Tech Talk: Gear Maker Allows Customer Reviews

By Elizabeth Wasserman

A Texas-based manufacturer of CD and DVD storage cases finds that allowing customer feedback on its website not only helps sell its products but gives the business insight into how it could make improvements.

Discgear, a brand of CD and DVD storage cases from CD3, based in Austin, Texas, stared 18 years ago selling in malls and through distributors but has now moved its sales online to Discgear.com. Michael Brown, IT director, tells IncTechnology.com how adding a customer review feature has helped provide customers -- and the business -- with more information about the products.

Elizabeth Wasserman: What is Discgear? What is your business model?

Michael Brown: Discgear is the brand name. Our parent company is CD3 Inc. For the past 18 years, we've been innovating in designing and manufacturing DVD and CD storage cases. The difference is Discgear offers storage and protection but we also have software that goes along with it that helps you find things and keep your media organized. Our business model has changed over the years. We sell a lot more online than we use to. We started out as a couple of guys selling products in the mall. Then we started to go through a lot of distributors and independent retailers. Our largest partner is QVC and we have seen great success with that format. We also sell online and a lot of our distributors sell our products online.

Wasserman: Why is it important to get customers involved in your website?

Brown: Being in charge of the website, I wanted to stay on top of what is going on and user-generated content is on everyone's website these days. For an e-commerce site, the best first step to get user generated content on the website is a product review. It makes sense. They just purchased something from you. Let them talk about it. People appreciate what other people like them have to say. People want to trust a company, but a company can be biased in what it says about its own products. Having a customer tell you the good and sometimes the bad about a product is a very beneficial thing to have. It became obvious that we needed to have something like this added to our site.

Being the manufacturer, it also makes sense. A lot of people are starting their searches at the manufacturer's website these days. Customers may go out and check some places for better deals, but they’re starting the search more and more at the manufacturer's website.

Wasserman: What did you decide to do?

Brown: We started going around and seeing what other people were doing. We started looking at our peers and the major e-tailers that have our respect and are doing a good job. More times than not I saw Power Reviews Express on their site. That is what first introduced us to that product. We followed up with them and a couple of other review providers. But it came down to what it cost and how easy it was to start up.

Wasserman: How much did it cost and what was involved in setting it up?

Brown: It was nothing to set it up. And it costs only $80 a month. The cost is minimal compared to some of the other people providing that service. The setup was a snap. It has an online wizard where you upload a product feed and make some decisions about how you want your reviews to show up. You drop a couple lines of code on your webpage. Within an hour we could have been taking reviews, although we delayed that for about a week and went through and did some testing and made some changes. It's an online service and what they are doing is managing the reviews database for you. We set up an account drop in code specific to our account on our webpage. When someone writes a review, they look it over and make sure it has no profanity and is relevant to our site and then they send it on to us. We can look at it or we can automatically have it go onto our website. There's no overhead on our end for keeping track of the reviews.

Wasserman: What have the results been?

Brown: We rolled out the service on Dec. 1, 2008. We wanted to get it up before the holidays. And within the first three or four weeks we had 100 reviews on our site. We don't have a deep product line -- we have 10 or 15 core products. We saw that as a great success, and it's given us some good feedback as well. There have been some reviews that have truthfully raised valid points and given us an opportunity to have something brought to our attention that we will probably think about for future design. It's there for good and for bad. Thankfully, we have heard more good than bad.