As dojomike’s previous post alluded to, LexisNexis recently released their 2009 Online Ratings Survey. In that 2009 Survey, LexisNexis revealed some interesting trends that are continuing to develop in the online community.

Trend 1: The vast majority of small businesses and consumers are active users of review and ratings Web sites (90% for small business and 80% for consumers).

Trend 2: Small business owners place a greater value on ratings and review Web sites than consumers.

Trend 3: According to Alfredo Sciascia, a vice president with LexisNexis, “review and ratings Web sites are being used to a greater extent than ever before to inform buying decisions”. Sciascia adds that “ratings offer consumers valuable insight into a wide range of goods and services, and they can be a powerful tool used by business owners to differentiate their goods and services from those offered by competitors.”

Trend 4: Despite the increased use of review and ratings sites (as dojomike indicated in his previous post), the reliability of many of these review and ratings Web sites are in question.

Lexis-Nexis Recommendation Based on Trends: According to Sciascia, “the survey indicates that in order to offer a trustworthy, complete resource that provides significant value to business owners and consumers, providers of ratings will need to incorporate a combination of qualitative and quantitative evaluations”.

Lexis-Nexis’ recommendation was derived from the fact that when asked what kind of evaluation would be most valuable, nearly 80 percent of small business owners and consumers find that a blend of both numerical scores (overall ratings score) and written feedback (verbatim comments/testimonials) would be the most valuable type of evaluation from review and ratings Web sites.

Accordingly, do not only listen to me or dojomike as you continue to purchase and/or sell online, also listen to the experts at LexisNexis who commissioned a survey to obtain information that me or dojomike would have gladly provided to them for free.

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