Could Daz Store let us rate/review products?

Daywalker Designs

genaris said:

There's lots of insipid, uninspired products in the marketplace, and some that have some nice ideas or design elements but which are badly executed, so much mind-numbing near repetition of standard substandard things as t shirt and jeans outfits which all seemingly blur together as generic careless throwaways and a few distinctive, well executed items here and there;  however much is selling, one thing seems pretty clear: the things that are distinctive and well done get more energetic response.  I do feel that  formalized wider-scale conversations directly to merchants can help bring better, more interesting and desirable products to market and more income to makers.  If more of the products were more exciting, daz wouldn't have to tie pork chops to products to induce people to buy them.  I can always sense what products released on a day Daz seemingly has less confidence in, by which item or items are singled out for the most desperate pitch/inducements. They're often the products I won't buy, period, because they are simply not intersting or well done enough or don't have the features, functions or aspects I want from that particular product type.  When enough people communicate this stuff clearly to the makers, they can make informed decisions about their creations going forward.

This is what the forums work best for. The problem is, that sometimes what customers on a forum would like to see is not something that would sell in enough volume iniitally to justify making it.

genaris said:

Or, certainly Daz can keep going as it goes now, racing to the bottom, relying on 34 cents per item bundles and complicated neverending states of clearance sales to move products and engaging in a non-stop leaning out of value, and slapping more of the same old same old on the shelves with an attitude of buy it or don't, whateve. Artists appreciate novelty and given a choice would prefer not to keep buying newer, better rendering versions of the stuff they bought last year, and year before that and year before that. :)

Agreed, but as has been said, they have the numbers that say otherwise.

genaris said:

Just to clarify here, as I read myself... I'm not trying to go off on you, Daywalker or offend or anger you. You have valid point about burden.   I just have strong feelings about the lopsided dynamic at Daz which I don't experience at other stores, probably because, to me at least, there's no pretense at Amazon or itunes etc of being anything BUT a store, which are inherently top-down, closed sorts of systems, but Daz sorts of straddles, blurs the lines, it's a store (to them) but also sort of poses as a community. That last part implies to me an actual meaningful sense of participation, which is where my disconnect always kicks in. :)

 

I can understand what you're saying, but we need to understand that a lot of people (vendors) probably view comments and ratings as interaction between potential buyers of the product and not a means of communication between customer and vendor. I know that's how I look at it.

Midnight_stories

McDragonSoft said:

namffuak said:

For example (based on observations at another site) 100 people purchase a product; 95 are happy with it, but don't bother to rate or comment, 2 make suggestions for improvement, and 3 leave massively negative comments. So the comment count shows 5 - two with suggestions and 3 that didn't like it - and we (the prospective purchasers) don't have a clue on how many people have not rated the product.

And we won't get a clue on over-all sales count - that info is for the PA and DAZ alone. That's also why there would be no chance of a mandatory comment/rating on prior purchases before allowing a checkout with a new order.

It wouldn't need to be mandatory, but it could be properly incentivised. The number one criticism I am seeing of adding ratings is an inadequate sample pool, no incentive to rate past purchases.

A TINY monetary incentive may be enough. I'm talking on the order of around 1 cent per review, limit 1 per product, and only purchased products. The incentive should be to PROVIDE feedback, while not pushing for positive or negative.

The information is quite valuable to DAZ3D and the Published Artists, as it would be to ANY company marketing products. And a penny a piece is a hell of a bargain for that kind of information/user-generated-content.

From the users side, sure I'm not the only one who has spent their LAST DOLLAR in the bank in this store... and on occasion fallen PENNIES SHORT of placing an order. This has real value despite is low quantity. I could review 13 past purchases if it would make up the 13 cents I need to place the order before the sale ends tomorrow ;)  (yes, I realize I have a problem... but its the kind of problem the staff should LIKE and want to encourage)

DAZ has overall sales information going back 10 years in their database, they COULD use the AGGREGATE data from that in conjunction with the reviews. Not only showing the overall rating, but the PERCENTAGE of purchasers who reviewed the product.

 

Honestly, I'd be happy if we could just get some PRODUCT STORE PAGES cleaned up/fixed. And a report problem feature on the product page could achieve that.

 

EVERY MAJOR DIGITAL CONTENT STORE/DELIVERY SYSTEM IMPLEMENTS A FEEDBACK/RATINGS SYSTEM. That is, except this one.

