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Originally published at Internet.com
Vendors in the crowded online search and comparison market have been expanding and enhancing services this year in an effort to leapfrog the competition. The trend has resulted in some rather interesting developments, such as today's news that ShopWiki is launching a Video Review service.
ShopWiki, a comparison-shopping site, crawls more than 120,000 stores to enable consumers to narrow down price-based searches almost instantaneously. The addition of video reviews is designed to be an enhancement to their growing database of more than 1,300 user-contributed buying guides.
Each ShopWiki user is able - and encouraged - to post and edit buying guides, in the wiki model of open collaboration. Similar to a blog in structure and logic, a wiki allows anyone to edit, delete or modify content that has been placed on the Web site using a browser interface. ShopWiki uses this platform to allow consumers to post reviews and buyer's guide of products they have purchased and tried.
In the bricks-and-mortar retailer sector, companies naturally want consumers to consider only their products (or their own store). The same has held true with online retailers, which for quite some time were dependent only on showing up near the top of consumers' search engine queries, or on consumers looking for their specific brand. With Web services such as ShopWiki, however, consumers have more opportunity to do their price comparison and product research online, at one place, before making a purchase, and online retailers have one more place where their products will be shown to shoppers.
Video Reviews Offer a 'Pseudo hands-on' Experience
The newly launched video reviews is designed to add a dynamic personal touch to online shopping with up-close views and balanced commentary on a wide scope of products. Since you can't have hands-on experience while you shop online, a video review will show you another consumer's experience. The video reviews launched on ShopWiki feature an individual product, a head-to-head comparison of products or a roundup of an entire category of products.
For example, a user might review a Blackberry alone, compare and contrast it with a Treo or do a product roundup comparing all of the Smartphones currently on the market. The accepted videos will appear on individual product pages and in the site's wiki buying guides.
Looking for comparison prices and reviews of the Guru Trilite Dura-Ace bicycle, you can now click to watch a new Video Review of the product on ShopWiki.com
Like buying guides, video reviews are designed to help a consumer understand a product before making a purchase - something that is important in online shopping where the consumer is unable to handle the merchandise directly before buying. For manufacturers and retailers, the video reviews offer the opportunity to have their own product or brand presented to a large consumer base through video reviews.
Kevin Ryan, co-founder and CEO of ShopWiki, doesn't necessarily see the whole comparison market heading in the direction of video. "Video reviews are suitable only for some markets and products. Video reviews of DVDs and books may not be useful, but for multifunctional products like bicycles or refrigerators, you are providing the consumer with a 3-D view - allowing them to see exactly how the fridge opens or how that specific bicycle handles works."
The video reviews follow on the heels of ShopWiki's most recently addition of Mobile Shopping Search and Search by Color functionality, which is designed to allow consumers, to not jusst shop for a type of product by price, but a product in a very specific color as well. You can search for a diamond ring or sweater then scroll through the listings until you spot a product you like. The color selector saves you search time as you could select, for example, to see only white-gold rings or only the sweaters in your favorite shade of blue. Like the color selector, the new Video Reviews are dynamic services offered to benefit the consumer's experience on ShopWiki.
To jumpstart the new Video Reviews section, the first 500 videos submitted and approved by the ShopWiki team will be paid $50. The offer seems to be paying off already for ShopWiki as Ryan told ECommerce-Guide that they received video review submissions just hours after the announcement was made.
By this fall ShopWiki has plans to expand into France, Spain, Canada, Australia and the U.K, offering consumers in those countries to opportunity to search for products in their own country. By next year the goal is to offer ShopWiki in a total of 25 countries.
Vangie Beal is a regular contributor to ECommerce-Guide.com.
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Author: Vangie Beal
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