I'm in the process of developing a review-driven site, and I'm wondering how so many reviews get written on a site like Amazon when there's no incentive to do so (from what I can tell.) The incentive on a site like Yelp seems to be badges and awards given by other users to your reviews. How do you get people writing reviews on your site?
Ask HN: What motivates users to write Amazon reviews?
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Re: Ask HN: What motivates users to write Amazon reviews?
#2I think Amazon reviewers are people with opinions, who relish the idea of sharing their opinion with the world. I don't think these people need any more motivation than that-- no badges or flair required.
However: I think that the reviewer-to-reader ratio is tiny, and this is masked a bit by Amazon's absurd popularity.
And, to make matters worse, this absurd popularity is one of the driving motivators (cf above, "share one's opinion with the world", not "share one's opinion with the 200 people who happen to follow my micro-site.")
If anyone knows any way out of this besides increasing the number of users by several orders of magnitude, I'd love to hear it-- I, too, have a site that allows reviews, and only a tiny handful of reviewers (so far.)
Re: Ask HN: What motivates users to write Amazon reviews?
#3I write reviews under a pseudonym because I either really like the product I purchased (rare) or someone really pissed me off (common, half my textbooks) and I want the entire world to know about it but I don't want it coming back to haunt me. :)
Re: Ask HN: What motivates users to write Amazon reviews?
#4I was motivated by just how god-awful the ending to the Battlestar Galactica TV series was.
Re: Ask HN: What motivates users to write Amazon reviews?
#5I've written reviews on Amazon; not lots, maybe in the dozens, but far more than I do for other shopping sites.
I think most fundamentally, I find a lot of value in reading Amazon reviews written by others, and I feel like it would be useful for me to write my own reviews. I don't tend to review every product I possibly can, but rather, I usually just write a review if I have something interesting to say, or if I feel very strongly about an item, good or bad.
I like to think by doing this I can help other people make more informed decisions about what to buy.
Re: Ask HN: What motivates users to write Amazon reviews?
#6I suspect that most reviews are pissed off customers that are simply looking for an emotional outlet. I am actually amazed that so many products on Amazon have a high rating.
Amazon could probably increase reviews 10 fold by creating an incentive program (e.g., coupon codes for reviewing products).
Or, though it's a little spammy, I wouldn't be opposed to receiving a Netflix/Ebay style email a few weeks after I order a product asking for me to give a star rating on it.
Re: Ask HN: What motivates users to write Amazon reviews?
#7I find myself motivated by the extremes. Either a product was so fantastic that I felt the need to reward the manufacturer with something more than my money or it was so terrible that I felt the need to get back at the manufacturer for taking my money.
Re: Ask HN: What motivates users to write Amazon reviews?
#8I've written a single Amazon review. I spent hours finding an external USB disk enclosure that would support S.M.A.R.T. and I wanted google to shorten other people's search process.
Re: Ask HN: What motivates users to write Amazon reviews?
#9I find Amazon reviews fascinating for precisely the reason you indicate: they're incredibly widely used, despite not appearing to use many of the psychological tricks you see elsewhere.
I think there are a bunch of reasons Amazon reviews work so well:
1. The audience. If you want your opinion to be heard, posting your review on Amazon is the best way to go - just like selling your stuff on eBay makes sense because that's where the buyers are.
2. The high quality of the existing reviews. They set a standard which new reviews then attempt to match. That's the result of years of careful management of community expectations.
3. The "Top 1000 reviewer" badges. They're relatively subtle as badges go, but offer a powerful incentive for the best Amazon reviewers to keep on reviewing.
Re: Ask HN: What motivates users to write Amazon reviews?
#10> I'm wondering how so many reviews get written on a site like Amazon
I'm sorry to burst your bubble. The well-respected consultancy User Interface Engineering has come up with the magic number of 1 review for every 1,300 purchases.
"While only one in 1,300 purchasers of the product writes a review, the number who indicate a review was helpful is even fewer. For the Harry Potter volume, which is Amazon's best selling product ever, it was about 0.0014% or about one in 7,300 purchasers of the product. The most helpful review garnered only 566 votes, even though it was written on the first day the book was released and Amazon has sold more than 2,000,000 copies since."