HomeStars - Company Blog

Managing Online Reputation

2008-08-25T10:51:00.004-04:00

We had an interesting note from a client a few weeks ago, which I think is worth discussing. He had purchased a home services company and had a series of not-so-good reviews on HomeStars. He asked us to remove them because he said that they were the fault of the previous owner. He makes an interesting point, but the reality is corporate reputation is actually what you buy when you purchase a company. The reviews of past customers are the legacy you are purchasing when you buy an enterprise, and it's then your job to change course, acquire new reviews - really a new reputation - which eclipses the old, poor performance of your predecessor.

Leslie Carothers writes for Furniture World magazine and makes some very good points our customers should be aware of. We also suggest setting up a Google News Alert with your company name, so you can see when you've been mentioned in the press or by another blogger or customers.

We harp on this point here at HomeStars, but it's worth making again. The more you get your happy customers to write reviews - and you know you have lots of them - the less impact the negative ones will have on your reputation online.

Great Question

2008-08-21T09:30:00.002-04:00

Yesterday in my inbox I had a great question from one of our readers and I thought I'd respond publicly because it's an important and excellent question and one many readers probably have.

Looked at the reviews for [company name] because I know the owners. Was stunned to see that the reviewers were almost exclusively relatives and high school buddies. What use is Home Stars if you do not have way of filtering out partial testimony from parties who have a vested interest in the company? It is great to find out that the two sister-in-laws of the owner think his painting is terrific but, without quality control, you are doing your internet customer a disservice.

Without getting into the motivations of the inquirer, the question is valid. The company referred to in the question currently has 19 reviews and a rating of close to 9. There are many good reviews there, but a few not so good. Is every review from a totally disinterested 3rd party? Perhaps not. We do check our reviewers to insure they have a valid email address, and we cross check that people aren't posting multiple reviews on the same company from the same location. Is it a perfect system where we absolutely insure work was done on every review? Perhaps not.

But reviews work because of The Wisdom of Crowds. (and I highly recommend the book) If we have a lot of reviews on a company generally the good companies will fare better than the worse. The author, James Surowiecki, says "Wise crowds" need (1) diversity of opinion; (2) independence of members from one another; (3) decentralization; and (4) a good method for aggregating opinions." I think this is what we provide at HomeStars.

Should we have a place for our users to rate HomeStars? of course. It's on our list of things to do and we'll probably have it out in the next couple months. Lots of other things on the agenda right now.

Go ahead and Claim yourself!

2008-07-25T15:16:00.005-04:00

Andrew just sent me an interesting study from Palore that studied small & medium sized health & beauty businesses in the west coast, and what % claimed their directory listing on various online web sites. (note - claiming means registering to the listing so you can then directly update your address, hours and add more information about your company). Palore found that companies that were already advertising online were 2.5 times more likely to claim than non-advertiserrs. And 45% of all companies advertising, claim listings on various online directories. But what's nice to see is that 18% of non-advertisers also are seeing the value in keeping their web presence up to date.

We all know that consumers are searching the web locally more and more to find relevant information about places in their neighborhood.

So if you own a small business, go ahead and claim yourself and get ahead of the curve.

Unique Selling Proposition for a Contractor?

2008-07-16T13:36:00.004-04:00

Got a chuckle out of this shot from a Chicago contractor's van. Their tagline is "We return phone calls and show up on time!"

If anyone out there has done business with these guys, right there is the makings of a potential positive review. :)

[Hat tip: Perry Marshall (print subscription newsletter).]

P.S. Their ugly website uses this USP also. I won't even try to speculate on why they have a one-pixel link to a video of Jerry Lewis singing "I only have eyes for you."

Some New York Times Thoughts on Reviews for Fourth of July

2008-07-04T10:40:00.003-04:00

Happy Fourth of July to our American readers.

As an ex-resident of New York I'm still a fan of the Times. Someone passed along this article to me on how companies are using review sites like Yelp to manage their reputation.

I thought this part of the article particularly insightful, and good advice for our renovators and listed companies:

Jeremiah Owyang, an analyst with Forrester Research, said in an e-mail message that smart business owners would “get involved in Yelp, listening, responding and being an active part of the dialogue, some going so far as to place signs on their physical doors requesting reviews.”

At HomeStars we encourage companies to respond to reviews. It opens up the dialogue and provides more insight into to what went wrong, and what went right.

The most important thing we suggest for companies listed on Homestars who get bad reviews - and, face it, you can't be perfect all the time - is to honestly respond to the bad, and primarily get more reviews by encouraging your customers to talk you up online. Readers appreciate the honesty comes with a company responding to a bad review, and that everyone can't be perfect all the time.

Introducing .... Me

2008-06-26T10:05:00.002-04:00

Hello Homestars Blog readers.

I've just joined the great Homestars team and thought I'd introduce myself. My name is Brian and I've been a long-time Homestars user, and even had a copy of the old Homestars book.

