May 2, 2006
ShopWiki
ShopWiki is a website that I noticed last week.
I think it’s a great idea! The site is essentially a shopping guide / wiki which indexes everything that can be purchased online.
So part of the site is sort of similar to My Simon or Froogle in that it lets you do price comparison. Where I think the site takes off in comparison though is that there are wikis on the site where users can add information/facts on buying something.
When I first came across it, I sort of thought it was neat, but wasn’t sure if I would ever use it. Then today I was thinking about making a purchase, but I wanted to do some research beforehand. Right now there’s not really any single place to look to do research. If ShopWiki can be a kind of content aggregator of some sort, for example, linking to all the product reviews on a certain type of product and collecting information and putting into an easily searchable place, I think it could be really awesome.
Before people make a purchasing decision, they need objective information to figure out what they’re going to buy. There’s tons and tons of reviews and articles on things everywhere on the web, but right now they are sort of all over the place. Having one place to find information is really appealing. Also, the community aspect of sharing and people helping each other out is another awesome characteristic of this site.
Of course, they still need to build up their content, but it looks like team behind the site has pretty impressive Internet credentials. Let’s see what happens with this site! I also think it’s neat the company is based in NYC, home of tons of media/advertising firms.
Sorry if this sounds like a commercial, I don’t know anyone involved with the site and just came across it on the Internet… I just think it sounds like a neat idea.
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May 5th, 2006 at 11:56 am
Re. reviews and articles on products being “all over the place” — where have you been? That’s why ConsumerSearch.com was founded six years ago, to review all these product reviews and rate them for credibility. In my opinion, ConsumerSearch is more efficient to use than ShopWiki, because you don’t have to sort through a lot of different products to find the one that meets your particualr needs. At ConsumerSearch, you can see the most-recommended “Fast Answers” chart to pick out the best product in a couple of minutes, or read the full report that discusses all the models reviews recommend. The reviews are summarized, with links so you can verify them for yourself. These product reports are written by experts, but they read the user reviews and I bet they’ll review the ShopWiki reviews too, just as they do Amazon.com and similar user reviews. So if ShopWiki reviews do turn out to be useful, they’ll be put into a larger context at ConsumerSearch, along with reviews at Consumer Reports and various print publications too.
May 5th, 2006 at 12:09 pm
Hmm, thanks for the info on ConsumerSearch — unfortunately I hadn’t heard of the site.
I guess you’re the first person I’ve come across raving about the site. It definitely looks useful, although a bit cluttered. I read on the site that the editorial content and advertising content is separated, but the way things are set up, it seems a bit commercial to me. I don’t get the same feeling of authenticity…
How important is so-called “likability” to a website’s success?
I just did a blogsearch on “ConsumerSearch” and it looks like most of the links that mention ConsumerSearch are to spam blogs that are just filled with commercial advertisements. Hmmm, isn’t that odd? Does this tell you something about the marketing tactics of ConsumerSearch?
May 8th, 2006 at 2:14 pm
I agree that the ConsumerSearch pages look cluttered–too many ads. But I guess that keeps the content free, whereas you have to subscribe to read Consumer Reports. Do you think the ads at ConsumerSearch lower the authenticity, or perceived authenticity, of the reports? When I first started using the site years ago, they had fewer ads, so I got in the habit of using it when it was less cluttered. About the blogs, I don’t suppose ConsumerSearch has any control over who links to them. Any popular site has the same problem.