Wize Blog

What Buzz Tells Us About Product Quality

In usability studies conducted at Wize.com, participants told us that they used three inputs to determine whether or not a movie was worth seeing:

First they read the reviews and/or watched them on TV.

Next, they asked friends, or went online to see what word of mouth said.

Finally, they looked at the box office returns for the first two weeks.

I was amazed. Box office returns? Really? Here’s why: according to our participants, good press can cause a movie to have a big opening weekend. But if word of mouth is not good, then the movie might not be either – the box office will be impacted by the second week. “Snakes on a Plane”, anybody?

Wize is built around the same three inputs our customers told us were the most important:

We leverage expert product reviews from the most reliable sources – the Ebert and Roeper model.

We include user reviews to get a sense for what real people who’ve used to the products think about them.

We measure a product’s buzz to let people know whether a product is up to its hype. Great products enjoy good buzz for a long time. Not-so-great products tend to make a big splash, but disappear quickly.

It’s fascinating – and in some ways, counter-intuitive – to think of what buzz, or a measure of popularity, can teach us about product quality. But it tells us more than that. A popular product, such as the iPod, tends to be more compatible, have more accessories, and might even have its own support group.

As new products are launched, it will be interesting to watch the “box office returns” come in. Will the next version of the Canon PowerShot make a big splash and then disappear? Will the Apple iPhone be a great product, or just an exciting one?

We’d love to hear what you think.

Helping people feel smart

I did a quick search on 43 Things this morning, a site that asks people “what do you want to do with your life?” According to the site, only 6 people want to “feel smart” . To put this in context, 2,059 people want to grow their hair long , 2,252 people want to learn to knit , and 4,524 people want to have better posture.

The 6 people who want to feel smart must be the same ones we talked to last week, when we asked what they wanted from a product research website. They told us there’s already too much information out there, but not the right information. They told us that it’s hard to figure out what gifts to buy for people, and that they’re tired of feeling dumb when they walk into a retail store. They told us that the fear of making purchase mistakes can be paralyzing.

But here’s what else these people told us: they don’t want to be told what to do, or what to buy. They want the process to be empowering, and to provide the information that allows them to make confident decisions along the way, to feel smart. They want the right information and the right tools at the right time.

It makes sense to us, and it matches our own experience: I want my restaurant servers to tell me what the specials are in words I can understand, not to decide what I should eat. I want my movie critics to tell me about the movies they saw, not to tell me which one to see. And I want my research sites and stores to help me feel smart, not to tell me what to buy.

We think there are a lot more than 6 people out there who want to feel smart. How about you?