Amazon is doing a great job of highlighting relevant content on their user review pages. This is something we strived for at Judy’s Book but never quite nailed.

When there is a profileration of content, people want to know what’s most relevant. This is a natural response to information overload. On a site where there are a lot of reviews, you want to know which reviews you should pay attention to. (At this point, the great Princess Bride quote: “You truly have a dizzying intellect,” is probably coming to mind but bear with me.)

At Judy’s Book, we typically listed reviews in reverse chronological order and displayed the TrustScore of the user. This was a useful proxy but it didn’t really capture whether other people found the review helpful. It wasn’t a true content quality score. Rather, it measured the credibility of the individual posting the review. This is useful and valuable, but doesn’t really address the review. I was trusted on Judy’s Book, but I know nothing about kid-friendly restaurants. There’s no way I could have written useful reviews in that domain.

The challenge with trying to get a quality assessment is that the percentage of users that will rate something is relatively low. As a result, you need a lot of traffic to make meaningful assessments.

Amazon nails this. Their product review page does a fantastic job of summarizing what’s relevant for a potential customer.

Amazon Product Review Page

They don’t just show the average rating, they show the distribution. This isn’t a new feature. What I love is they highlight the positive and critical reviews that users have found useful. This is awesome. It let’s you see at a glance the most relevant information and gives a user comfort that they are getting the information they need to make a decision.

I love that Amazon displays the critical review as well. This has two big benefits. First, it feels authentic - no product is perfect; seeing the good and the bad lets you evaluate whether its failings are ones that will bother you. Second, even if a customer doesn’t buy this product, they will view Amazon as a place that makes it easy for them to make a good decision. They will either buy something else this session, or they’ll come back in the future.

This is a great example of taking a long view about customer satisfaction and hats off to Amazon. I’ve blogged about them before and remain impressed. Another area where they are doing a killer job is web services, but more on that later.

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