Lack of reviews culture across most of continental Europe is now kein Problem/no problem/pas de problème, says Reevoo
London, 18th April 2011 - Social commerce company Reevoo has developed an automated review translation tool that enables reviews from one country to be translated and used in other countries where the same product is sold. Reevoo’s new software has been piloted successfully by Sony across eight of its European websites, helping Sony to overcome the lack of an established reviews culture across continental Europe.
Reevoo used machine translation to supplement valuable and irreplaceable local language reviews, giving Sony a clear advantage of volume at launch. The near-instantaneous translation of reviews enables products to benefit from a high volume of reviews during the earliest part of their lifecycle, when products are at their most desirable and profitable. Reevoo’s use of machine translation also maintains vital objectivity in the process of translation, meaning there is no inadvertent interpretation of the voice of the consumer by a human translator.
Reevoo’s software employs Google Translate, a free translation service that provides instant translations between 57 different languages and can translate words, sentences and web pages between any of the supported languages. Using the Google Translate AJAX API, Reevoo’s developers created a tool that enables users to translate reviews into their native language.
Since the start of 2011, the ReevooMark™ service – complete with new translation tool – has gone live on Sony’s German, Italian and Dutch sites, with Reevoo already providing tens of thousands of ‘additional’, translated reviews. Reevoo’s ability to deliver ‘international network reviews’ means that hundreds of Sony products in these countries, which would otherwise have had no reviews at go live, have had reviews right from the first day of launch. In Germany, the proportion of products ‘review-less’ at launch was 34%, while in Italy and the Netherlands the figures were 35% and 30% respectively.
In fact, Sony’s German site had 511 local reviews at launch – but 58,395 network reviews. In Italy, the figures were 283 and 45,733, while in The Netherlands it was 375 and 49,100. Expressed differently: of every 114 reviews on the Sony Germany site, 113 were international network reviews made possible by Reevoo’s new software. Across all eight Sony sites on which Reevoo’s solution is deployed, nearly half a million international network reviews have been delivered.
The average number of network reviews for otherwise review-less products on Sony’s German site was more than 24; in Italy, 22; and, in The Netherlands, 41.
Kyle McGinn, chief technology officer for Reevoo, said: “For some time Reevoo has been the only social commerce solution that syndicates reviews of any given product across all partner sites – the ‘network effect’ – and now we have the only solution that delivers an ‘international network effect’.
“On average 78% of Sony products across the eight countries benefit from reviews, with a maximum of 94% - compared with a typical average for a similar business of below 20%. It’s impossible to overstate how important this is: the majority of products are most profitable in the first few weeks of sale, so brands like Sony need reviews quickly.
“Just from a volume perspective, what we’re doing is only possible using machine translation, but equally significantly it maintains the integrity of each and every review. Human translation is necessarily subjective, and risks turning something from a real customer review into a piece of marketing collateral,” he added.
Simon Moutzouris, Social Media Manager at Sony Europe, said: “Sony’s objectives for the roll-out of ratings and reviews across its European sites were for both the deployment and the ongoing function to require as few of our resources as possible, and for all the international sites to have reviews from day one. Because of the way that ReevooMark is deployed, and because Reevoo developed the translation tool, both of these were achieved.”
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Notes to editors
Try out Reevoo’s tool: visit http://mark.reevoo.com/reevoomark/de-DE/product?sku=DSCHX1.CEE8&retailer=SGM&badge_style=sonyde230by45 and click on ‘Reviews from other countries’ (from top tabs).
About Reevoo
Reevoo (http://www.reevoo.com/b2b) is Europe’s leading provider of social commerce solutions. Reevoo has been deployed by more than 120 major brands including Sony, BestBuy, Tesco and Dixons helping them to achieve average sales uplifts of 18% through boosted conversion rates and increased order values, turning browsers into shoppers.
Reevoo has solicited more than two million independent, impartial reviews from genuine customers. To help consumers make their purchase decision, Reevoo provides easy access to these reviews, displaying more than half a billion reviews to shoppers every month across the Reevoo network.
Reevoo’s consumer website (http://www.reevoo.com) also presents shoppers with everything they need to decide what to buy, including impartial customer reviews, price comparison, expert advice, product information and voucher deals.
Media contacts
Tim Donnelly Smith, Both Barrels Communications Ltd.
timds@bbcomms.co.uk, +44 7978 800275
Nicola Riordan, Reevoo
nicolariordan@reevoo.com
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