A Guide to Creating Customers’ Reviews Map: Your Customers Needs Within a Quick Reach
Author: Rusana Shkaraban, Co-Founder at IntroMarket Research Group
Consumer research is an ongoing activity and requires a lot of attention and analytical work.
If there is a need than there already is or will be a solution. Addressing the right needs increases your chances to succeed.
The most popular research tools available to identify them are surveys, focus groups, consumer trends reports and similar. Most of them are time-consuming and requires an allocated budget. But what if you don’t have the last and need it quickly but accurately?
Customers’ reviews map is an effective and reliable tool which allows to identify your customers’ needs and add more value to your products and services. Gathering reviews about similar/same products or services is an easy way to identify what customers value at most, what features/services they would like to be implemented, what they don’t like or possible issues that they already experience with your competitors’ service and similar. It can be applied to the new business or an already existing one.
Let’s see how it works on practice
At IntroMarket Research we had a client that wanted to identify:
- weak spots of competitors software;
- find out what features users would like to be implemented in the competitors’ software tools;
- what clients value the most when it comes to the usage of services of their current providers;
- What and how do they like competitors design?
The first step of creating a customer review map was research on competitors. We identified the top 5 competitors in the industry by analyzing 10 different rankings and choosing those that were the most frequently listed. (image 2)
Now, as we know whom to analyze, we create a new excel file or a spreadsheet where we create a table to put all the reviews as it was on Image 1.
Where to get the reviews?
Luckily we live in the 21st century and there is no lack of sources where to get the data.
In our research we used the following platforms:
- Softwareadvice.com
- Merchantmaverick.com
- Pcmag.com
- Trustpilot.com
- Reviews.financesonline.com\\
- Capterra.com
- business.com/reviews
- Techradar.com
- Fitsmallbusiness.com
- Cloudwards.net
- Trustradius.com
Now the fun part begins – gathering and analyzing reviews. How does it look like – copy-pasting the review into the spreadsheet and highlighting sentiments that influence the buyers’ decision and experience.
After reading and analyzing 20-30 reviews we already see the patterns and features that customers like or don’t like. We recommend highlighting positive in a green or blue color and negative in a red but obviously, it is up to you which colors to use.
Depends on the research process results we have a dedicated column per each major characteristic. It will help to draw a conclusion afterward.
It usually takes up to three days to create a profound customers’ reviews map.
Every single day, when we get back to its creation we start from the reading of existing reviews, that we already gathered, just to refresh the information we already have.
The number of reviews per each competitor may vary but we recommend it to be to less than 30.
