6 Reasons to Not Fear Negative Reviews

By Sam Decker, ClickZ, Jul 27, 2010

I've heard it a thousand times - companies are afraid to add user-generated content to their sites. They're afraid people will say negative things, that writers will go off-topic, or that, somehow, letting people contribute will hurt sales.

But there's a big difference between "anyone can say anything on a site" and your "voice of the customer." For example, anyone can say anything - no matter how profane, untrue, or damaging - on Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube. If your brand is referenced there, you have no control over what is said.

In the past five years, we've seen hundreds of brands overcome their fears of user-generated content. If you - or your management team - still fears user-generated content, here are some key principles to remember.

1. Most reviews are positive. In analyzing user reviews from hundreds of companies, we've seen that most reviews - up to 88% in the U.S., for example - are four or five stars out of a possible five stars. This percentage holds up worldwide and across a variety of industries and eCommerce verticals.

2. All feedback - even negative feedback - builds authenticity. Including customer reviews on your site shows that you care about the direct input of customers; however, an eCommerce store full of nothing but glowing reviews can make a shopper skeptical. Allowing a mix of positive and negative reviews proves to customers that you care about what they say - both good and bad.

3. "Bad" isn't always bad. While some reviewers may rate a camera low because they believe the battery life should exceed six hours, others may not be so stringent. Qualities that matter to one consumer may not matter to all - or even most - consumers.

4. Reviews - even negative reviews - drive sales. Numerous case studies and client anecdotes prove that having any reviews has a positive impact over having no reviews. For example, QuickBooks lets customers review its ProAdvisors (experts businesses hire to help them use the software). It found that not only did ProAdvisors with reviews get more clicks than those without feedback, but the number of reviews was more important than the rating. For example, a ProAdvisor who rates four out of five stars but has nine reviews gets more clicks than a five-star ranked ProAdvisor with just two reviews.

5. Reviews let you know exactly how to improve your products. Sure, negative feedback can be hard to hear, but having reviews or Q&A on your site lets you aggregate what people think, quickly and easily - and you can respond directly to your consumers. For example, Domino's Pizza recently made headlines with its "Pizza Turnaround" campaign, publicizing its decision to act on customers' feedback to radically improve upon its 50-year-old recipe.

6. You simply cannot hide. Like I noted above, social networks are making it easy for people to share their opinions - and they're doing it in real time. Ignore customer opinions at your own peril. Recently, when Consumer Reports gave Apple's iPhone 4 a bad review, Apple deleted all references to the article that consumers posted to its discussion board. This prompted an outrage about censorship, which bloggers and other social network users brought to the forefront. So, what was really more damaging to Apple's brand: a less-than-stellar review from Consumer Reports, or the censorship story that followed?

So, where's the real proof that your brand shouldn't fear user-generated content? The fact that financial services firms (one of the most highly-regulated industries) embrace the voice of the customer. Shawn Morton, director of mobile, social, and emerging media at Nationwide Insurance, gives his key to persuading management to add user-generated content to their site: "Tie it to clear business objectives," he says. It isn't enough to say something is a "fun, new trend." Make the business case the old-fashioned way, just as you would for any other investment. Demonstrate the value behind social in numbers; show how reviews impact decisions. From there it's easy to gain the executive advocates you need to make a case for social marketing across your organization.

This article was originally posted on ClickZ

Gproxy Design launches new eCommerce website, HealthWalk using OrderDynamics On-demand Platform

Healt Walk Shoes is a healthcare professional that understands the benefits of comfort footwear, Their unparalleled inventory –which includes Rockport, Ecco, SAS, New Balance, Noat, Aravon, Finn Comfort, Alegria, Birkenstock, Geox, Dansko, MBT, Clarks, and many others– provides the choices needed to begin living an improved quality of life.

They decided to use one of Gproxy Design's partners OrderDynamics for their On-demand eCommerce Platform. This platform is delivered as a service (SaaS), and is an end-to-end system that helps facilitate revenue growth by growing qualified traffic, converting sales and creating operational efficiencies.