• iTunes
• Google Play
• Windows Store
• Steam
• Amazon.com/Kindle Store
• Roku
• Youtube (okay, not the best example for intelligent feedback/comments. lmao)
• Facebook (Apps/Games)

This is the ARENA that DAZ is now playing in. The others have it for good reason, the information is quite useful if utilized well. AND the other content stores mentioned above take a MUCH SMALLER piece of the pie, even though they provide the OPERATING SYSTEM AND INFRASTRUCTURE needed to use the content, as well as the MARKETING AND DELIVERY for the publishers. Come on guys, time to earn that 50%! ;p

(and that's not a state secret, its in the So You Want to Become a PA info page)

They also almost universally have In-App Purchases, which is something DAZ is now adding to DS4.9+ ;p

Oh, and most of their content is in the $1-3 range ;p

Just sayin... lol.

OK most of those ratings and comments are fakes at those online stores. It wasn't until I released a mobile app that I realized people paid for the reviews and ratings. I got a lot of e-mails from companies asking for money to get my ratings up. Sure there are some real one but most are paid for. So I hope it never comes here!

ravvenkitsune

I just wanted to add my two cents worth of support for this. The two things that I would most love to see is 1) verified purchaser reviews, and 2) documentation for each product being required from all vendors. Obviously it would be very rudimentary for figures, but I have experienced a lot of frustrating recently with lighting/HDRI packages (mainly from Dreamlight) that I just cannot get to work. If there was a documentation sheet available for each product it would help a great deal.

Another helpful thing would be to require vendors to state for each set if it is optimised for Iray or not. I've purchased quite a few that turned out to be non-Iray after the fact, and well...all of this isn't cheap, is it? If I added up everything that I've spent in the past year or so I'd probably fall over in a dead faint. :) As someone who spends a ridiculous amount of money it would be nice to be treated a bit better with proper information, documentation and reviews for me to base buying decisions on.

bytescapes

The very useful DAZ Deals browser extension adds an entry to each product page that links to all the gallery images using a particular product, and also to forum references to the product.

While that's not exactly the same as a rating, it can be informative: if a product is used in a large number of images, that suggests that many people are happy with it. And if there's something badly wrong with a product, people will certainly complain about it in the forums.

I think a rating system, while desirable in some ways, is potentially problematic for DAZ. Any online community, however generally courteous -- and DAZ's is one of the best, in part due to attentive moderation -- will occasionally attract odd characters and spawn random feuds. I think DAZ probably don't want to deal with the potential fallout from someone with a grudge systematically down-rating every product by a given PA. Alternatively, you can get astro-turfing/spamming, where a PA creates fake identities to up-rate their own products, which further reduces the usefulness of the rating/review system. I can well understand DAZ not wanting to venture into this particular minefield.

ItsCeo

Here is my view of the world, so please do not flame me. 1. Daz is not Amazon or Steam. Compared to them, Daz is incredibly small potatoes. This is in no way a slam on Daz it is just truth in numbers. Comparing Daz to them is not very valid IMHO. 2. There are people that get paid to write good product reviews on big sites. I do not think that would happen here, Daz/the content creators are too small. My friend owns a restaurant. When he pays extra per month for Yelps "special service", his business is always in the top 10 for my city. Guess what happens when he drops the "special service"? 3. Instituting a rating system is a programming change. Right now hasn't Daz been undergoing a project to update old items into Smart Content? How's that going? What's the ETA on that job completion? Which is more important from a company standpoint? 4. Who honestly would go to a forum to look up product reviews? We are spoiled as shoppers, we want it on the same page as the pretty picture of the product. 5. Daz is a monopoly. Again, don't misunderstand me. They are great and have great products, but they don't really need to spend money on such things because people are going to come here to buy anyway. There would have to be proof presented to the owner that a review system will,in fact, increase sales and by what percentage to cover the cost of such an endeavor. I'm not just talking about one time costs, but one of your Daz employees will need to spend time to deal with it or Daz may even have to hire someone. 6. What is the actual foot traffic or sales per month for Daz? Do 100 people shop here monthly... 1,000.... 5,000... more? The answer to that also is a big factor. Why institute such an undertaking if the number is low? 7. I think Daz does care about customer ease of shopping, etc, but changes take money. Can Daz afford to undertake such a project for perhaps just cosmetic changes that don't contribute to sales? 8. Is there ANY way to write in the forums without it being one giant paragraph?

Daywalker Designs

ravvenkitsune said:

I just wanted to add my two cents worth of support for this. The two things that I would most love to see is 1) verified purchaser reviews, and 2) documentation for each product being required from all vendors. Obviously it would be very rudimentary for figures, but I have experienced a lot of frustrating recently with lighting/HDRI packages (mainly from Dreamlight) that I just cannot get to work. If there was a documentation sheet available for each product it would help a great deal.