I originally met the team here at a Home Show about 2 years ago when I had bought and was renovating my house. I blogged about the experience here, although I haven't updated the site in a while. Finding home renovation resources - especially reviews was challenging and Homestars definitely helped. A couple of my great finds from the site were Mayday Drain Services and Accord Roofing - both excellent companies.

I'm somewhat of a technology geek, and love reading other people's tech blogs. Some of my favourites are my friend Kevin Restivo's musings, as well as one of the bigger Web 2.0 blogs called Mashable.

Of course, here at Homestars we appreciate feedback. So send us notes, comment on our blog postings and of course review your favourite companies.

A tidal wave of new Charter Members!

2008-05-26T22:50:00.009-04:00

Wow - what an overwhelming response! Thank you everyone for the fantastic support of our Charter Member drive. We are digging our way out of a huge pile of new members requiring validation. Until we get back on track, the promotion will be on hold for the next little while. We will honor our commitments for gift cards for any member who signed up before Tuesday May 27th and who meets program requirements.

Please check your status by signing in to your Profile on the upper right hand side. We are flooded with notes asking us questions and we will catch up over the coming week. Thanks for your support. Your contributions will really help others make better decisions. Please stay tuned and we will be back with our program shortly.

What's your profile look like?

2008-05-23T16:56:00.002-04:00

Check out our new tools in the My Profile section of your account. Log in, go to My Profile in the upper right-hand corner, and members who have signed up for the Charter Member program will find new tools to keep you in the know about our Charter Member program and more.

Enjoy the weekend! Anyone tackling a major home improvement project? Planting the vegetable garden? Traveling? Post a note in the comments.

Welcome New Charter Members

2008-05-22T12:16:00.003-04:00

Response to our Charter Member program has been outstanding. With more than 1,000 reviews coming in over the past 48 hours and over 400 new enrollees in the Charter Member program from almost every state in the U.S., we're working hard to read and process the reviews.

Our process involves human editors, reading each and every review. Please bear with us as we power through a bit of a backlog!

If you have signed on with our Charter Member program, please give us a little extra time to get caught up. All reviews will be read and processed, and those users who meet the requirements for the Charter Member program will receive their rewards.

To provide maximum benefit to fellow homeowners, in the meantime, why not log into your profile, click on the blue "My Profile" tab, upload a picture and answer the profile questions so others can get to know you a bit?

Another quick note: the area of greatest need is reviews of local, non-chain stores. HomeStars users are particularly curious about local contractors and independently-owned home-related retailers.

We"re thrilled to welcome so many new members this week. We, and your local community, thank you for your ongoing efforts to share and write reviews.

What's your home worth?

2008-04-08T10:35:00.007-04:00

Value is sure in the eye of the beholder!

A friend of mine just sent me this joke email. It is very funny, and there's more truth to it that we'd like.

Zillow.com's zestimator is a good example of the large fluctuations even computer programs can give on the value of your home.

Role of "Influencers" Questioned; Friends' Recommendations Drive Purchases

2008-04-03T22:40:00.001-04:00

Social media users report taking product recommendations more seriously if the recommendation comes from their circle of close friends or family, reports Canadian polling firm Pollara. According to the Pollara exec quoted in this Online Media Daily story, "marketers may have to reconsider who the real influencers are out there." [Hat tip: Techmeme.]

Keep Lysol on hand, just in case

2008-03-12T17:48:00.009-04:00

We read all reviews that go up and sometimes we pause and reflect on whether things should be posted or not. Our guidelines are to accept relevant information about the work done, service or product purchased. Hearsay is rejected. It's not fair to a business that Sally your best friend had the same problem - let Sally write her own review.

We had a couple this week that were debated before they were approved. One was a Duct Cleaning company. The homeowner wrote:

"Two guys came to my house, one fellow smelled like he had not showered in 3 days."

Initially we hesitated about whether this was relevant. Then the reviewer went on...

"They took apart my furnace cover and one guy stuck his fingers inside and tried to convince me that I needed the furnace cleaned too. His fingers were clean and he said ' look carbon '. I refused, if there was carbon it would have been sooty black. They pulled off the plugs that were left on my duct pipes from a prior cleaning by a different company and when they left they did not replace them. When they left they did not turn my furnace/air conditioning switch back on. In the end I had to tape up the holes left behind because they stole my plugs, I had to spray lysol air freshener all over the house to get rid of the body odour, and I had to pinpoint why my furnace/air conditioning system was not working."

All in all the personal hygiene of this repairman was relevant to their professionalism. So the review was published.

And then another review we debated that was worse than body odor...

"I noticed a worker urinating on the tire or their truck that was parked in my driveway. I noticed another urinating on my garage. When I mentioned this to the supervisor, he seemed to care less... The work was average, but this action by the workers and the reaction by the owners mad me so mad I tell my story to everyone interested in roofing work.

