Back in December of last year, we introduced ratings & reviews on Dell.com in a section of the website. In May of 2007, we expanded them to some Dell systems and introduced ratings and reviews in Canada and Europe. Shortly after, we introduced ratings and reviews across all our products. Today, we're now offering customers an easy way to share helpful reviews with others. Bazaarvoice, a company based in Austin, is our partner in ratings & reviews functionality on Dell.com.

Click on the photo below to see a larger version. In the middle of the page, you willl see the words "Share This Product" along with icons for Facebook, digg.com, and de.licio.us. Clicking on any one of those links on a review page will allow you to share reviews you find helpful with a few (or many) friends.

Why is this a big deal? This is another way for you as a customer to take control. You can share negative reviews just as easily as you can share positive ones—and that means products will need to stand on their own merits. Beyond that, in all kind of research that's been done, it makes sense that lots of customers research products and services on the Internet before a purchase, and that customers tend to trust reviews from other customers more than the sales or marketing information from corporations. 

When we started monitoring the blogosphere back in April 2006 to find customers who were blogging about their Dell hardware, one of the early things we learned is that our Blog Outreach team gained the most traction by entering the conversation with customer blogs who only had a handful of readers. Many times, those customers were the ones who blogged about 1) being surprised that a Dell support person read their blog and 2) Being relieved that those same Dell reps helped fix problems that were sometimes weeks (or even months) old.

Bottom line, our blog outreach team really started getting noticed once customers started talking to each other about their experiences dealing directly with Dell in the blogosphere. Getting the conversations started was a big deal back then, and it applies here with the new share functionality we're adding to our ratings and reviews.

Granted, this is a small step toward introducing more community content into Dell.com, but it's a start. Take a look at Laura Thomas' post if you want to see more on this topic. And if you haven't checked out our re-vamped community page, click over to www.dell.com/conversations. In addition to providing background on our community-focused areas, we've recently enhanced it so readers can see the latest blog posts, forum threads and new ideas from the IdeaStorm community. 

User jmxz seems to be looking for that as well with his Let customers post reviews/discussion... idea. Integrating customer feedback from properties like the Dell Forums, IdeaStorm,  Direct2Dell or others into Dell.com is a long-term goal that we're just getting started on. It's one I'm passionate about, and so are many others. We'll continue to blog new details as we continue making progress against that goal.