February 25 2007

Customer review solution launches in the UK

Bazaarvoice has launched in the UK as the start of a push into the European e-retail market. The US company provides software to enable shoppers to leave ratings and reviews on purchased products.

The software solution from Bazaarvoice is already being used by 70 US clients include department store chain Macy's, Hewlett Packard and Dell.

Brett Hurt, Bazaarvoice's founder and CEO commented: Word-of-mouth marketing has a profound impact on business success in the open online market - it's part of the next generation of e-commerce for retailers. Gaining insightful consumer reviews and acting on them ensures online businesses are customer-focused and customer-driven."

The software solution can be implemented in just 20 hours, which is far less time than it would take the average e-retailer to decide to go ahead with customer reviews.

Although research and peer experience shows that having negative product reviews increases trust in an e-retail business, the implementation of a customer review solution is still a decision which has to be managed and implemented for the right business reasons. It also requires the retail business to be able to act on negative feedback, if need be.

Business Week has a feature on US e-retailers' experience of consumer reviews.

Luke Errington, of customer review publisher Reevoo.com, explains the benefits of adopting user-generated content to drive sales and provides a checklist for those launching a customer review programme in the next issue of Internet Retailing. Make sure you're signed up to receive it.

Press release follows:

Bazaarvoice, the customer ratings and reviews technology provider which helps online brands build their businesses through word of mouth, launches in the UK today to service the European market.

Started by web analytics pioneer and Coremetrics founder Brett Hurt in the US with $4m of venture capital funding in 2005, Bazaarvoice helps online retailers build trusted customer communities on their sites. It provides bespoke ratings and review software to enable customers to give feedback to each other and to the brand in a public forum. Bazaarvoice's stable of 70 US clients include department store chain Macy's, Hewlett Packard and Dell.

"We're launching Bazaarvoice in the UK to service online retailers in Europe due to the phenomenal success our clients in the US are having with customer-created content on their sites," said Brett Hurt, Bazaarvoice's founder and CEO. "Word-of-mouth marketing has a profound impact on business success in the open online market - it's part of the next generation of eCommerce for retailers. Gaining insightful consumer reviews and acting on them ensures online businesses are customer-focused and customer-driven. Bazaarvoice was founded to give brands the technology, team and processes they need to help customers build their business."

The Bazaarvoice management team includes executives from Coremetrics, Trilogy, Callidus Software and Dell.

"We've prepared our platform and our teams to help European retailers achieve significant revenue impact leveraging their customer advocates," said Bazaarvoice VP of Marketing and Products Sam Decker. Decker, a veteran of word of mouth marketing and ecommerce, previously led the growth of Dell.com, helping it become the world's largest consumer eCommerce site in 2003.

Bazaarvoice's hosted and fully managed ratings and review service is customised for each online retailer, and new implementations can go live in as little as 20 hours of IT time. The software currently supports two European languages - French and German, and will soon support Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Italian and Dutch. Bazaarvoice also helps clients create marketing campaigns to introduce new review features to customers and incentivise them to share opinions and rate their experiences with a brand.

"We're in final talks with several household-name retailers in the UK who are about to join us, and we're very excited about repeating our clients' success with Bazaarvoice in the US over here," said Vice-President of Sales Michael Osborne. "The UK launch today marks the beginning of our company's growth in Europe. Bazaarvoice will change the way companies think about marketing and drive eCommerce to new levels."

Several of the industry's most influential thought leaders are members of Bazaarvoice's Board of Advisors, including marketing expert and New York Times best-selling author Bryan Eisenberg and BizRate/Shopzilla co-founder David Reibstein.

Emma Herrod