Again it was relevant to the care and service taken by this company when they entered this person's property.

There are two sides to every story, so here's the opportunity for these companies to respond or take action.

Renovation Meta-Planning - An Idea Whose Time Has Come?

2008-03-06T13:48:00.003-05:00

The whole purpose of HomeStars, of course, is to help homeowners make planning decisions about home improvement.

So what do we think of companies whose job it is to help with those planning decisions? Hey, that's not for us to say - yes, we can certainly opine, but... - ultimately it's the community who will rate the planner companies just as they will rate specific contractors.

Let me explain where I'm going here. I ran across a small print ad about a site called WendysRenoStory.com. Because there wasn't much disclosure in the ad, except for the positive words from the smiling Wendy, I wasn't expecting much. In fact, I half-expected it to be some kind of scam.

I read the promotional-looking material on "Wendy's" landing page, and was eventually directed to the "real" site for a company called PlanSmart. I have to say I was impressed as I read on. Although many architectural firms and general contractors are out there helping you to plan your overall direction, the pitch from PlanSmart made intuitive sense to me, and seemed a bit different. If you have an older home (built prior to 1970, they say), any significant remodeling is going to require hundreds of small decisions. My home was built in 1896, so it's all about variables. :)

And if you're like me, you only have a loose sense of the technical elements of a complex reno. It's not only about who you can trust, but what direction you actually want to take with your reno. You're left sifting through bids to a few firms, and fortunately now that HomeStars is here, looking at reviews of their work.

On the surface, PlanSmart seemed to offer a helpful "pre-planning" service to help put you on the right path towards a successful renovation. It's not dissimilar to what we hope to accomplish with this website.

So I looked for reviews of or mentions of PlanSmart. Unfortunately I didn't find any.

So I checked the domain records for WendysRenoStory. Seems that it's owned by a Walden Design Build listing an Eglinton Ave. address in Toronto. Bingo! HomeStars has one highly positive review for Walden Design Build. At least we're getting somewhere.

Looking a bit more closely, Bruce Borden of Walden Design Build is prominent on the PlanSmart bio page. Seems like a very solid track record.

Anyone have any experience with PlanSmart? We'd love to hear about it, if so.

Drainworks reaches new benchmark of 111 consumer reviews

2008-02-04T07:37:00.002-05:00

I'd like to single out Drainworks as they are an exemplar in how they use the HomeStars consumer forum to interact with their customers, and demonstrate (in an open medium) their point of difference. Getting into the conversation on the net is smart marketing and they 'get it'. Drainworks has a reason to jump in, as based on customer feedback they are always on time, on quote and offer creative approaches to solving emergencies (that can be stressful and costly). Consumers are contributing very helpful perspectives on this company - some are extremely detailed on the difficult problems they encountered and how it was solved. A couple of homeowners mention how Drainworks identified work that may be covered by the city. The company actually helped them prepare the paperwork to get a rebate. Now that's service.

Normally we don't focus on one company on our blog but this is an extreme case of someone who understands that reputation is built over time and honesty, trust and reliability can't be taken for granted by homeowners. Especially when someone is digging up your yard.

Terry Cord, the president, is actively involved in what's going on in the field, even though he has many trucks and up to 40 technicians out at any given time. And with each review published, both good and bad, he responds to every single one himself. This is someone that takes word of mouth seriously.

My favorite post is from someone who had a problem and months later called Drainworks to come back and fix it.

'Drainworks installed two new outdoor faucets a few months ago. ... I went to winterize the faucets and found that one of them had been installed wrong. ...I called Drainworks and they had somebody to my home within hours to fix it and they could not be more apologetic. Mistakes can happen to anybody but what sets great businesses apart from all their competitors is how they deal with problems months after the sale. Drainworks proved that they are really a great company.'

Not all the reviews are 10 star, and that's again what sets Terry apart. His very first review was a 2 star and Terry was really upset the complaint hadn't reached him first. HomeStars verified the review and Terry accepted that sometimes people aren't happy and won't tell you. So he wrote his first response. That was 16 months, and 110 posts ago.

HomeStars is coming out shortly with a Top Rated Companies list in our developed cities based on your opinions, and how helpful others found your reviews. Drainworks will undoubtedly make the list as they not only have reached an empirical level of high ratings with Toronto area homeowers, but their reviews are recent and as good today as they were a year ago.

Thanks to all 111 homeowners who took the time to provide everyone with these insights. And keep up the good work Drainworks!

Small Is Beautiful

2008-01-31T10:23:00.001-05:00

Nancy and I were chatting about the issue of company size in the home improvement services sector. Many of these companies are small, but bigger than small would suggest. They're bringing in $1 million, $5 million, $10 million a year. They spend, collectively, a hefty chunk on marketing.

I thought about it a bit later in connection with the reputation issue. The big difference with a small company is that you have the means to be proactive and nimbly address process issues or problems with isolated individual incidents of customer dissatisfaction.