Health Walk Shoes choose Gproxy Design for their eCommerce website design. We started working together initially in the ESP phase (eCommerce Specifications and Prototype). In this phase, we created a navigational prototype for their online store and decided what functionalities were going to be included in their site.

Once the ESP was completed, we started working on the art work and full design of HealthWalkShoes.ca's website. Always considering their branding and today's eCommerce best practices our Creative Team put together a trendy, user friendly and modern look and feel.

Some of the eCommerce functionalities included in this website are: visual impact Jquery banner, featured products on homepage, recently viewed items, product reviews, image zoom, among others.

The final result of this project is a niche market online store, with a user friendly navigation, clean and modern look and feel, supported by a robust eCommerce platform like OrderDynamics. Congratulations to the whole team involved in this project!

To learn more about Gproxy Design Inc and access to our portfolio, please click HERE. To contact one of our Sales Consultants, please click HERE.

LittleMissMatched a Gproxy Client Opens Store in Chicago.

LittleMissMatched Opens Its First Store in the Midwest at Chicago's Water Tower Place

"Opening a LittleMissMatched store in downtown Chicago is a great opportunity for us to present our exciting, fun and accessible merchandising mix to the heart of America," said Jonah Staw, founder and chief executive officer of LittleMissMatched.

LittleMissMatched is a groundbreaking retailer that inspires creativity and individuality throughout their breadth of fashion, home and lifestyle products. The company launched in 2004 with a collection of colorful socks that don't match and are sold in odd numbers to encourage girls of all ages to express themselves. Their "nothing matches but anything goes" philosophy knocked people's socks off and today LittleMissMatched has expanded to include socks, winterwear, sleepwear, apparel books, bedding, baby , furniture and more for creative mavens from 10-110.

To read full article pls click here: www.littlemissmatched.com

Gproxy Design and OrderDynamics Team Up to Provide Superior eCommerce Platform and Marketing Solutions for High-Growth Online Retailers

Two industry-leading eCommerce Service Providers, Gproxy Design and OrderDynamics, have come together to help mid-market online retailers migrate to a superior eCommerce platform and achieve their sales goals.

This partnership is designed to give existing, high volume B2C and B2B online merchants the ultimate combination of on-demand eCommerce platform technology from OrderDynamics and next-generation Retail Web Design, Usability and Online Marketing Services from Gproxy. Both companies are leaders in their areas of expertise and the blend of their services creates the ideal solution for retailers generating between 5MM and 50MM in online revenues.

Gproxy Design is a leader in eCommerce web design and online marketing services, with one of the largest eCommerce portfolios in the market. For over 10 years, Gproxy has been differentiated through its professional and highly specialized approach to retailing web design that combines client needs, ecommerce best practices and ROI oriented online marketing strategies.

OrderDynamics provides superior eCommerce platform technology and services aimed at growing sales. Their on-demand eCommerce platform is delivered as a SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) solution and is an end-to-end platform designed for businesses that have outgrown their current frontend shopping cart and backend Order Management System (OMS), Customer Service Tools, and Merchandising Tools. The OrderDynamics solution facilitates revenue growth for online retailers through a proactive Account Management process, called Dynamic Merchandising, which increases qualified traffic, converts more sales, and improves operational efficiency. OrderDynamics specializes in multi-eStore deployments and highly integrated environments that provide complete branding control and near real time integration with over 25 ERP, Warehouse Management, and Accounting systems.

The success of the partnership between these two eCommerce leaders has been proven with an ever growing list of mid-market clients and worldwide-recognized brands that have trusted Gproxy Design and OrderDynamics. Some of these companies include: Consumers Interstate Corporation, ToilletPaperWorld.com, SuperSupplies.com, Pilot Pen of America, Walking on a Cloud, Recorders.com and Health Walk Shoes.

