Blog homeLast month I wrote about aggregation and curation in travel. You may like to read that post first in order to remind yourself of the principles of curation as there are some good comments on that post.
I have found three examples of extreme curation that are worth looking at:
Kallow – consumer electronics [Link to Kallow site]
Homepage is simple, lists 23 unique product categories (e.g. Laptop, Desktop, Digital Camera etc). On each category you go through to a single product listing.
e.g. Desktop – currently suggests an Apple iMac
The key section is the “our thoughts” section. It gives the reason WHY you should consider this purchase. It is nice seeing a bit of expert subjectivity on ecommerce sites (vs user subjectivity e.g. user reviews – or just bland product description information)
Where Kallow have pitched themselves is to be the answer to the friends advice dilemma. For example people used to ask me to help fix their computer – or advise on a printer purchase etc. Instead I can now just (when asked) send a friend to the Kallow site and let the two founders advise my friends. (No one asks me for advice nowadays, thankfully!)
101 holidays – travel destination decision making / inspiration [Link to 101 holidays site]
The homepage has 101 thumbnail images. Depending upon selection (on the left) images grey out
As you hover over an image, a popup with detail is shown
Clicking through to the destination page there is, like Kallow, a single product presented. Like Kallow, the site curators give their verdict (for 101 holidays – the curators are two well known travel writers).
Tour operators are featured on the site by invitation only and are limited to a maximum of 3 pages each. This ensures diversity on the site. (Operators pay to be on the site, annually up front rather than PPC)
One little comment – I would like the 101 thumbnail images to stay in the same location between page refreshes. For example I just found one destination that was interesting – but forgot what it was (But I knew where I had clicked, approximately). On the next refresh I really struggled to find the same small image again – and actually it was lucky I had taken a screenshot so knew what I was looking for!
101 holidays is going to be an interesting one to watch from an SEO perspective. One of the challenges with a curated website is you can end up with a small site (in terms of total number of pages) – this can make it harder to optimise effectively as you are using a small fishing net. However one of the travel writers behind the site is Mark Hodson who also runs a search engine optimisation agency for travel companies – Travel SEO . Lets see what Mark does to optimise his own (rather than a clients) site.
New York Times – 44 places to go in 2009 [Link to New York Times travel section]
The New York Times has a similar visual design to 101 holidays. Similar mechanism to filter destinations (the images grey out as well), similar popup style….
They don’t however link through to a specific product / destination page. The popup is the ultimate page within this functionality - although it contains links to guides, reviews and inspiring ideas what to do (in each destination).
Personally I think the 101 holidays site is much better executed – but then I do tend to prefer XHTML / JavaScript over Flash – so perhaps I am biased.
What can we learn about curation from these three sites?
To do a well curated site you need to limit your product you present quite aggressively
23 in consumer electronics, 44 from the New York Times and 101 from 101 holidays. Because you are picking the best in any category the number of featured products relates to how many distinct categories you can devise – not how many products exist in that sector.
Both Kallow and 101 holidays have obvious curators
New York Times lets you order by either what they recommend – or what users recommend. i.e. there is a user generated element (which actually makes it a review system rather than a truly curated system)
On Kallow and 101 holidays I don’t feel I know the curators that well
Kallow look like nice guys – but I want to know about what kind of electronics they own. What do they carry on a daily basis? What do they use as their home computer? By knowing their buying habits I may trust their recommendations better.
On 101 holidays I am overwhelmed with newspaper brands that the two writers have worked for. Frankly I don’t care too much about that. What I want to know is where they go on holiday, what they find interesting – is it culture, the unknown, exotic food, waiting at airports etc. Anything else is just corporate CV speak which is not helpful on a consumer facing travel website. Again, only by understanding the true travel nature of the curators does the curation process make any sense at all. Otherwise they may as well aggregate.
Any more curation examples out there in the travel sector?
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Alex,
Thanks for your positive review, and your very interesting thoughts about developing the “About us” element of the site. We may well act on that.
