How to create great product reviews
There are different types of products and as such there are different types of product reviews. It is also good to point out that there is a difference between creating your own review and having others do it for you. We will go over each type and with more details.
Creating product review for your own tangible product
This is great way to spark your creativity. Generally people tend to love the reviews that show them how easy it is to use your product. It is also easier for them to trust and order the same if:
- The product looks good
- Product looks easy to use
- If the product features are highlighted
Now as we know this, there are also different types of options of presentation. The text is sometimes important as there is just no substitute for it. On the other hand adding images to your text is a great way to have things explained in a better way.
What works even better is if you add videos next to the same as well. Ideally you would place a video somewhere near the top and it would be same as the text and images bellow it.
Video however will add additional - 3D - perspective of your product in a way that is easy to comprehend and what might be taking a large amount of images otherwise.
Now we know that the video would be best, however images can still be helpful and sometimes even important. With that said, both still require you to know a bit more about actual review process.
Making your product look good
Some products might be replacing several other products - those 2 in 1, 4 in 1 and alike products. In such case it is good to showcase exactly what your single product would be replacing.
Choose the light and the angle that benefits your product. One example would be an image or video of a bike you are selling. If you only shoot it from the front or the rear you can not tell too much from the looks of it. Ideally you would want to highlight how it is different from others. If the difference is only the front axle you would still benefit of showing entire bike. Imagine someone wanting to purchase yet thinking that you are only selling front axle.
If your product is small and can easily be held in your hand, try shooting the angles that might not be comfortable to you during shooting yet showcase the product in a nice light and angle.
The light can be quite important when setting things up. This is a whole subject on its own.
The Light
The light is something that is quite important. Bad light can make your product seem clunky, big or strange. On the other hand the light can help you highlight everything properly.
The light you want to set should be powerful enough to show everything important, yet it should not be "burning" some areas with harsh light. You should also look that the light is not going to go into the lens of your camera.
Generally the best way to go with it when you are not sure is to add the light above your product.
You can see some examples of this on the following video:
If you watch the video you can see some great ways to experiment with your gear to get the right light that benefits your product. While they mention it indirectly you can see how they use the light to highlight the sides or parts of product that they think add to the value of the same.
In The Right Angle
We said above that angle of shooting can help your product. In this section we will try to add a bit more details about the angles. You will have the angle of the light, the angle of the product as well as the angle of the camera. All of these angles should be set to benefit your product. For example if your light is above your product you might want to shoot from same height as your product or just a bit from a top of it. If your product is longer, shooting it from top can add the length and additional depth of it. This is the case for smaller height difference.
If you change the height of the camera to higher - near 80 degrees your products would seem slimmer. This might be ideal starting point if your product is laying down and it is intended to fit small places such as women purses.
Both light and angle is something you should experiment with however keeping mind on it can mean a big difference between a product that looks good and product that looks great.
Making your product look easy to use
This part can be tricky yet helps sell the product. Some angles under which you might be recording could require you to be in a bit of awkward position. Makes no sense on one side, however it is important that it looks easy to use. If you use it in a way that is easy for you to use and you show your arm or hand more than the product itself it no longer shows its ease of use.
It might take you few tries to get the right footage. The good thing about the video is that you can easily slice and connect it any way you want to make that presentation look awesome.
Sometimes that can actually help make the video look even easier to use.
Of course, it is good if you have great energy as well.
One example of this can be seen here (look at how the videos are combined):
Highlight your product features
You might know the ins and outs of your product. The features of your product might be super in your face. Maybe you do not need to highlight them then? No, that would not be true. Always highlight your features.
As example check out our features page. Now compare before checking our page and seeing all of the features we support and after checking. We are sure you noticed at least one feature that you did not know we support.
For the same time, any time you are grabbing photos or videos of your product you should showcase the features. For example maybe it cuts through different materials - show how it cuts. Maybe it is applied on skin or some surface - show that instead. For example if your product is a mascara and its feature is 2 times the amount of brushes you should really point that out. Maybe even add a closeup how they look or how they are applied.
Creating product review for your own digital product
Digital products are often easier to produce. In the same time they are a bit harder to shoot the video or image of. Sure you can grab the screen and save it quite easily however these things require editing to look presentable.
Like before there are few key points that you should look for when capturing the video or images of your digital product:
- Make the product look helpful
- Product looks easy to use
- Make sure product features are highlighted
It is a bit different with the digital product. Your main point would be to make it look helpful. So let us jump into that first.