It seems like it's easier for big companies to do PR because they have whole departments for that. But between consumers' highly tuned BS-meters and antipathy built into the approach many members of the media take to business journalism, problems can spiral out of control. A few folks in the media can even do a pretty good job of orchestrating (at least a short-term) "takedown."

Imagine if your job was with PR with this grocery chain, for example. They were fined for a mouse problem at their warehouse. Those of us who know the stores and regularly drive by the warehouse might say "ewww" and that's the end of it. But it doesn't help that the person deciding which photo to show next to this story in the print edition of The Toronto Star decided to put up a shot of a truck with the company tagline - "We're fresh obsessed" - plastered across it. (Can you say "sarcasm"?) If you were in the PR department for that company you'd probably be wondering who (internally or externally) was waiting in the weeds to make you go eeeek! next week.

An advantage of small is that your advocates will be vociferous and will spread the positive word about you. But it takes effort. No PR department is going to put out your brush fires.

The North Amercian Challenge: Who can write and share faster?

2008-01-27T07:23:00.000-05:00

Many people have written us asking if our service existed in their town - from Atlanta Georgia to Winnipeg Manitoba. HomeStars initially started in Toronto and expanded to Vancouver and Boston, but we realized we couldn't build slowly, city by city.

So we took up the challenge and spent hundreds of hours on our expansion plans. It was a real technical challenge to create wide yet local service you can use ANYWHERE (well, in North America) - and we are excited to tell you we finally did it!

Now we need your help to grow.

Type in your city in the search near box and access home improvement companies that are within a few miles of your home. And more importantly, rate a company you hired or purchased from. You will be contributing useful knowledge for others in your community (at the ground floor in most towns)!

Your wondering how that works when we only have a few big cities listed on the site. While we are officially open in these 10 cities, you can still access your own neighborhood in the search bar. Try it! Add a city, or zip / postal code. Whether you are in Austin Texas, Tulsa Oklahoma or Naples Florida there are thousands of local home improvement companies to find and rate.

Our team has come up with a challenge for our readers - see which person can write and share the most, and truly build community participation the fastest in 2008. I've been thinking of how to reward such a connector and I'll save that for an upcoming post. In the meantime;

- Have you done some work on our home? Some examples: Fixed the floors, replaced your cabinets, bought new lighting - and can share your good or bad experience?
- Do you know lots of homeowners in your community?
- Do you know lots of people in North America?

If you answered yes to any of the above, jump in and help build this free online resource for the home.

We’ll start to feature the biggest contributors every month.

What do you do next?

Step 1 Register (it's free)
Step 2 Tell your friends nationwide about HomeStars;

Bonus: each Tell a Friend also is an entry in our Home Depot $1,000 Shopping Spree which closes January 31.

PS - our team is very concerned about privacy and there are strict safeguards to protect emails. We wont spam and we won't share with any other company. We really hate spam too!

Fake reviews - should we out these companies?

2008-01-19T23:26:00.001-05:00

I have come out of my cave and will start getting more active on this forum. I'm not one to write on a blog - but I do answer our contact us as I really enjoy the 1-1 dialogue with people. I have to get with program though and jump into the open conversation.

All of us at HomeStars take turns reading reviews before they are posted (ok - Andrew may need a turn ; ) ). It helps ground us in the reason we are working so hard to build this company. People use HomeStars to help them make decisions and it really brings the quality down when there are fake posts and poor quality reviews. Who cares that you bought a new widget at home depot and the staff were not so helpful. We want to know about the guy that started your basement reno, took a deposit for $4,000 for initial materials and then didn't show up the next day (and it's 4 weeks and 40 phone calls later). We need to shine the light where there is darkness. Our readers also want to know about the dream contractor you hired, who delivered on time and on budget.

But I'm always amazed at how companies think they can publish fake reviews. We've caught many, and yet some companies will try again - hoping we will be asleep at the switch (although we aren't perfect so we do get your help sometimes).

Should we raise awareness of these flagrant fakers? Should we put them in the penalty box like tripadvisor and ban them from search results for a while? Should we post a "FAKE review removed" button on their company listing in neon? And for how long should they be in the penalty box - a month, a year, for all time?

Your suggestions are welcome.

A Merrier Christmas Through the Magic of Service

2007-12-28T11:30:00.000-05:00

The point of HomeStars is to come up with ways for homeowners to shorten their time finding good vendors, and to find better, more appropriate vendors. Did you know there is a neoclassical economics term for this? We're "lowering search costs." Because the cost of a good or service isn't just its price, it's the time and money spent researching and finding the appropriate good or service.

According to The Economist's website, that's why "inventions such as the Internet" have been so rapidly embraced by both buyers and sellers.

Fine, all well and good. We're on the same page about this useful Internet thing. :)

The current approach is working - there are thousands of reviews by thousands of consumers of home improvement services currently on the site.