The images reload randomly so that each holiday shares equal billing on the site, rather than one always appearing at the top of the grid, and another at the bottom. If you had hit the “back” button, or “return to homepage”, they would have stayed in the same positions (and your search selections stayed as they were). But as you reloaded the page, they reappeared in different positions.
cheers
Mark
Hi Mark
Howabout seeding the randomness for the grid display based on the date? Hence random, but only changed every 24 hours….. that would solve for most people during a single visit session
Only a thought. Glad you liked the review!
Cheers. Alex
Good idea! Will pass on to our designer.
Mark
Interesting post Alex. I am wondering where ‘curation’ sites fit in for the consumer in the buying process though.
When a consumer buys a complex product online where they need to weight up a specification (travel, digital cameras, etc), i think they look for ‘tethers’ to peg their decision to. My own view on this as an e-tailer is that they will try to secure their decision in 3 ways:
1/ the vendor: will they deliver the product, any after sales service and are they trust worthy?
2/ They like an expert verdict (could be Rough Guides, Which Guide, David Bailey (Celebrated English Photographer),
3/ Do they know people that have used the product / what will their friends think? (online this is UGC)
This is essentially quality of vendor, Expert View, and UGC.
These sites seem to mix expert view with UGC. A consumer might trust UGC because of the volume of it available. Statistically there is accuracy in volume. If i read 10 bad reviews of a hotel… its probably bad. If joe.blogspot.com reviews the hotel, how can i guage the quality/accuracy of his review if i haven’t heard of him before? I think this is a real weakness, and would not be a strong enough expert ‘tether’ for a buyer. And due to lack of volume… not a strong enough UGC tether.
However, are these sites more about a different display of unique content that would help SEO ranking for affiliate or link sales? Call me a sceptic, but are they just trying to drive SEO traffic and play the numbers game….
The point with Kallow (which I didn’t mention) is that perhaps the curators are not so important to the overall process (as they are for 101 holidays for example)
Say someone asks me for advice on a gadget – I go to Kallow – find the page – and email that URL to the friend. In that example it is not the credibility of the curators that the friend is trusting, but mine. Presumably (as the friend asked me) they know who I am, what my background is etc…. so not quite the same as for 101 holidays.
Keith – Kallow does seem to be an affiliate site (of Amazon) but 101 holidays is renumerated via advertising, not affiliate sales. I think the New York Times site was just trying to find an interesting way to expose existing content already on the site….
Nothing wrong with them being an affiliate site of Amazon. But it is relevant in taking their advice. Their objective is driving traffic through their affiliate links, not about passion for delivering the very best reviews on the web (ie the experts view).
For example if i look at Kallows ‘about us’ page, it talks about their passion for helping you find the best consumer electronics products because they are passionate about these products.
So i am expecting to be wowed with their ‘experience/expertise’ that will help me make my buying decision. However if i select their first digital SLR camera, they have 3 lines of description. Follow the affiliate link ( http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0012YA85A/kallow-20) and Amazon list the full manufacturers spec. This products also has 302 Amazon user reviews at the time of writing. The Kallow 3 lines of copy also bears a distict resemblance to some of the Amazon manufacturers description. The Kallow description also doesn’t mention any experience they have of the camera. Again call me sceptical, but i dont get the impression they have ever seen this camera!
This is really what i was getting at. Are these self proclaimed experts really experts, or are they caught between experts view and UGC?
If the above camera description was written about a 2 day trial of the product or similar… that would be great. For my expert ‘tether’, i want to know that the digital display wasnt clear… and the quality didn’t seem quite as good as product xxx despite many more megapixels, etc etc.
Aren’t they just traffic driving affiliate sites (Holiday 101: paid link site – based on traffic – same thing) ? Are they REALLY experts in their fields, or just smart web people?
Is it then fair to say “extreme curation sites” sites need to also be “extreme personality lead sites” if they aren’t using UGC methods to define the cream of the crop?
I agree paul. To my mind UGCs ‘balance’ comes from many reviews.
