I read an article today in which the author waxed lyrical on the commercial opportunities afforded to wine retailers by having customer reviews on their sites. She made the fair point that people look for reassurance before taking out their credit cards (especially in a 'tricky' area like wine) and that in many cases (pun alert!) they value the opinion of similar others over 'experts' - they want to know what normal individuals think about a wine.
Observing how successful the customer review model has been for Amazon and Trip Advisor (a site I don't like using, as no matter which hotel you have spent ages picking out there will be some sourpuss who has slated and tainted it for you), she makes the grand claim that "early adopters <...> of wine reviews on their sites will see their sales, revenue, and popularity soar."
Nice idea in theory: have customers write reviews (hopefully glowing) and display a button so they can share these on Twitter, Facebook or somewhere else (we do this here on bubblebrothers.com) . The problem is that, for whatever reason, no one plays ball in Ireland - you couldn't get a people happier to drink good wines, and more disinclined to spiel on the web about them afterwards.
And who can blame them! Crafting reviews takes precious time and effort. The social nature of the product means that it's usually drunk with others, and breaking off mid-anecdote at a dinner party to post compliments on a retailer's site looks very bad. Of course, wine is kind of a 'funny' area too, and most casual drinkers would probably be too embarrassed to express their thoughts on their Gigondas in public in case they are 'wrong' (note: you can't be) and everyone laughs at them; if only they knew how wildly different from each other experts' tasting notes on the same wine can be!
Across the water in Britain, Naked Wines seems to have mastered the trick of getting its customers to write reviews, but theirs is a unique business model and their customers seem to be an unusually involved bunch. Obviously the two Leviathans - Amazon and Trip Advisor - mentioned above, get heaps of reviews, but their sites attract astronomical numbers of visitors compared to the typical, humble wine merchant's.
I think it looks so forlorn if you offer the review function but nobody ever writes! "Be the first to write a review of this wine" - how often have I seen those sad words? Maybe just a simple Facebook "Like" button, and a tweet one too, is the way to go, as these simple things involve much lower effort and risk for reticent drinkers.
But perhaps reviews will take off here eventually? Online wine retailing in Ireland is still in its infancy and, of those that sell online, only some allow customer reviews. It's probably too much to expect reviews galore at this early stage.
What do you think? - Is there any way in hell you would ever write a wine review online?