As a user of the site myself, though, I know we can still do a lot better. For example, there are tons of niche queries and sub-categories that are still elusive to searchers. (To use current digital economy-speak, we still need to do an even better job of figuring out how to address the "long tail" of less-frequent, but huge-in-the-aggregate, home improvement conundrums, queries, and needs.)

One way to achieve this scale, amazingly, is to realize that technology doesn't answer all of our problems. Automation just facilitates the exchange of information; it doesn't create it. So we need to come up with even more ways to help people exchange that info. Sometimes that isn't hard, because there are plenty of sellers of services who would be more than eager to tout their availability, given an appropriate platform.

Let's face it: consumers, particularly affluent ones, are doing less and less for themselves these days. I'm not sure when the first artificial Christmas tree was sold, but that time-saving ethos is a slippery slope that affects us all, and I don't care how good the brakes are on your toboggan.

Let's say you want to hire someone to put up your Christmas lights. I know... that still sounds preposterous to some folks, but high standards and high ceilings may mean standing on high ladders in the ice and snow. In other words, it's a bit like window washing... but slightly more dangerous and done in the freezing cold. Not everyone's cup of tea. My buddy's dad, Doug, was notorious for shoveling snow off their roof in his housecoat (at best). There are, for better or for worse, fewer and fewer Dougs around.

Last week I noticed that my neighbors across the street had hired installers (neither named Doug, and neither in a bathrobe) to put up their tasteful Christmas light decoration, across both houses of a shiny new duplex. But if you couldn't ask a neighbor, or wanted to compare vendors, where would you go to find a handyman who'd be willing to string fancy lights in an incredibly busy season? What if you had a really tacky display that you just don't have the energy for anymore? Where to find a contractor who is "tacky-positive"? Right now, you can't find it easily online, even if you're a good sleuth.

To date, HomeStars is also not all that great at helping you find, say, a place that carries fancier Christmas decorations and lights than the usual fare. Do a search for "christmas lights" and you do get a whole whack of companies that sell them (that's because we have a subcategory for it, so it's easier to find). But depending on where you live, there are still very few, or no, reviews of those outlets. It's still early days yet.

OK, and the final example is the concept of the traditional Christmas tree that you want in your living room without spending the time lugging it home (or what if you have no car, live in a condo loft with 14-foot ceilings, and still want a big beautiful fir?), strapping it to the roof, or getting needles all over the back of the wagon. Obviously, like furniture, you can get Xmas trees delivered. Heck, you can probably pay the guy extra to include, and wrestle with, the confounded tree stand. But there's no really quick way to search for this info, and consumers have no great place to ask one another for recommendations. Whoever delivers trees in your area may have built a decent word-of-mouth reputation, but better online reputation takes that up a notch.

There are lots of ways to get info like this together, but it takes time, and a flexible approach (Q&A areas, forums, etc.) to allow the community to build the resource, bit by bit. So that's what's on our plate for 2008!

Whatever festival you celebrate, have a good one. And best wishes for a warm and prosperous New Year... and hey, do it in style!

[The photo above compares what outdoor lights look like when "the guy who does it" is me... with the "pro" job across the street (the full splendor is a bit higher up, on the neighbor gables.)]

On Inclusiveness

2007-12-07T19:48:00.000-05:00

Interesting riff from Seth Godin, from his fabulous new book, Meatball Sundae: Is Your Marketing Out of Sync?

"Under CEO Bob Nardelli, Home Depot alienated customers, investors, and employees. Even though Home Depot had huge market power and a significant retail footprint, customer dissatisfaction was enough of an opening for the more agile Lowe's chain to make significant inroads. A simple idea, pursued relentlessly (women welcome here), was enough to transfer billions of dollars of market value from one company to another."

Note: this is the opinion of Seth, not of the present author. :) But it is important for companies to know what's being said about them - before it's too late.

As a matter of fact, my wife loves Home Depot Stockyards so much, she takes two city buses there to go mix some paint or buy some bolts. (Yes, you heard right - she hauls cans of paint on the bus! Now that's dedication to home improvement! Can't always wait for hubby to come home with the car.) I've never heard her mention being put off by any type of "macho environment" at Home Depot, but then again, we don't have Lowe's in Canada (yet) to compare it to. At the Stockyards location in Toronto, we can compare it with adjacent big boxes, Canadian Tire and Rona. All have their shortcomings. But that's another story.

Congratulations to Boston Magazine's "Best of Boston 2007" Home Category Winners

2007-11-29T12:56:00.000-05:00

Boston Magazine's "Best of Boston 2007" awards are out. Each year, Boston Magazine invites Boston-area readers to nominate various companies for their "Best of" series. Based solely on consumer voting, the Best of Boston 2007 choices in the Home categories are a result of consumer confidence and experience.

