If you need to learn about a new company or product, there are plenty of online resources for reviews and other information.
You can go to review sites like Yelp, social networks like Facebook or even specific blogs or websites for more specific testimonials. But if you don’t want to do all of that research, there’s Shadow.com.
Shadow Technologies is a new company that provides a sort of one-stop-shop for information and reviews about anything. The team likes to think of it as the Wikipedia of reviews. Read more about the technology and how the company formed in this week’s Small Business Spotlight.
What the Business Does
Collects information about various topics from various online sources.
Shadow.com gives people the ability to search for information about pretty much anything, from movies to products to presidential candidates. The information often includes ratings, reviews, online comments, social data and more.
Business Niche
Providing a one-stop-shop for information.
Since the site provides information from so many different sources, that saves users from having to do all of that research themselves. In addition, the business offers options for businesses to display comment systems on their own sites.
Eliyahu Mashiah, CEO and founder explains:
“This is new technology that can collect information, reviews and comments posted by the crowd in social networks, video blogs, review sites etc. SHADOW.COM allows its users to express their views about any topic and share it with the world. SHADOW.COM sells business owners the comment system technology to allow their crowd to express their views in the business website.”
How the Business Got Started
Because of a personal quest.
Mashiah explains:
“I was tired of the tedious process that starts with googling the web to look for reviews about something, searching which site covers the kind of product or service I’m looking for and I thought there must be a better way to do it. So I raised a couple of hundred thousand dollars from my own and old friends who liked the idea and we started developing this technology.”
Biggest Win
Growing the company’s user base.
Mashiah says:
“We are approaching the 1.5 million users per month and hoping to continue the trend and reach 2 (million) this summer.”
Biggest Challenge
Facing outside criticism.
Mashiah explains:
“When we were trying to find a PR agency for ourselves, we approached a few of the big PR agencies but we were rejected or ignored. We heard so many rejections and criticism that almost made us think “they must know better”, but continued and our traffic continues to grow and tell us a different story.”
How They’d Spend an Extra $100,000
Invest in public relations.
Favorite Team Tradition
Weekly happy hours.
Mashiah says:
“Our work is around the clock, people work late and are very dedicated to the dream of becoming well known website in a reality where 98 percent of the websites don’t survive more than 3 years. We have a tradition where every Thursday at 5 p.m. we take a “happy hour” with beers and watch viral videos from around the web.”
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Find out more about the Small Biz Spotlight program.
Images: Shadow
Aira Bongco
I think businesses like these are slowly booming. I guess this goes to show that feedbacks are more important than just words. They can really make or break a business.
Annie Pilon
Feedback has become so important. But there are so many different places for it, so it’s nice that this service sort of consolidates those different platforms into one.
Carrie
This is a very important question in the subscription-based economy we’re experiencing nowadays. A great way to sustain customer retention is through proactively monitoring the feedback and engaging in a fulfilling customer-experience. Clients highly value personalised experience and even negative reviews can help companies showcase their initiative, thus boosting loyalty and satisfaction.
The easiest option to manage that is through hiring a third-party feedback collecting company, like eKomi or Bazaarvoice. It is very important that the solutions they offer be purchase-based to boost the credibility of your brand. Independent reviews gain much more trust that in-house managed testimonials.
By carefully listening to what your customers have got to say, you can quickly react to any issues or make changes to your product to make sure your clients don’t start exploring the competition’s offer.
I’m looking for a company that can take my existing reviews on my weebly website and bring to a new website, but they will still seem verified because of the third party. I can retype them, but once I leave weelby, they won’t seem verified.