Interview with Wize CEO Tom Patterson - product reviews
Wize
is a product review site that aggregates sources from across the web to
bring you a comprehensive perspective on consumer items. The aim is to
help consumers make better decisions, and reviews are a very important
way to do this, especially when shopping online. Wize offers products'
satisfaction scores and rankings, as well as specs, such as price, to
aid in the review process. This cuts down the time necessary for
shoppers as they don't need to spend as much time doing their own
research. Wize also offers a bookmarking tool for users to keep track
and take note of what they've found on Wize. This helpful tool will
soon be coupled with more community features within the Wize service.
Below is an interview with Wize CEO Tom Patterson.
What is Wize and how does it work?
Wize is a Web site that makes deciding what product(s) to buy extremely easy. Wize makes this possible by leveraging the growing amount of online expert and user opinions and presenting them to consumers in a radically simple way. Think of us as a “Consumer Reports of the Future” or a “Rotten Tomatoes” for all products.
How does it work? Wize collects all the user and expert reviews and ratings we can find on the web and algorithmically computes a product satisfaction score (or Wize Rank) of 1-100. Wize Rank is the quickest, easiest way to determine which products are best, and to filter out the ones that aren’t worth considering. Since they’re based on our technology and market research science, Wize Ranks are completely impartial and can’t be manipulated.
The next way we help is by collecting other information related to product research -- specifications, stores, prices, and “buzz” (akin to popularity) and displaying them as simply and clearly as possible.
Essentially, we do all of the work needed to help people make smart purchases in less time by providing quick access to the best content on the Web.
Where do most of your reviews come from?
Our reviews come from a variety of sources all over the Web, from Amazon to Cnet to many smaller, useful sites. In addition to those popular all-encompassing product review sources, we make sure Wize Ranks for each product category incorporate reviews from very product-specific sources. For example, the Wize Ranks for digital cameras represent reviews from such well-established digital camera sources as Popular Photography & Imaging magazine, Digital Camera magazine and Shutterbug magazine – to name just a few. Our list of sites grows everyday, and we make sure to look at the quality of the content of each site before incorporating it into our Wize Rank or displaying it to our consumers.
How do you target consumers that are willing to add their reviews?
Because remaining impartial is so critical to our value proposition, the content on Wize.com has been collected from other review sites around the web. We will be launching a capability to add reviews directly into Wize in a way that adds value for all of our customers and ensures the integrity of our Wize Rank.
How do you access retailer and expert reviews?
Our goal is to bring together the Web’s best, most reliable content to help people decide what to buy. Wize Technology focuses on aggregating content from the best retail and expert sites. We then determine which sites have a great ability to predict how good a product will be. We continually add new sources as we expand products and categories. A great way to think about the consumer reviews on the Web now is that it’s a great proxy for word of mouth information that exists offline. Wize will be growing to compile information in all the places where word of mouth exists -- not just retail and expert sites. This process of finding and presenting the most relevant information will continue to dramatically improve the product research process for people.
What type of website publisher are you wanting to use your badge for people to post a review on an individual product?
Our
syndication strategy has many levels. We are currently working with a
variety of partners, including bloggers, portals and retailers who have
interest in leveraging objective, third party data to help customers
figure out what to buy, to provide value added content to their site
experience, to improve conversion (product click-through) and to
prevent leakage to other sites when their customers need to do more
product research.
The benefit that bloggers, portal, retailers and manufacturers get is
they get a third party opinion of a product, which increases Web site
trust and product conversion.
The use of Wize Rank this way is similar to how people use Wine Spectator scores in wine stores to help people buy the best wines for the price.
What are you hoping to accomplish with the My Research bookmarking feature?
With the My Research bookmarking feature, we wanted to provide users with a convenient way to keep track of products they’ve researched on Wize, in addition to any notes they added to them. You can save items to My Research by clicking the Save to My Research button beside any product. You can also add, delete or change your notes at any time.
Currently, My Research is cookie-based, meaning that users don’t have to remember a username and password and login every time they want to take advantage of it. In our research, customers have told us that they really like this feature. We’re continuing to gather customer feedback in order to make it better.
What are your upcoming plans?
Right now, we’re focusing on two things: improving our destination Wize.com Web site (product experience) and providing our Wize Rank information across the Web.
We continue to improve our proprietary Wize Rank, making it better so that it is undisputedly the best, most helpful and most accurate product ranking system on the Web. We’re constantly adding products and sources, in addition to working with our technologists and statistician PhDs to ensure that the Wize Rank is a portable and robust product satisfaction score.
Wize Rank will be leveraged into our continually improving Web site and will also be leveraged in our partnerships.
We
are working with a number of companies to provide them with our Wize
Rank and Wize data so they can improve their current Web site
experiences. They are leveraging the technology and IP we’ve created so
they don’t have to spend money, time and resources trying to build it
themselves. It’s not trivial. We are very excited about our
partnerships that see the value in the data we provide.