HomeStars.com offers homeowners in the Greater Boston Area a community dedicated to shared intelligence and making home improvement decisions worry-free, while the Best of Boston 2007 awards takes the best of consumer-driven input to point consumers to the best services and retailers.

HomeStars.com congratulates the winners in the Home category:

Lavender Home and Table, for Best of Boston 2007 Bedding: http://www.homestars.com/companies/299619-lavender-home-and-table

Boston Design Center, for Best of Boston 2007 Bath Supplies: http://www.homestars.com/companies/318300-boston-design-center

Morrissey and Sons, for Best of Boston 2007 Electrician: http://www.homestars.com/companies/307933-morrissey-and-sons-electric

Tweeter CE playground Store, for Best of Boston 2007 Electronics: http://www.homestars.com/companies/318337-tweeter-ce-playground-store

Nurturing Spaces, for Best of Boston 2007 Feng Shui Consultant: http://www.homestars.com/companies/318338-nurturing-spaces

Furnature, for Best of Boston 2007 Furniture, Custom: http://www.homestars.com/companies/318339-furnature

Montage, for Best of Boston 2007 Furniture, Modern: http://www.homestars.com/companies/297394-montage-inc

Winston Flowers & Garden, for Best of Boston 2007 Garden Supplies: http://www.homestars.com/companies/318340-winston-flowers-garden

S+H Construction, for Best of Boston 2007 General Contractors: http://www.homestars.com/companies/318341-s-h-construction

Green Home Solutions, for Best of Boston 2007 Green Consultant: http://www.homestars.com/companies/318342-green-home-solutions

Call Phil Now, for Best of Boston 2007 Handyman: http://www.homestars.com/companies/318343-call-phil-now

Charles Street Supply, for Best of Boston 2007 Hardware: http://www.homestars.com/companies/308526-true-value-charles-street

Tiger Home Inspection, for Best of Boston 2007 Inspector: http://www.homestars.com/companies/318344-tiger-home-inspection

Kitchen Arts, for Best of Boston 2007 Kitchen Supplies: http://www.homestars.com/companies/289027-kitchen-arts

Wolfer's Lighting, for Best of Boston 2007 Lighting: http://www.homestars.com/companies/303849-wolfer-s-lighting

Coelho Contracting, for Best of Boston 2007 Painter: http://www.homestars.com/companies/318347-coelho-contracting

Landry & Arcari, for Best of Boston 2007 Rugs: http://www.homestars.com/companies/303595-landry-arcari-oriental-rugs-carpeting

Bliss Home, for Best of Boston 2007 Tableware: http://www.homestars.com/companies/318349-bliss-home

Piari Luna, for Best of Boston 2007 Home Accessories, Neighborhood North: http://www.homestars.com/companies/318350-piari-luna

La Petite Maison, for Best of Boston 2007 Home Accessories, Neighborhood South: http://www.homestars.com/companies/296960-la-petite-maison

Nesting on Main, for Best of Boston 2007 Home Accessories, Neighborhood West: http://www.homestars.com/companies/301775-nesting-on-main

The $800,000 Teardown

2007-11-28T00:05:00.001-05:00

I came across a real estate ad for a beautiful Toronto home today. Large, treed lot, seriously affluent neighborhood, good schools, and the ad assured us that "million dollar homes" were on the street. With the whole surrounding area clocking in at an average selling price of $977,777, I daresay that's right.

The 3+1 bedrooms, gas fireplace, and various amenities also sounded like comfortable living. The type of place that most ordinary folks would be more than happy to live in. Price tag: a doable figure for a "move-up buyer" at $779,000. With bidding wars, that pushes just over $800,000.

Then you notice the fine print, or at least, the serving suggestion. "Move in or build!". Yes, the realtor was hinting that this, like so many modest homes on oversized lots in established neighborhoods, is a prime candidate for a tear-down. Someone will spend $800,000 to haul away the previous owners' lovely home, and pour in another $700,000+ to build a custom job. Another "million dollar home" now on the street.

When you see stuff like that, do you wonder if it's all gotten out of hand?

Well, it's all relative, isn't it?

In high end real estate, it looks like all of the growth right now is at the lower end, the $1.0-2.5 million range. Outside of Manhattan, in bad times, the awkward, garishly expensive ones will move more slowly. But at the same time, in the most desirable neighborhoods, all the "low-end" stuff gets snapped up. According to a recent report, in Toronto's posh Rosedale area, no homes between $2.3 and $5 million are currently up for sale. There are a few properties available above that. (Especially if you want to go ahead and bid $6 million on someone's $2.3 million property... even if it's not up for sale. Zillow's "name your price" concept hasn't quite made it to Canada, let alone Rosedale... but I digress.)