Both companies would like to thank everyone who visited the OrderDynamics booth at the Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition IRCE 2010, and picked up Gproxy Design’s brochures and took the time to meet their teams.

About Gproxy Design Inc.
Gproxy Design Inc. is a Miami-based business and service provider of top quality Web Design and Online Marketing solutions for businesses around the globe. Gproxy Design is a customer and service oriented business that looks to create long lasting business relationships with customers. Gproxy Design has been working in the eCommerce industry for 11 years and has a portfolio of over 300 eCommerce websites.

About OrderDynamics Corporation
OrderDynamics Corporation is a privately owned eCommerce platform service provider for high-growth B2B and B2C businesses. The success of OrderDynamics is highly attributed to its Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) eCommerce model and Dynamic Merchandising concepts which provide superior control and help drive revenue. The OrderDynamics solution caters to multi-channel retail, manufacturing, business-to-business, and complex online retail. OrderDynamics officially launched its On-Demand eCommerce Solution in 2006 after 2 years of research and development.

PILOT PEN Selects Gproxy for its Online Store!

A well recognized international stationary brand “Pilot Pen” chooses Gproxy for the design & marketing of its new Pilotpen.us store.

We are proud to welcome Pilot Pen to our customer family. Through the foundation of the OrderDynamics partnership as the eCommerce selected for Pilt Pen Gproxy was able to capture the trust of this international brand and commits to deliver a customer capturing website that will enhance even more Pilot’s Pen brand!

Stay tune for Q4 when the site to goes live to test its shopping driven usability.

SLI Systems Mobile Commerce Survey

As Mobile Subscriber Numbers Skyrocket Worldwide and Retail Sales on Mobile Sites Grow, 80% of E-Commerce Companies are Not Prepared with a Mobile Commerce Strategy.

CHICAGO, IL – Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition – June 8, 2010 – According to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), mobile subscribers will surpass five-billion this year, moving the mobile Internet closer to overtaking the PC as the most popular way to get on the web. Additionally, the Coda Research Consultancy reports that U.S. mobile commerce sales hit $1.20 billion in 2009 and will grow to $2.42 billion this year. Despite this rapid growth, a new survey of more than 400 online retailers from SLI Systems, provider of on-demand, intelligent search services for Internet and e-commerce sites, shows that the majority (80%) of e-commerce companies do not have mobile commerce (m-commerce) strategies in place.

Currently, 83% of e-commerce organizations say between 1-10% of visitors come to their sites from mobile browsers, while 12% cite that 11-20% get to their sites through the mobile web. And, those numbers are expected to grow quickly. A recent Gartner report states that by 2011, over 85 percent of new handsets will be able to access the mobile Web. According to Shaun Ryan, CEO of SLI Systems, “This represents a significant opportunity for companies that have optimized their sites for mobile use, and also shows that many retailers are still in wait-and-see mode. With such rapid growth expected in mobile commerce, online retailers that are preparing now for the influx of new business the mobile web represents stand to benefit significantly.”

Mobile Commerce Site Features:

* Of those polled, 79% say site search is important to a mobile website strategy and 61% are confident site search capabilities on a mobile site will generate additional conversions.
* The top four features online retailers cite as the most important to enhancing the m-commerce experience are navigation (73%), site search (59%), product pages (54%) and product reviews (40%).

Mobile Commerce Site Development:

* For companies looking to build their m-commerce sites, 31% will utilize in-house resources, 28% will outsource the work to a third party developer, 36% will use a combination of both in-house and outsourced resources and the remainder are unsure.

Mobile Commerce Apps:

* Fifty-one percent (51%) of e-commerce companies do not consider the iPad to be a mobile device (they say iPad users can utilize their current website); yet 31% will direct iPad to their mobile site.

