Enhancements to Reviews & Guides

[amy]

**Enhancements to Reviews & Guides*** 

November 18, 2005 | 11:13AM PST/PT

Hi, this is Matt Ackley again, Senior Director of Marketing. We just made some new enhancements to Reviews & Guides that I want to tell you about.

As a refresher, Reviews & Guides is a place where members can write reviews for certain products, or create informational how-to guides on just about any topic. It’s a great resource for buyers who want to research a type of item before making a purchase, or to simply give you a place to share your opinion with the world.

To make Reviews & Guides even more helpful, I’m pleased to let you know that now each writer of a review or guide will have what we call a User Content Page. If you find someone whose material you find really valuable, this page will let you see all the other reviews and guides they’ve written. You’ll be able to access each writer’s page from an icon next to any review or guide they write, and also from a link on their Member Profile page.

Another addition we’ve made is what we’re calling Reviewer Rankings. Since we first launched Reviews & Guides, members have been able to rate reviews by how helpful they are. Those reviews that have been voted most helpful could reach “Top Review” status. Now reviewers themselves will get a special icon according to how often their content is voted helpful. For example, you could get an icon indicating you’re a “Top 25” reviewer, or “Top 1000”. To see an example of what these icons look like, please see our Help page.

For more information about Reviews & Guides in general, please see our information page. We hope you enjoy the new additions to Reviews & Guides!

[amy]

another enhancement.  If eBay is going to be putting links to reviews written by other ebay users on items where I use pre-filled info (CDs) I'm not going to be happy.  There's a lot of potential for abuse if you're selling a rare/slow moving item and a competitor decides to write a "review".  I'll be opting out of having ratings/reviews appear on my items. 

***Reviews & Guides: Links On Pre-filled Item Pages and In Search*** 

March 22, 2006 | 05:21PM PST/PT


Hi everyone, I'm Ryan Spoon, and I work on Reviews & Guides. In case you've never used Reviews & Guides, this is an area on eBay where you can write reviews on certain products, or create informational how-to guides on just about any topic.

Since their launch last September, the reviews and guides you’ve written have been very helpful to buyers doing research before they buy! And for sellers, they've helped you showcase your expertise and get some extra exposure for your listings and eBay Stores.

We're now making a few enhancements to Reviews & Guides to make them more visible to buyers looking for particular items. These include:

Product Ratings on Item Pages
When you list an item with our Pre-Filled Item Information feature, your listing is populated with basic, standard information about that item (such as Author and Publisher if you're listing a book). Starting this week, we'll also include two new pieces of information beneath this area: an "Average Rating" bar showing how other members rated that product, plus a "See Reviews" link that lets the buyer easily read what other members thought of it.

If you don't want this extra information to appear on your listings, you'll be able to opt out through the "Show product ratings on your listings, if available" option within your Seller Preferences in My eBay.

Coming in April -- Member Guides in Search
In mid-April, we'll be giving Reviews & Guides a huge boost by including them in search results! Up to four relevant member-written Guides that have been voted as helpful will be included in a "Related Guides" box on the left-hand side of the page when you search for an item. These will be in addition to any of the eBay-provided Guides that we display today.

We appreciate the Community support we've seen for Reviews & Guides, and we want to encourage you to keep on sharing with others through this area. 

more information: http://reviews.ebay.com/?ssPageName=CMDV:AB

related topics:
What IS the excitement all about concerning being able to write reviews??
http://community.tuliptools.com/index.ph...568.0.html
eBay Adds New Feature: Reviews and Guides
http://community.tuliptools.com/index.ph...537.0.html

[bargainbloodhound]

arcasm1:

Neat, another link to lead buyers away from our item page and to the rest of the eBay site!  Thank you Intrusive Link Team! Thank you eBay!

The contributions of eBay's Intrusive Links Team over the past few years:

top of page: search box to your competitors items
top of item: link to similar items by your competitors
middle of item: link to reviews pages (which have links to your competitors items)
bottom of page:  VACANT SPOT, PERFECT FOR MORE LINKS TO YOUR COMPETITORS (Hey, I know the perfect thing to put in this spot, how about links to your competitors shipping rates!)

*end sarcasm*

[xppman]

There is no doubt that ebay has way too many people
working at HQ that have nothing better to do than tinker all the time.

ebay needs to shift its focus and do away with all these specialty departments.
Hey how about a glitch fixing department and maybe a customer service department?

What do they have? Like 2000 employees over there now.

Take 500 of them and put them in CS.
Take the other 1500 and put them in "glitch fixing" department and by ALL means.

Keep those kids off the friggin computers and lock down any further development plan
until they either fixed everything else that is broken or brake it all
so bad that the site crashes.

Unbelievable.


And the sit their scrathing thier heads wondering
why all the buyers and sellers are going away.

[bargainbloodhound]

ebay needs to shift its focus and do away with all these specialty departments.

They definitely need to consolidate their "teams".  They have 100s of narrowly focused teams who are clueless about what is happening outside of their team. If someone suggested to them that they have overdone it with "teams" I'm sure their response would be "I'll forward your response to the appropriate team"  :

Keep those kids off the friggin computers and lock down any further development plan
until they either fixed everything else that is broken

Putting a temporary freeze on new enhancement releases and fixing their code would do more to enhance their revenues and improve the user "experience" than any enhancement they could add.

[xppman]

Putting a temporary freeze on new enhancement releases and fixing their code would do more to enhance their revenues and improve the user "experience" than any enhancement they could add.

You can say that again.