Smarter’s video product reviews are a very entertaining and useful product research tool. As Smarter’s product evangelist Paul Willmes said, “the reviews are by people who actually own [the product] which makes it more real. It makes the opinion more valuable, like a friend giving you advice.”
The question of ‘what to buy’ or ‘what not to buy’ has long been addressed (poorly in my opinion) by the shopping engines through a myriad of buyer’s guides, reviews, and user ratings. These resources are sprinkled throughout the shopping engines, but have never been a main focus as the shopping search engines have historically tried to get people to click out as soon as possible so they can make money (through CPC fees).
Smarter.com’s video product reviews, however, are tightly integrated into the product shopping and browsing experience. You can’t miss them, and for the most part you wouldn’t want to. Right now, there are approximately 24,000 video product reviews on the site which are being syndicated from Expo TV (only the top reviews from Expo TV show up on Smarter).
You can view reviews throughout all levels of the shopping search experience, from the product list level to the product detail level.
It’ll be interesting to see what impact these video product reviews have on merchant click-through and conversion rate.
Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.
Related Topics: Search Engines: Shopping Search Engines
Great writeup, it will be interesting to see what impacts these videos and user reviews have on comparison shopping and merchant sales. Voice comments were pretty short lived, now video is the big deal.
I would also like to see reviews at the top from the merchants giving sort of a “live” product walkthrough and description (obviously it wouldnt work for everyone, but would be a neat, useful, time saving feature.