- ClientConsumer Reports
- IndustryMedia & Publishing
- CapabilitiesCommunity strategy (O&O) · Content strategy
Building a Community Around Product Reviews
Consumer Reports is the trusted brand for all things product reviews. Their relationship with consumers was purely transactional—quickly Google a product, arrive at Consumer Report’s website, read the review, and then leave.
With its scale and breadth, they had the opportunity to connect like-minded users and develop an ongoing relationship with their audience.
Key Takeaways
Transformed brand into vibrant lifestyle community
Interactive features enhance user engagement
Strategic innovation boosts audience retention
Leveraging Scale for Engagement
To increase user retention, engage new audiences, and increase upselling, our strategy was to leverage Consumer Reports’ scale and depth to offer a premium, members-only subscription service.
Unlike the free service, it offered additional benefits that included access to communities where users could connect with other like-minded individuals, access to and direct conversations with product experts, and rich content (including deep-dive analysis and in-depth product reviews).
We also designed features to support users becoming actual ambassadors of CR, helping the company to both reach more users faster as well as support and reward their existing users.
This new service layer allowed Consumer Reports to have an ongoing and dynamic dialog with its community, grow its audience, and gave consumers real reasons to buy into and engage with the brand for the long-term.
Building Community and Connection
We created a suite of features for both logged in and unauthenticated visitors that would encourage user engagement and subscriptions.
Through a new suite of membership features, we would build community, foster engagement, and support relationships that reflect how CR's ecosystem creates value.
This suite included Ask CR, a conversation starter where consumers can send any question to a Consumer Reports expert, Stories, a collection of user stories around a shared topic to facilitate community connections, and TESTx, a series of product quizzes to add a sense of gamification to the site while providing CR with useful consumer data and users with helpful tips and content related to the products they love.
What We Did
Platform
Developed a robust platform for user engagement.
Content
Created diverse content tailored to community interests.
Ecosystem
Established a supportive ecosystem for collaboration.
Customer Experience
Enhanced customer experience through feedback.
Let’s get to work. Start a conversation.
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