Online reviews = trillion $ industry, but it still sucks...
Online Reviews Are Broken... How Do We Fix It?
If you've ever had to book a hotel or airbnb before, purchase a product on amazon, or get a reservation at a restaurant, you know how much making a decision just sucks.How are we supposed to scroll through dozens of options all with supposedly great 4-5 star reviews and figure out which one is better? Which one doesn't have fake reviews? Which one fits more into what we personally enjoy and look for?It's impossible. You spend hours of time and hundreds or even thousands of dollars on something to end up feeling ripped off.The system is fundamentally broken.Ecom market size is 20 trillion dollars. 95% of customers rely on reviews to make online purchases. And studies show that 42% of reviews are fake.20 * 0.95 * 0.42 = 7.98 trillion dollars worth of purchases are made with shitty data.To be able to fix the market, first, we have to truly understand all of its faults and why the current solutions don't work.1. The Accuracy ProblemYou can't fully trust the accuracy of reviews. Nowadays companies use different strategies to hijack reviews and boost them inorganically:Bots (some AI ones even suck)Review agencies. Companies hire these third parties to put in the manual labor of purchasing and reviewing their products naturally.Rewards and incentives. Companies offer gift cards, discounts, or just straight cash for providing a review.Since everybody knows that this is how it works, when reading reviews we are skeptical from the get-go.2. The Negative Review ProblemMost negative reviews are just rants or malicious without any logical substance. Humans are generally speaking impatient, petty, and self-centered. As soon as we get mad, annoyed, or frustrated we go to the extreme and value something as a 0/10 experience, when realistically it might have been a 3-7/10.3. The Context ProblemReviews lack a world of context. Would it be fair to say that what the 70-year-old retired millionaire enjoys and values is the same thing that a 22-year-old broke college student would? No.4. The Crowd Wisdom ProblemCROWD WISDOM IS INHERENTLY FLAWED. Surowiecki studies show that "the crowd (the reviewers) produces very bad judgment, and argues that in these types of situations, their cognition or cooperation failed because (in one way or another) the members of the crowd were too conscious of the opinions of others and began to emulate each other and conform rather than think differently."5. The Platform Incentive ProblemReview platforms are incentivized to sway the results. They earn a % commission when you make a purchase by clicking a link on their site or they directly get paid by companies to advertise or boost the products on their own platform.6. The Review Evaluation ProblemThe users who have been reading and evaluating reviews for a long time know how to get the least biased and most authentic reviews. How?They focus on the 2-3 star ratings that have actual rationale and logic behind their negative review.Then they evaluate if the reason that the reviewer did not enjoy the product, service, or experience is a deal-breaker for them or if it's a tradeoff that they actually see as positive and something they can live with.You see, what might be a turn-off for someone else might actually a plus for you.This strategy and system time and time again has been described as the absolute best way to evaluate any online purchase.The SolutionOn the one hand the review platform would have an internal trusted due dilligence team like Consumer Reports to make sure that we have verified & vetted reviews in a well-explained, logical, contextual, and provable format. This way, people can have a 100% trust factor and at the same time decide if the negative aspects are deal-breakers for them or not, given their personal circumstances.On the other hand, a due dilligence team cannot possibly review every single product, restaurant, hotel, or activity in the world. Therefore, we need a network of users submitting their personal reviews and experiences (which we will verify of course), and in turn they will gain reputation on the platform as reviewers and earn a portion of the revenue generated from that review.But how will the platform make money? How will each review be monetized? The platform makes money from users paying to read these high-quality high-fidelity real reviews and make an informed decision about their purchase.Why would anyone pay for a review? Imagine investings hours of research and hundreds or thousands of dollars into purchasing a product, service, hotel, activity, vacation, or any other and getting ripped off. Would you not pay 5, 10, 50, or even 100$ to make sure you are getting the real deal? Make sure you are not being scammed? Make sure ou get the most out of your money & time? Seems like a no-brainer. Huge ROI.Why I’m Passionate About Solving ThisWhy am I even interested in this problem? Why even try to find a solution?I am an explorer, a digital nomad of sorts, I have booked hundreds of hotels, activities, and restaurants, … and like most people, I have an amazon / online shopping addiction lol.I’ve gotten extremely good at filtering out the bullshit and finding the gold, but it has come only recently. It took years of “being in the trenches” and I still often get ripped off, duped, scammed, or just have a downright bad experience.If it happens to me, it happens to all of us.Where We Are and What’s NextThe key to building this verified catalogue of reviews is volume. It’s the network of users that are submitting their personal reviews and experiences (which we will verify of course).Meanwhile, we have a Due Diligence team that is working day and night to upload new reviews constantly.So if you have an upcoming trip, a restaurant you’re looking to try out, or an amazon product you are dying to buy, shoot us a review request in the box at the bottom and we will investigate and research it thoroughly to get you all the real info and details.There are hundreds of thousands if not millions of hotels, restaurants, activities, and products all around the world to evaluate - so we have a long way to go, and will take any help we can get!