It's clear from any number of studies out there that customers trust what they hear from friends, family members, or someone they consider and expert more than what they hear from a company. It's also clear that most folks use the Internet to research products quite a bit when they are ready to purchase something like a computer that will be used daily for quite some time.
Product reviews tend to be a source of information for customers when they are deciding between . Anne B. Camden just published a post to discuss two recent awards for the XPS 420 and XPS 730 desktops. Speaking of awards, yesterday we launched a new Awards & Reviews site on Dell.com. Of course, it features the latest third-party reviews of Dell products, but lots of folks worked to make it more than just a static page with links and logos. Hopefully, one thing you'll notice is that we tried to make it an intuitive visual experience. You can click on specific products if you have already narrowed your search or can see whole categories of systems.
Beyond that, we wanted to make it more interactive by doing a couple of things: integrating product reviews from customers who own the product and videos from Dell employees who share their opinions of products. Regular readers of Direct2Dell have heard me blog about user ratings and reviews. They are significant because in my mind it represents a small first step in integrating community elements into Dell.com. I've been a big believer in Jeremiah's concept of the Irrelevant Corporate Website. To me, it makes sense that companies that do the best job of blending customer and community feedback with the traditional e-commerce functionality that we've all grown accustomed to will have a significant edge over competitors. Though we're still in the early stages of things and have much work to do, we'll keep working toward that goal.
I hope this site gives you a reason to spend some research time the next time you're looking to buy a system. You can check it out by clicking on the image above or by going to www.dell.com/awards.