It has been found that a lot of users rely on the reviews of a product before making their decision. But how reliable and relevant are the reviews that you see?
Introducing Yotpo, the first ever "Social Review System". Yotpo builds a social graph of your reviewers and helps the reviewer and the customers get an original and innovative experience. It is simple and relatively easy to install.
You can be up and running with Yotpo in about 5 minutes. We got a chance to interview Tomer Targin, the young, passionate and motivated co-founder of Yotpo, and get his views on the link between eCommerce and social media. Catch the interview below:
Tomer, please introduce yourself to our readers.
I'm a young, highly motivated entrepreneur with a passion for product and design. I think I started playing with the internet from the age of 15 and I'm certainly a geek :) Prior to Yotpo I worked at Intel for two years and in the university I studied a combine degree of electrical engineering and computer science. Besides Yotpo I'm also a contributor at TNW blog and a real dog person.
Can you explain in detail the concept behind Yotpo?
Think of Yotpo as the Badgeville+Disqus for reviews. Yotpo’s mission is to give people the power to write and read reviews within their social graph in a fun gamely way and make the review space more open and connected. After extensive research Yotpo found the formula to combine reviews and social. By enabling the user to read and write reviews from/to his social graph in a fun, gamely and influential way, Yotpo leverages the reviewer social graph to the benefit of both other consumer and the website itself.
What was the inspiration behind starting Yotpo? Do you have a story to share with us?
The inspiration behind Yotpo came actually from a personal story. One of our friends always says that we never bought him a present for his birthday. We decided that we are going to buy him a digital camera along with a course in photography. When we bought the camera we read reviews and based on the reviews decided on which camera to buy.
After the second lesson of his photography lesson the teacher told my friend that the camera we bought him is basically crappy and that he should buy a new one. We were sooooo mad on the reviewers that wrote the reviews. Then 3 main questions poped to my head:
1. "Is the reviewer a real person? Is he or she are biased?"
2. "Is that reviewer part of my social graph in some way? Is he/she are connected to me?"
3. "Why should I listen to that reviewer? does he/she specialize in the product I'm going to buy?"
After talking to a lot of e-commerce websites we also noticed that e-commerce website don't leverage their reviewer social graph and don't get any social data about their reviewers. Add to that our research on how to improve the review experience (which we think is way too difficult today) you get Yotpo!
As a start-up what were the difficulties that you faced from the time that you hit upon this idea to having Yotpo up and running?
I think the main challenge is focus. Because me and Omri (my co-founder) are both geeks the easiest part for us was to set down at my apartment and to start program Yotpo. The hard part for us is to well define the problem and how the solution will look like. Like Steve Jobs once said: "Focus is about saying no", there are so many features to build and to focus on our MVP (Minimal Valuable Product) was extremely hard.
Please explain to our readers how is Yotpo different from other social media aggregators.
The first clear advantage is our social approach. Not like any other solution out there, Yotpo is a true value, social inherent solution. For the first time users can see that the reviewers are real people, how they are connected to each other and a full reviewer profile containing all the info if you should or shouldn’t trust their reviews.
What are the kind of benefits that an eCommerce website/online retailer/blogger expect to see by using Yotpo?
Simplified review process. In every solution today the reviewer has to go through a long process of registration + review forms in order to post a review. Yotpo’s solution make it very simple to write review: One click social log in + a simple review box.
To summarize, Yotpo is the first solution that puts a social layer on top of the review space. This new approach opens a world of possibilities and experience for both the users and the websites.
E-commerce websites can for the first time establish a social community and get true social data on their customers. Yotpo's current customers are seeing 40% increase in social engagement, 10-20% increase in reviewers retention and ~90% increase in their review count!
How do the reporting tools in Yotpo help users to better understand their customers/readers?
Yotpo's social analytic tool enables the e-commerce website to understand how many customers are using Facebook against to Twitter or Linkedin or Foursquare. Another thing is that Yotpo establishes the social graph of the customers and identify influencers within the social graph.
What has been the most satisfying moment along the whole journey so far? What is the best compliment that you have received from your users?
I think the happiest moment was that one of our customers sent us his FB analytic after he installed our system. The results were amazing and he was just so happy. I think to see that your product actual give value to the customers is something truly amazing.
Do you plan on creating new social media applications as creative as Yotpo in the future?
Yotpo is a real revolution, I really hope and think that Yotpo will be the company I'm going to work in until the age of 70. There is a huge opportunity here and the product plus team is amazing- not going anywhere else :)
What has been the most satisfying moment along the whole journey so far? What is the best compliment that you have received from your users?
I think the happiest moment was that one of our customers sent us his FB analytic after he installed our system. The results were amazing and he was just so happy. I think to see that your product actual give value to the customers is something truly amazing.
Do you plan on creating new social media applications as creative as Yotpo in the future?
Yotpo is a real revolution, I really hope and think that Yotpo will be the company I'm going to work in until the age of 70. There is a huge opportunity here and the product plus team is amazing- not going anywhere else :)
Other than being the co-founder of Yotpo what activities do you like to do in your free time ? Is there that one Book/Movie/Song that you keep going back to?
Besides Yotpo there isn't a lot but I'm trying to spend time with my dog as much as possible.
What advice would you like to offer for aspiring Start-Ups?
My advice is just start. Go and build your idea and see if you found one person in the world saying your product is great and that it helped him/her. After that you will already know what to do.
Thank you Tomer for taking the time for this interview, we wish Yotpo and you the very best in the future. :)
Check out this short infographic explaining everything about Yotpo.
Learn more about Yotpo through their:
Had never heard of Yotpo before. But it seems to be like a good software that would really be beneficial. Bye bye fake reviews!
Interesting Videos.. Awesome Wonderful Thanks..
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