As much as it's easy to be glib about what most all of us would probably do -- time and money allowing -- in terms of building a custom dream home on a lot we like (perfectly functional present structure be damned), it's still a bit hard for me to get past the idea that many of these existing structures are "perfectly good." The teardown concept feels extreme when the house being torn down is anything but a tawdry mess. Am I just a wuss, or wouldn't it just be nice if some family actually moved into the $800k place, and struggled along with the existing 3+1 bdrms, maybe putting a paltry $150k or so into upgrades and an addition out the back?

It's also worth asking: do people who tear down 4-bedroom homes, to build larger, sprawling, luxury residences, feel any sense of paradox when they then turn to a range of "green home" concerns? Do they feel like the elimination of the old place, and replacing it with a new, bigger (slightly greener) place helps the environment, or not really?

Anyway...

HomeStars users increasingly rely on word of mouth research to help them plan increasingly expensive jobs. Success stories happily show up often here in our "builder" category; I offer you just one example of a well-rated company, D-Cam. Our expanded "Credentials & Financial Information" section puts the onus on owners of construction companies to state their policies on things like written contracts, and which if any professional bodies they belong to. The reviews by you, our users, fill in the real-life feedback.

From the ordinary roofing job done for working people just making ends meet, to the million-dollar dream home plan, the stakes are high for the homeowners involved. When projects don't go as planned, the consequences at either end of the economic spectrum can be tragic. (Admittedly, this may severely test different meanings of the word "tragic.") Finding a good vendor shouldn't be about luck.

The Comforts of Home

2007-11-21T14:55:00.000-05:00

This is just a tip of the cap to another company in the "home" vertical - AppliancePartsPros.com. They've combined a promotion with a unique good deed at Thanksgiving time. Called the "Comforts of Home" contest, it contributes care packages to be sent to U.S. troops overseas. A few bloggers are picking up the story.

If you really want to give the effort a boost, you can even Digg it.

Managing Your Online Reputation Takes Patience, Integrity

2007-11-12T17:59:00.001-05:00

We were honored last week to find our way into an excellent piece by Lisa Stephens of the Globe and Mail, on the subject of companies managing their online reputations, especially in cases where they've faced negative consumer reviews.

Negative reviews are inevitable. They're also nothing new. In fact, a Google Search for the term "negative reviews" turns up 1.38 million results!

When it comes to reputation management, some business owners are still in denial. How about this cafe owner, who - stung by negative reviews on Yelp, a popular local business review site - posted a sign banning "Yelpers" from the cafe. Talk about compounding the problem!

There is, of course, such a thing as an unfair review or a bad customer. But the savviest business owners know that sour grapes won't help turn the tide of public opinion. By being proactive and open and courting an entourage of supporters who will be willing to drown out (or argue with) the negative voices, it's possible to come out on top.

Sam Decker, VP of BazaarVoice, writes about the importance of negative reviews in establishing the overall credibility of a site that incorporates user feedback. I couldn't agree more. I was recently a little disconcerted when I visited the American Apparel site, because of the presence of too many glowing, cheerleading reviews of its products. Some simply said "I haven't tried this yet but I'll be getting one really soon!" Poring over the various reviews, I actually felt like I'd be more likely to buy the product that had at least one negative or moderate review. Why? Because I wouldn't be as likely to suspect that the reviews are fake.

To boil the advice down to one point, I'd probably say that you shouldn't wait for negative "incidents" in online reputation, but rather, be proactively building that reputation all along. That means treating the online world as an extension of the offline word-of-mouth world... including, potentially, participating respectfully in the debate. Consumers are the kind of animal that can smell fear. Build confidence by establishing online reputation as part of your proactive, not reactive, marketing arsenal.

Making Search Better (Part I)

2007-11-03T10:58:00.000-04:00

Like you, I've been an avid search engine critic for years. When I don't see results I like - be it on Google or someone's ecommerce site - I squawk and complain like the next person. Sometimes I even fill out the feedback form (did you know you can click on "Dissatisfied? Help Us Improve!" after you do a Google Search, and tell them why you didn't like the results?).

In rare cases, I blog about how dissatisfied I am, or write an article about it. Obviously I'm more passionate about searching than most people!

So imagine my feelings when I had the opportunity to work on improving the search engine for the HomeStars site. Not as thrilled as I should have been! I thought it would be like getting handed the keys to a Ferrari. But then it dawned on me: I've been invited to the Ford plant and asked to improve the way they manufacture the pistons.

The history of information retrieval runs deep, but the history of web information retrieval has been short, and it has to be said, kind of funky. In either case, some of the people who designed very popular forms of search -- think Yahoo directory -- had no business doing so. If you're anything like me, you've had bouts of extreme satisfaction with information retrieval (I love Google Maps to save my bacon), as well as some years of extreme tedium. I sometimes think that my one main reason for specializing in democratic theory in graduate school was so I could just stick to the same shelf - JC 423 - in the stacks. I'd wander up and down those aisles, looking for any books I hadn't yet read. In the process, I discovered some pretty mind-blowing stuff. :) It makes me wonder if future generations will have a similar experience. I have to admit they probably won't, and it won't be the end of the world.