SLI Systems is the developer of learning-based search and navigation technology for corporate Internet sites, e-commerce destinations and consumer Internet portals that Searches, Learns and Improves the user experience. SLI Systems’ hosted site search and user-generated SEO solutions empower businesses to enhance customer satisfaction while increasing sales, reducing costs and yielding valuable customer information. Unlike traditional search software, SLI Systems’ patented technology continuously “learns” from the behavior of visitors over time to deliver more relevant results. SLI Systems is a privately held company, with offices in Silicon Valley, London, and Christchurch, New Zealand. For more information, visit www.sli-systems.com, or see the company’s blog at http://blog.sli-systems.com/.

Source: SLI-SYSTEMS

NetSuite and Zuora Partner to Deliver Subscription-Based Businesses

Industry Leaders to Jointly Develop and Offer Combined Solution to Automate Metering, Pricing and Billing

SAN MATEO, Calif. and REDWOOD CITY, Calif., July 7 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- NetSuite Inc. ( NYSE: N), the industry's leading provider of cloud-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) / financial suites, and Zuora, Inc., a leading provider of cloud subscription billing solutions, today announced a partnership to jointly develop and offer combined solutions to companies that need to meter, price and bill for subscription- and usage-based products.

Zuora, Inc. is a preferred partner of NetSuite for subscription- and usage-based businesses. As a first deliverable of the partnership, the companies plan to integrate Zuora's Z-Commerce Platform with NetSuite and NetSuite's native cloud-based billing engine. The solution will support any subscription pricing model including one-time, recurring, usage and metering charges, and volume tier pricing, and enables companies to tailor products and pricing to specific market segments. Current NetSuite customers will be able to leverage the integrated capabilities to rapidly enable and expand subscription-based products and services, and automatically meter and bill customers through Zuora's Z-Billing capabilities. More information can be found at www.netsuite.com/zuora.

The partnership is designed to address the growing shift to the Subscription Economy. Consumers today are leading a revolution that demands more products and services via the cloud, including: software as a service (SaaS) applications, computing power, telecom services, travel services, digital media and content, textbooks, and much more. This shift is requiring businesses to adopt fundamentally different business models and new infrastructures to manage large transaction volumes with variable, fragmented, and usage-based, pay-as-you-go pricing structures.

The integrated solution from NetSuite and Zuora will address the needs of companies that have adopted this new business model. It will bring a host of powerful capabilities and benefits to these companies including:

* Ability to rapidly deploy metered, pay-as-you-go, and subscription revenue streams
* Flexibility to quickly modify pricing and packaging in response to market shifts
* Easy-to-use subscription management and full lifecycle management capabilities
* Automated process integration with Z-Commerce billing and NetSuite ERP/Financials.

"Zuora is an ideal NetSuite partner—a company built by and for cloud computing, the future of business," said Zach Nelson, NetSuite CEO. "Zuora's extensive experience in subscription services billing and management will make it easy for NetSuite customers to innovate and develop new revenue streams, while relying on the power and transparency of the cloud to support those initiatives."

"Technology companies are rushing to get new cloud offerings to market but until they solve the metering, pricing and billing problem, they are in for a world of pain," said Zuora President and General Manager Shawn Price. "By partnering with NetSuite, we are combining two of the most powerful solutions to address this new market reality. NetSuite pioneered financial and billing solutions for the cloud, and together we can address many of the opportunities created by the shift to the Subscription Economy."

"As cloud service providers continue to link services the way that NetSuite and Zuora are doing, enterprises benefit from a constant flow of new capabilities and functionality, without the need to retain additional IT expertise or build out hardware infrastructure," said Vinnie Mirchandani, founder of Deal Architect, a leading industry analyst and published author. "Integrated cloud ecosystems demonstrate it is time for 'AND not OR' in technology – a point emphasized at many points in my new book, The New Polymath."

To learn more about Zuora, please visit www.zuora.com.

For more information about NetSuite, visit www.netsuite.com.

SOURCE: PR WEB

Gproxy Design LATAM Supports Uruguay at the FIFA World Cup 2010!

Uruguay is one of the 4 best teams of the world, and Gproxy Design LATAM is supporting the team!