Wednesday, December 10th, 2008...6:33 pm
“Super Charge Me” – Cut out the extra fat in SaaS solution fees
“1.2 billion impressions served!!!”
Assuming it is accurate, this is a huge number and all I can think about are the costs associated with serving those impressions and the risks to retailers of having an outside vendor hosting this content.
Our competitor recently issued a press release saying that they served up mountains of review content for their retailers on Cyber Monday. Good for them, I am happy that their servers held up and that they didn’t have CTOs calling them asking why their product pages were hanging on their SaaS provider when people were trying to buy stuff (especially in this “don’t-risk-revenue” year).
Retailers already have fully scaled web hosting capabilities in-house, and at PowerReviews, we have built a system that leverages this to provide a low cost and low risk Review Solution through our Asymetrical ASP. From the start, we invested in and built more efficient technology that helps our entire network of retailers use the systems that they have already built without loss of control or downtime risk. Our clients’ CTOs and IT departments truly appreciate the fact that they are not dependent of someone else’s system for page reads. Bazaarvoice’s solution has them hosting the reviews for you. With PowerReviews you control the data and it’s your choice whether it is hosted by us or you.
None of our clients are worrying about the servers staying up. They can focus on collecting volumes of trusted reviews and then leveraging their value for things like SEO improvements and Top Rated Gear sections to sell more of their best products.
Looking back to 2006 when a minority of the retailers on the Top 500 had customer reviews and answers on their websites, I would say that we have all come a long way in empowering the customer’s voice. That being said, you might want to carefully consider the implications of the “progress” you read about as it relates to the delivery of these benefits.
Some friendly advice: Big Macs and Big Hosting Fees might not always be what the doctor ordered.
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