Another helpful thing would be to require vendors to state for each set if it is optimised for Iray or not. I've purchased quite a few that turned out to be non-Iray after the fact, and well...all of this isn't cheap, is it? If I added up everything that I've spent in the past year or so I'd probably fall over in a dead faint. :) As someone who spends a ridiculous amount of money it would be nice to be treated a bit better with proper information, documentation and reviews for me to base buying decisions on.

Iray has been a part of DAZ Studio for a little over 2 years now, but there is quite a bite of content still in the store that has been in the store for more than 5 years. If, as bytescapes suggested, you install the DAZ Deals extention, you will have access to the online version of the readme, which includes the date of release so you can see by that whether or not Ira is supported.

Serene Night

My take... i think if the product descriptions had  a touch more info on what customers' wanted to know... (And here is where knowing why stuff is most frequently returned might be helpful...) there might be less desire to review products. Perhaps if a form could be submitted which included checkboxes so people knew what to expect in a more standard way than there is at present....This could answer simple but bugaboo questions for buyers such as: anatomical elements hideable walls, true iray shaders, removable eyebrows, etc.

A lot of dissatisfaction I see seems to stem from people not having enough information. Many pa's do include the details but some do not have enough info.  Thus the customers make a disappointing purchase or might be delightfully suprised to learn the product has a great feature they did not know about.

More info is always better, although determining what would be useful, I'm not sure.

Midnight_stories

I think it's subjective! if you get a person who doesn't like you, then they are not going to give you a great review. If you saw some of the comments on the Genesis 8 figures went they first come out, I don't think it would be constructive. When I put a product in I put in a list of all item and material and morphs then QA turn that into a list on the production page. If there is any doubt how to use it or what it does I put a walk through video so people can see for themselves.

Griffin Avid

I think some vendors are selling to past customers and they feel they don't need new/more information.

You're getting the same thing you got last time. lol

There's a vendor on here, that when asked about their product(s), is very dismissive, but since they are popular, why should they care?

Business. They got it already.

And I'm in business too, I'll buy from that [insert words worth moderating] if it's something I need.

-

I did want reviews, but now I'm against them.

Stonemason aint the only vendor building an awesome futuristic set.

But, if I search sci-fi city, I want ALL the results, not just most sold or most favorited.

Reviews would read like forum comments...

Awesome!

Great Job!

I love this!

Great stuff!

My credit card just fainted.

Wishlisted!

Take my money!

Horrible, SSS is off.

Drawers and draws don't open..

Bad, waste of money, script wouldn't run.

TURRIBLE, jus' turrible- couldn't find product after download...

This is crap, avoid at all costs- NO PDFFFFFFFFFFF  pfffttt'

Okay product, vendor didn't answer my post. Terri Turrible support.

-----------------

All Daz needs is @Novica (hired as a consultant/internet employee) to write complete information and mini-reviews. lol

Nothing bad, nothing good, just facts. Includes this, has this, works like this. Get creative and do this....

Get  @Divamakeup and @Llynara to pick the best gallery images to fill out some missing promo pics...

They would probably do it for discounts, free products, early access and free PC+ membership. lol

--------------

ATI's browser *should be integrated with Daz. That thing causes sales!

---

What I do want is a better search engine- one that can handle close words....

But even better would be just to get the current features to work better.

I'd rather have Daz focus on smart content DIM and a better internal search to find products-

A much more manual way to sort products....

A favorites, most used, used recently...etc...

I need more meta control....auto find for product images.....

More right-click menu choices......so many small things......

 

jaxprog

I think a product rating system may be a nice to have from a consumer point of view, however it seems to me that a product rating system does not to make much of impact for or against product sales and quality. Put Daz3D side by side with Renderosity. Daz3D does not have a rating system and Renderosity does have a rating system, yet both companies attract great artist who product quality 3D content, both have a loyal consumer base, both are profitable, and both are competitive when marketing their products. To me a rating system may not have the impact that some are arguing for in order to justify its existence.

Again it may be a nice to have but the Daz3D forums in my opinion do a great job of addressing issues and praise where users/consumers feel inspired to take time and draft up and articulate their feelings.

RitaCeleste

Rendo lets you reveiw products and give them stars. Just saying no one has died from it yet.  Its nice to be able to say thank you to the artists for items like shader sets that don't get much attention but make my work so much better and quicker.  I often feel this hobby is not as popular as I would like because there are not a million chatty fans posting like mad.  But I am guilty of not dropping by the boards enough myself.  Its just living in a rural area, I don't know many others in real life with this for a hobby.  A review here and there is a nice way to say to the artists, hey we exist and we like what you do!  I know we all fear some troll will upset them and run them off, but I think that shouldn't be allowed and can be managed.  The good would outweigh the bad.

