Amazon是怎样用一项小策略创造了27亿美元的？ 试译

原文地址：http://econsultancy.com/blog/3521-how-amazon-made-2-7bn-with-one-small-tweak

试译：http://offmask.com       不正确的地方请各位指正，谢谢。

用户的评论已被证实是提升销售的有效手段，但绝不仅仅是将评论添加到产品页面这么简单。当你开始收到大量评论时，你需要进行整理，将它们以对顾客有意义的方式呈现出来。

可用性专家Jared Spool举了个很好的例子，Amazon是怎样成功地为它的客户处理好了评论的问题，并因此增加了27亿美元收入的。

上周，在这篇来自 The Economist  的文章中，Google的零售行业总监John McAteer说，评论的数量对于提高转化至关重要。20是一个充满魔力的数字，20条评论能让产品更具吸引力，而且还能激发更多人发表评论。

然而，当评论达到一定的数量之后，客户需要大量地滚动鼠标进行浏览（这句不确定，或者是：客户会因为量太多而拒绝浏览）。这时客户需要你帮他们把评论变得更有价值。

Jared Spool在他最新的文章中讲述了Amazon的方法，非常简单，只是在每条评论的下面加了一个问题：“这条评论对你有用吗？”就是这样简单的一个问题，帮Amazon将与产品最相关，同时也是对转化最有帮助的评论提到最前面。

Amazon悄悄地移除掉占据“最有用评论”前三甲的评论。它尝试让好评和差评保持一种平衡的状态，这样，顾客能从正反两方面了解产品。一个有趣的意外现象是，这些被选择放到前面的评论怎么才能得到更多的支持呢。如果它们是有争议的（不是每个人都觉得它们有用），它们的支持率就会降低，那些最有用的评论就会超过它们排到前面。这已经成了一个自治系统，让那些人们觉得最有用的评论能保持在列表顶端。其结果是，简单的手段，高效地运转。

还有其它一些技巧，比如让用户能容易地看到支持率最高的差评或好评，或是用简易的图表总结评论的等级，这样对用户来说，数量庞大的评论易于管理，而对Amazon则更有用。

Jared计算了一下，自从显示最有用的评论以来，媒体产品分类下的销售增加了20%。总体而言，这项功能对Amazon来说价值27亿美元。而之后的另一篇文章example of a firm that made $300m by removing the need to register before checkout《一公司通过取消付款前需注册这一规定，增加了3亿销售》，也说明了小手段能产生多么大的影响。

没有必要每个卖家都采取这样的方式，因为很少有能像Amazon吸引这么多评论的。事实上，在英国，产品能收到大量评论的电商不多。

Kelkoo 和 Reevoo都问道，评论是否有帮助，能否让顾客更容易的快速浏览页面。Reevoo提供了一份有用的得分汇总，并按别人觉得的有用程度来排列评论：

 在Game网站上，有些游戏有几百条评论，但是卖家没有采取措施帮用户利用这些评论。在侠盗车手这个例子中，有217条评论，被分成了40多页：

 有了这么多用户的反馈，而Game网没有加以利用。这是一个明显的例子，若是能将评论推荐为有用或以其他方式推荐评论，这对潜在用户而言是很有价值的资源，而且还能帮卖家提高转化率。

原文：

User reviews have proven to be an effective sales driver, but there is more to it than just adding them to product pages. Once you start to get large amounts of reviews you need be able to sort them in a meaningful way for customers.

Usability expert Jared Spool has a great example of how Amazon managed to solve this problem for its customers and add $2.7bn to its bottom line.

In this article from The Economist last week, Google’s retail industry director John McAteer says that the amount of reviews is crucial for increasing conversions, with 20 the magic number, at which point the product becomes more attractive and inspires further reviews. 

However, once the number of reviews reaches a certain point, and users have too many to scroll through, then they need some help making more sense of them.

Amazon’s solution is described Jared Spool in his latest article, and was as simple as adding the question: ‘was this review helpful to you?’ which helped Amazon to place the most relevant reviews, and therefore the most useful ones for conversion, at the top.

Amazon quietly bumps the three most helpful reviews to the top. It tries to balance positive and negative reviews, so shoppers get a balanced perspective. An interesting side effect is how these selected reviews get more votes. If they are controversial (in that not everyone agrees they were helpful), their ratio goes down, allowing the most helpful reviews to bubble up past them. This makes it a self-managing system, letting the reviews people find the most helpful to maintain their standing at the top of the list. The result is an understated implementation that works great.

Other touches, such as allowing users to easily view the best negative or positive reviews, as well as some handy charts that summarise review ratings, make the large number of reviews manageable for users and more useful for Amazon.

Jared calculates that, since displaying the most helpful reviews has increased sales in the media products category by 20%, overall this feature was worth $2.7bn to Amazon, and after this example of a firm that made $300m by removing the need to register before checkout, shows how small tweaks can make a big difference.

This doesn’t necessarily apply to all retailers, as few attract the sheer numbers of reviews that Amazon, In fact, it’s hard to find too many UK e-commerce sites with a large number of reviews.

Kelkoo and Reevoo both ask if reviews were helpful, and this makes product pages easier for shopper to scan. Reevoo provides a useful summary of scores, and displays review in order of how helpful others found them: 

On the Game website, there are a number of items with hundreds of reviews, but the retailer hasn’t provided the tools to sort them and to help shoppers make more use of them. In this example for Grand Theft Auto, there are 217 user reviews split across 40+ pages:

Having gathered so much user feedback, Game is not making the most of it, and this is a clear case where the ability to rate reviews as helpful or otherwise could make them a valuable resource for shoppers, and help increase conversions for the retailer