED RECOMMENDATIONS (G3) to provide useful recommendations and streamline purchases for customers. Some recommendation communities share much in common with MESSAGE BOARDS (D5).

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PROBLEM

Recommendations from other customers are valuable, but making sure that the community system is not abused is a time-consuming process littered with obstacles.

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SOLUTION

magnify image Figure G4.6 Provide a two-step process funnel to help customers write reviews. Let them (1) write the review and (2) check that their review is formatted correctly before submission. After the publisher makes sure that the review conforms to all stated rules, other customers can see the published review.

Provide a two-step process to write a review: (1) Have customers enter a review title and text of the review, along with any numerical rating. The text must follow the guidelines of the site. (2) Let customers see the recommendation as it will appear on the site, and allow them to edit it. Filter the title and text for profanity and HTML that might link to another site. Keep an editor on staff to review customer-written recommendations and remove them if they‘re offensive or libelous. Once the review has been posted, provide a mechanism for other customers to rate the review, giving it a meta-rating. Finally, to get customers to use the community features, offer them an incentive to write the first review.

Other Patterns to Consider

Provide a UNIFIED BROWSING HIERARCHY (K1) to integrate content, commerce, and community on your Web site. Build a two-step PPROCESS FUNNEL (H1) for people to (1) write reviews and enter numerical ratings, then (2) review and edit what they wrote. Publish the review guidelines, as well as your FAIR INFORMATION PRACTICES (E3). Integrate the reviews into the CLEAN PRODUCT DETAIL (F2) pages. Once reviews have been posted, let other customers rate them by clicking rating ACTION BUTTONS (K4). Some recommendation communities share much in common with MESSAGE BOARDS (D5); many of the tips in that pattern apply here as well.

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