Epinions.com (an eBay company)
I was recruited to help redesign Shopping.com which owned Epinions.com the leading on-line review and shopping comparison site.
First question: Do users know what Epinions is all about?
After the completion of a large usability study we determined
that many people were not aware that the reviews on Epinions were generated by real people that actually owned the products. Many consumers though that the reviews were written by paid professional writers due to UI designations and the reviewer's profile badges. (ex: Advisor) As a result, consumers thought the reviewers were biased, and trusted them a lot less. Many users of the site also did not realize that they could participate in the community and contribute reviews to the site.
We presented the stakeholders with the findings from user testing and made some key changes to the site's branding, tagline and look and feel. We had limited time and resources and a full redesign wasn't an option, so the first thing I looked at changing was the tagline as it offered the biggest bang for the buck, and the greatest reach. I argued that it should sum up what Epinions is in one sentance and it should be on every page on the site since most users deep linked into granular Epinions reviews from search engine links. We added"Unbiased Reviews by Real People" and images of actual users to the site on the home page.
See current site: Epinions.com
Epinions.com and Shopping.com were purchased by eBay for $620 million June 2005 and are still top product review and prices comparison services owned by eBay. They operate websites in USA, United Kingdom, France, Germany and Australia.
Five years later it is still one of eBay's top web properties
