Today I did my first software review on the G2 Crowd platform. G2 Crowd likens itself to Yelp for enterprise software, according to a 2014 article in TechCrunch.
I was introduced to the platform last Fall after noticing that Nimble is highly rated as a Customer Relationship Management tool on the site.
Even more impressive was the number of people who had given reviews on Nimble as well as Salesforce, Sage, Oracle, Zoho, Pipeliner, GoldMine, Sugar and a number of other online customer relationship management tools.
How G2 Crowd Works
All the reviews on G2 Crowd are from users of the software (regular people), not the companies themselves! And, they’ve made it difficult to game the system, as users are required to use their LinkedIn credentials to create a review.
Also, “no one is permitted to review their own product or that of a competitor, thus eliminating bias in the reviews,” states G2 Crowd’s website.
All in all, this makes G2 Crowd an excellent place to check out, in pretty good detail, what others have to say about different business software platforms. As well, it’s a place where you can leave your own business software reviews – good, bad or indifferent – for others to benefit from.
G2 Crowd was launched in 2013 and has worked hard to encourage reviews of different business software products. Some product categories have significantly more reviews than others but there is no doubt that the service they provide is a needed one and will only continue to grow over time.
According to the G2 Crowd website, their “software recommendation engine, the Grid, ranks products based on customer satisfaction scores reported in the user reviews as well as publicly available data on vendors. No outside opinions or influence is added to the rankings.”
Easy To Use & Intuitive!
If you’re in the market for business software, be sure to check out G2 Crowd to see what consumers have to say about various software products!
The G2 Crowd site is easy to use and intuitive, and provides excellent information, including an overall rating along with reviewers thoughts on what they like and what they dislike about each product listed.
To compare software on G2 Crowd:
- Go to www.G2Crowd.com and click on the ‘Categories’ tab in the navigation menu at the top of the site.
- Find and click on the business software category you would like to investigate further.
- When your category opens, select the different products/brands you would like to compare with a simple tic, in the box provided. (see sample image ‘Comparison Selection Tool’)
- Click the ‘compare’ button provider (in the area beneath where the products/brands are listed).
- Check out the results provided. (see sample image ‘Business Software Comparisons)
Note: I found the menu tab at the top of the page worked better for me than the large button in the middle of the page. The term I had entered using the ‘Compare Software’ button didn’t get me to the exact place I was looking for. The ‘Categories’ tab allowed me to click on ‘All Categories,’ located at the bottom of the categories pop up, where I easily found the other software options I was wanting to learn more about.
Another way to check out a specific software category is to click on one of the icons in the G2 Crowd grid, available for each category. This will allow you to research a particular product by clicking on an icon in the grid. When you click an icon a small pop up provides links that will take you to reviews, the product profile, pricing, and any questions and answers posted. Check out the sample category grid for Social Media Management tools using the widget embedded below.
Nielen’s 2013 Under the Influence:Consumer Trust in Advertising report tells us that “68% of us trust consumer opinions shared online.” G2 Crowd is a good resource for those of us looking to make business software buying decisions based on what users are saying online.
Impact Of Reviews On Business
For business software providers, the value of online reviews to consumers means a few things:
- Delivering quality products and services to customers is more important than ever.
- Encouraging and reminding customers, especially happy customers, to share how they feel about products and services is more important than ever.
- A lack of online reviews for a business could be considered equal to, or have the same impact as, a bad review in the eyes of consumers.
Happy customers and unhappy customers are often more willing to share how they feel about products/brands/services when invited to do so/given the opportunity. Those who are somewhat satisfied but not completely satisfied, are less likely to want to make the effort, at least when it comes to sharing good feedback.
Businesses that deliver products/services that meet and exceed their customers expectations, AND who encourage their customers to share their thoughts online, are likely to be the winners when it comes to online customer reviews. The result will be more customers for them.
A lack of customer reviews is often telling. If no one is saying anything about a brand’s products/services online, that can speak almost as loudly to consumers as a bad review.