How to make your digital product look helpful
There are many products that look the same. And they mostly do because they are using things such as Wordpress or Bootstrap, etc. that make the development easier. In the same time they also make digital products look quite similar to one another. This is why with the digital product your main goal for image and video capture should be about making it look helpful. One such example is how you highlight your product to capture a video in an easy way on some service. For example check out our video recording plugin for JotForm platform.
Ideally you would try to go above your design and show how your digital product helps with some action. Especially if your future customer would not otherwise be able to do. Maybe it would be possible, just hard or complex. The story line introduces your system - and everything starts to be easy.
With this there are no key points other than to find what your product excels at and point that out.
How to make your digital product look easy to use
If you are reviewing your digital product and trying to make it easy to use keep it simple. If there are different segments you can highlight and one takes 20 steps, it might be a good idea to not highlight each step. Instead look to show how easy it is to add things to your page.
For example how easy it is to add Ziggeo to your page? You would just click few buttons (if you are in a clicking mood) and copy and paste the code to your page. Check it out here: /docs/sdks/javascript/browser-integration/header
The simple step of copy pasting makes your product very easy to be used and added to different services. That is true even if you do not know or like the code since everyone knows the copy paste.
Your digital product might be even easier to use with just few clicks (like the widget we mentioned above). What if on the other hand your digital product is a book? Well that is easy as well. Just start with the first page and show what people would get. Show some of the cool pages within the same. If possible look the grab the ones that are funny or say something really helpful. Since this is a segment about ease of use, highlight how someone can go through your book to find something real quickly.
Make sure your digital product features are highlighted
Digital products have the benefit of adding as much detail to it as you can. Your product videos can be in 4K, your images within a book could be of high quality and product easy to use. You should still try to highlight the features you have in your video review.
Depending on the digital product you would go about adding feature highlights differently. Generally this is easier to do with a video than with text and images. What seems to look good is to skim through the features as you highlight the product itself.
Letting others create great product reviews of your tangible product
Letting your customers know the steps they should follow and setup they should create is great. All the reviews will look perfect, uniformed and easy to add to your website. If you do this however it will likely always seem as if you were the one making the reviews, not your customers.
This could turn a lot of people from leaving review because most people want something easy and simple, especially when helping someone else. Instead what you should do it to let them create the reviews without scripts or specific setup. You can add some guidelines to how long they should be, or the general content. This could help them if they have not done this before.
A great way of doing this is by creating a page that is dedicated to the same. You can then have the recording option made available as well as the instructions on this same page. This way you can easily send just a link to people and have them fill it out.
You should know that depending on the way you capture these recordings your customers might be going through slightly different experiences. Enter Ziggeo!
We made our system to offer you several different themes. With these themes you can provide your customers with very same experience regardless of the browser or platform that they are using.
This makes it very simple for you to create your guides as well as for your support team to provide them with guidance where to click.
All you need is to add the code like this one to your page:
<ziggeorecorder ziggeo-width="640"
ziggeo-height="480"
ziggeo-theme="modern"
ziggeo-themecolor="blue">
</ziggeorecorder>As you can see just few lines of code and you can immediately start capturing your reviews. It also makes no different what type of camera your customer has - our codes will care about that.
All you need to do is to remind them to record their review in a room with enough light and that light is going towards them and not towards the camera.
Letting others create great product reviews of your digital product
Reviewing your own digital products is easy because you have access to various digital assets that you can use. Your customers however can only do as much.
What we suggest is to provide them with soft guide such as length and ideas however to let them do the review.
One great idea for review is to ask them what they liked most about your digital product.
It would be great to add that to one page on your website allowing you to share it with your customers. This makes a single place to change and edit as needed to make it look and work exactly as you like.
With Ziggeo you can have them easily record their screen without any installation needed. Our system works by providing you with few different yet easy to set and use options.
You could start recording screen. Quite simple and efficient. What we recommend when it is a review is to consider something else we offer. That is the option to also have camera recorded next to the screen. This way you can see who is doing the review as well as of what.
The entire code you would use can be seen here:
<ziggeorecorder ziggeo-width="640"
ziggeo-height="480"
ziggeo-theme="modern"
ziggeo-themecolor="blue"
ziggeo-allowscreen="true"
ziggeo-allowmultistreams="true"
ziggeo-multistreamdraggable="true"
ziggeo-multistreamresizeable="true"
ziggeo-addstreamproportional="true">
</ziggeorecorder>After all, what gives a better review how great your system is than a smile on the face of your customer recording the review.
As with any option, our system supports multiple platforms and systems which allows you to offer the recording in a same manner across different systems.
Have any questions? Liked the content and want to see more? Great, do reach out to our friendly support at support@ziggeo.com.