As imperfect as search is, it always improves.

In the case of groundbreaking technologies like Google, they've often been built on one big idea, and stabilized around the real-life improvements that come with tens of thousands of small refinements.

Search engines do their best refining their proprietary sorting recipes with the help of user data in various forms. Do people find what they need on the query "joe's plumbing" or is something messed up in the results? Feedback helps us improve.

Obviously when Google sifts through feedback, they are largely looking for the high-level stuff, like people being frustrated by not finding what they need. Search engines are businesses, not purists. While companies like Google are lucky enough to have a campus packed with people who can spend 20% of their time on pure discovery, the main thing they do would seem to be to obsessively check up on whether aggregate satisfaction scores are improving.

You cannot satisfy every single user for a couple of reasons.

The first reason is the "universal search box" concept. Search engines these days have trained users to just "go type in the box." That means no matter what kind of search, or no matter what intent behind the search, the sorting algorithm has to pull out the best possible information for that search, without really knowing who you are or what you want. So in other words, a fifteen-year-old typing in a query about an anime cartoon (Bleach) is treated the same way as a 43-year-old parent of four who is looking for info about Clorox. Search engines are only as good as what you put in!

And search engines are not mind readers (though they're improving on that score, through personalization). They're machines. The best ones can try to guess a little bit better from what you type, or where you're located. Failing that, they should at least work in a relatively predictable fashion.

Second, related to the "go type in the box, which is supposed to solve every type of problem" phenomenon, is the fact that people don't want to become better searchers. Search on Google has gotten so good, no one really expects to have to "learn to search better" anymore. And that's a shame.

Twenty years ago, the only folks doing any "searching" were pretty much undergraduates checking out the university catalogs, and the odd soul in the public library. The mainstream public started trickling through the doors in the early 1990's about when Webcrawler and Magellan were available on a text-based browser, and they came along in larger numbers after the growth of search engines like Yahoo and AltaVista.

Today, everyone knows how to "search"... sort of. Search has gotten so kickass good (ever since Google's cocky "I feel lucky" button) that few users use advanced search options.

So I guess we can forget the idea that the average person will bother to read the "instructions" on how to search better. So we, the search interface designers, just have to suck it up and make it work - as challenging as that can be.

This "Google effect" is similar to the bar-raising "Amazon effect" in online retail. In retail, if your shipping is expensive or checkout appreciably more difficult than Amazon's, you're dead in the water. It means all of the little guys have to work harder.

Luckily, we already know a fair bit about what people will be searching for within our database. It's different from searching the whole web.

In fact, compared with smaller more focused (sometimes called "vertical") search databases, the concept of searching the entire web is ... well... silly. The fact that Google has to go to such elaborate (and often inaccurate) lengths to determine which pages have "authority" and "relevance" is proof that the haystack they're helping you find that needle in is just too big. Billions of pages!

With only a few hundred thousand, or a few million, potential pages, the job gets easier. Vertical sites (like HomeStars) have their own industry-specific ways of ranking and rating stuff that is much more reliable because the community there is more dialed in on what counts.

Well, that's a heckuva preamble. I'll share a bit about what we're specifically trying to do to improve the search experience at HomeStars, in my next post on the subject.

World Champions, Free Furniture, and Reviews

2007-10-31T10:44:00.000-04:00

In 2004 the Red Sox finally put "the curse of the Bambino" to rest. In 2007, Jordan's Furniture decided to put the team to a test: buy furniture from Jordan's Furniture between March 7 and April 16, 2007, and get the furniture FREE (after rebate) if, and only if, the Red Sox could win the World Series.

The Red Sox beat the Indians, and then slammed the Rockies, and now Jordan's Furniture has an estimated 30,000 customers ready to get reimbursed for their undying loyalty and belief in the Red Sox. Are you one of those customers? Read the rebate details here.

Some HomeStars.com reviewers may benefit from the Jordan's Furniture promotion, and we'd love to hear from you. We know that HomeStars.com reviewers shop at Jordan's; read their reviews here for the Natick store, and their Reading store.

Reviews like these help shoppers like you decide where to buy and how to compare pricing and services; promotions like the World Series giveaway help you save money. Tell us your story!

If you are one of the 30,000 customers who decided to take a chance on the Red Sox and will receive free furniture rebates from Jordan's, write a review about your experience at the Jordan's Furniture listing in the HomeStars.com review listings!

And if you had a near-miss and you shopped on March 4, or on April 19, then tell us about that as well!

Consider writing an additional review of a Greater Boston home improvement service or home-related item, to share your experience and expertise on HomeStars.com and help build a stronger Boston site!

Congratulations to the Red Sox and to furniture winners from the HomeStars.com team. And the Patriots aren't doing too badly either, with 52 points their latest game! Any companies willing to offer deals for a New England Patriots Superbowl win? :)