IRT,
Thanks for the comments regarding Kallow. About the Canon DSLR, I am a photographer and have used the Digital Rebel for years. I also have experience with similar models from Nikon, Olympus and Pentax. So the Canon was carefully vetted and selected, perhaps more so than any other product on Kallow.
You are definitely right that we need to add a bit more personality to the website. We are adding a blog which should help with this. However, our objective is not solely driving traffic through our links. Our main purpose is helping people select a good product. For example, we could recommend the EOS-1Ds Mark III, because it is the top-of-the-line, most expensive DSLR Canon offers. We’d get a lot more revenue for each sale, but less people would make a purchase. Or we could recommend just sticking with a $200 point-and-shoot, and maybe more people would buy, but our revenue would be less. So the only thing we can do is make people happy with their product and hope they return to Kallow.
It is also always a difficult balance between too much information about the product (confusing, wordy, too comparative) and keeping it simple (trust us).
Thanks again for the comments and discussion, guys.
@IRT
You ask:
“Aren’t they just traffic driving affiliate sites (Holiday 101: paid link site – based on traffic – same thing) ? Are they REALLY experts in their fields, or just smart web people?”
In response, I should say that 101 Holidays is not – as Alex pointed out – an affiliate site. See here: http://www.101holidays.co.uk/about-this-site
You’ll also see from this link that David Wickers and I, between us, have some 40 years experience of writing travel for national newspapers and magazines. There’s a bit more self-promoting guff about me here: http://www.markhodson.net/about-me
It’s this knowledge and experience, both of travel destinations and tour operators, that we’re aggregating on the site. I hesitate to call myself an “expert” but I hope you’ll concede that we do know our stuff!
Mark
Hi Mark
More than happy to concede you guys know your stuff. Indeed, experts for the purposes of this discussion at least.
I’m just not sure i get the idea of having such limited choice, and giving such a short review. The review, for fly drive california is quite limited, but it might be early days for you guys. They’re all 4 lines of copy in quotes with a link to an agent. It just seems to be neither giving expert depth of content/the benefit of your experience, or choice. This might grow to have links to more agents, or perhaps to have much more depth of content for each holiday, but i can’t see the ‘content framework’ that you might deliver your expertise through. ie specifically why is this a great tour.
cheers
keith
Keith,
You’ve found one of the few pages that aren’t yet fully loaded. Should all be there by the end of the week. We’re still officially pre-launch.
Mark
101 Holidays looks like an interesting aggregation of these experts knowledge of the best holiday. Although it still looks a bit thin, I think the opportunity here is to hang a number of suggested operators and specialists off each experience – for example we may be tempted to go to Dubai, but we may want a different budget range from the single operator featured. Also, there are two recommendations going on here – the actual holiday experience, and the operator to go with. Why are jetsave a good company to go to dubai with? Personally I would divorce the operator from the recommendation, and simply invite sponsored offers – keep the recommendations commercially pure, and based on thematic experiences only. Basically what we are trying to do at World Reviewer – but on a larger scale. This site will live or die on the expertise/kudos of ‘David and Mark’ rather than any SEO, which I agree is a challenge with limited copy. Operators will only pay fees if they converting traffic. And they may find it difficult to get other newspapers to write about them, as I found out to my cost when I launched Travel Intelligence with AA Gill.
Hi Alex; I’d be interested in what you thought of Mr & Mrs Smith as a curated site. (Although I agree with what James said in your previous post on the subject – it’s an ugly word, we tend to go with ‘hand-picked collection’).
When we started the company, the hotels we featured were all visited and vetted by my husband and me, but as our collection’s grown, we’ve had to assemble and train a team of Smiths to assess and write-up the hotels we feature, based on the template initially created by our own tastes. The only dilemma brought up by curation is taking into consideration the variety of consumer needs and interests – one expert’s view may not tally with the individual consumer’s ideas about what they’re looking for. The balancing act we have to perform is between selecting hotels based on what we like, and writing about the features that excite us – and anticipating what other aspects our customers may be interested in, in order to maintain that broad (but by no means all-inclusive) appeal that we’ve built up over the years. Aggregation, however, could never work with Mr & Mrs Smith.