Video product reviews
May 22nd, 2008I came across an interesting site the other day called ExpoTV that offers video reviews of all kinds of products from makeup to snow tires and beyond. It’s certainly an innovative concept but for me there are some major hurdles a review site like this will face.
First, the reviews are only useful if you trust the reviewer and perhaps this is one reason ExpoTV decided to use this model - you get to actually see and hear the person reviewing the product. In many cases, though, the reviewer can be distracting to the review. I was searching for a mountain bike pump review and came across a woman reviewing a floor pump. Now, keep in mind that I’m a mountain biker - I stay in shape and I like to ride fast and get dirt in my face. The woman reviewing the pump was middle aged, overweight, and had a thick southern accent which, when taken together, completely invalidated everything she was saying to me. Of course, had I been reading a review from the same woman writing as ’southernlady123′ (fictional screen name) things could have been different because I would have assumed she was a mountain biker just like me. ExpoTV pays video submitters for their reviews so the site seems to attract folks who review just about everything in their home, whether they are knowledgeable or not. ‘Pay-for-reviews’ is another topic entirely, I’ll write more about this later.
Video reviews also need to be aggregated and coded to be useful. For example, if I see there are 138 reviews of a digital camera on Amazon.com I can trust that the 3.5 star rating is a pretty good average, and I can then compare that rating to other cameras in my price range. With a video, it’s one perspective on a single product. Perhaps if the video reviews were scored (positive, negative, neutral) and THOSE scores were then aggregated, a site like ExpoTV could start to be helpful. As it is now the videos themselves are rated which doesn’t say alot - does it mean the product is good or that the reviewer did a good job? As a consumer I just want to know if the product is recommended…
