Introducing Hugdug, a new customer review service

5 ways to use the service integrating with Amazon

You will know that reviews and social proof are an essential strategy to maximise the appeal of an online retailers proposition in order to incentivise a would-be customer to make that purchase and turn prospects into customers. Furthermore, online reviews are more trusted with consumers than bland, manufacturers product descriptions. It's also recognised that to get customers to review a product or service requires a reason or purpose to make the effort.

Enter Hugdug - a product review site with a mission to get millions of us to write reviews of our favourite books, music or whatever takes our fancy.

The incentive is to drive people to write reviews through the site where 50% of revenues generated will be going straight to selected charities.

So how does Hugdug work?

Hugdug is part of the Amazon affiliate program and seeing as Amazon sells literally everything, you could write a review of just about any product imaginable. How the revenues are generated is that the review created by the user links to the product on Amazon. So if a user decides to read your review, click through to Amazon and then purchase the item, a commission is then paid out to Hugdug - of which 50% is donated back to a charity.

Here's an Example

I created a review of the book, Ctrl, Alt, Delete by Mitch Joel on Hugdug which you can see here (or in the screengrab below)

From the review page above, the user clicks through to Amazon.com where they can purchase the product and in turn, Amazon generates a commission back to Hugdug - simple. It's a strategy of harnessing the opportunity of product reviews and at the same time enhancing the opportunity to drive sales as well as create. A perfect way in re-defining the power of the online review to drive a more social responsibility.

5 Ways to make your online reviews count

Online reviews have become part of the fabric of a successful online retailer, but are you really maximising the opportunity they can offer your business? Hugdug have re-invented this powerful user-generated content and here are a few strategies to consider to enhance the value of online reviews for your business:

• Reviews from your own customers - Opportunity to engage with your existing and new customers to incentivise them to write reviews of their experience of shopping or interacting with your online proposition.
• Re-invent your, bland, boring product descriptions - An issue for online retailers selling similar products or services is that a vast majority rely on product descriptions to be created by the manufacturers and in most cases it makes bland reading with little optimised content tailored to your customers. how about re-inventing the product description by using customer reviews?
• Enhance on page content - Use your customer reviews as additional content for your product page which will help to enhance your product pages and drive related content.
• Social Media Content - Recycle customer reviews as content to be distributed through your Social Media channels - helps to bring to life and create a personal edge to your social media channels by using customer comments.
• Build customer engagement - A great opportunity to build direct relationships with your customers and open up a dialogue by listening and interacting with your customer. Also don't be afraid of negative comments and feedback - treat this as an opportunity to learn and how to better enhance your products or services.