SuSoleil

If a product doesn't grab me by the guts, then I'll often ponder the decision, and it's almost always a comment or render by a user that'll prompt me to finally hit that buy button. So I would really appreciate having a products rating system, or at least a comments area at the bottom of the page, as well as a link to thumbnails of renders. The forums are nice, but they are soooo time consuming, if they're your only option for finding product reviews. I admit to delaying purchases for days just because I didn't have time to dig out a reaction to the product in the forums. Then I often check to see if anyone has actually used the product. Thanks to a wonderful browser add-on :-) I can do that. But, it would be so much easier--and faster--if I could just scroll to the bottom of the page and see the comments, as well as linked thumbnails of renders in the gallery. That would give a sense of how the items are used by artists of varying levels. (This, by the way, is one of the reasons that add-on is so very useful and popular. There are other reasons, of course, but this thumbnail feature isn't the least of them.) I take it that DAZ has decided against adding these features to the site. I wish the powers-that-be would reconsider. 

SnowPheonix

Bright Shadow said:

I was surprised this isn't possible since it's been a standard online shopping feature for so long. Even if it's not common in the 3D modeling community, it's a chance for Daz Store to be even better.

There are benefits to buyers and content creators:

• Money for quality. It drives sales to the best content creators, encouraging them to create more and leading to higher overall quality.
• Convince me to buy. If people have loved a product, I might be willing to buy it even if I'd hesitate in a feedback-less environment.
• Feedback for creators. If a product has frustrated buyers, this is a great way for content creators to learn that. A creator might overlook a single unhappy email or post. But if (for example) a tutorial vendor repeatedly reads that people are frustrated with audio quality, they know what to focus on next time.

Given a choice between a shopping site with reviews and one without, the one with reviews usually gets my money.

Strongly agree because customer satisfaction with products can only help to improve sales... I recommend a facebook style rating system where you have happy faces and angry faces. and in between... :)

Daywalker Designs

SnowPheonix said:

Bright Shadow said:

I was surprised this isn't possible since it's been a standard online shopping feature for so long. Even if it's not common in the 3D modeling community, it's a chance for Daz Store to be even better.

There are benefits to buyers and content creators:

• Money for quality. It drives sales to the best content creators, encouraging them to create more and leading to higher overall quality.
• Convince me to buy. If people have loved a product, I might be willing to buy it even if I'd hesitate in a feedback-less environment.
• Feedback for creators. If a product has frustrated buyers, this is a great way for content creators to learn that. A creator might overlook a single unhappy email or post. But if (for example) a tutorial vendor repeatedly reads that people are frustrated with audio quality, they know what to focus on next time.

Given a choice between a shopping site with reviews and one without, the one with reviews usually gets my money.

Strongly agree because customer satisfaction with products can only help to improve sales... I recommend a facebook style rating system where you have happy faces and angry faces. and in between... :)

Satisfied customers are generally repeat customers...

SuSoleil said:

If a product doesn't grab me by the guts, then I'll often ponder the decision, and it's almost always a comment or render by a user that'll prompt me to finally hit that buy button. So I would really appreciate having a products rating system, or at least a comments area at the bottom of the page, as well as a link to thumbnails of renders. The forums are nice, but they are soooo time consuming, if they're your only option for finding product reviews. I admit to delaying purchases for days just because I didn't have time to dig out a reaction to the product in the forums. Then I often check to see if anyone has actually used the product. Thanks to a wonderful browser add-on :-) I can do that. But, it would be so much easier--and faster--if I could just scroll to the bottom of the page and see the comments, as well as linked thumbnails of renders in the gallery. That would give a sense of how the items are used by artists of varying levels. (This, by the way, is one of the reasons that add-on is so very useful and popular. There are other reasons, of course, but this thumbnail feature isn't the least of them.) I take it that DAZ has decided against adding these features to the site. I wish the powers-that-be would reconsider. 

As far as I remember, DAZ has never had a rating system or allowed comments on the store pages, which is why they disabled the features in the current version of the store software, among other things, from what I can tell. It also appears that they would prefer that the majority of sales would be based on how buyers viewed the products based on the promotional images rather than being influenced by other buyers feedback on the product.

kenmo

Rating/review should be considered a prerequisite.

harold_withers

I agree, it is a pretty standard feature. The only real question should be to what extent it is implemented. Just star ratings or full review. I've not used this site much for purchasing items, I came here with the purpose of becoming a PA, but when I did have to hunt for a specific item to help enhance my product shots, I did find navigation and searching for specific items to be quite cumbersome and unintuitive and it took me quite a while to find something even halfway appropriate. So a more robust search facility would be appreciated, catagorisation of past product as well as new just released content would be beneficial too, so all available content would be more readily available at your fingertips. Which could only be a good thing in the long run.