Allure.com now allows consumers to discover products in its print magazine's editorial content that can be purchased through a shopping cart shared with Quidsi subsidiaries BeautyBar.com and Soap.com. The site will give any product covered editorially its own page with product reviews, and consumers will be able to purchase the item if it is carried by BeautyBar.com.
— From 'Allure' adds e-commerce functionality to its website at Direct Marketing News.
Most notably, Makeup Alley (which does not sell anything, and carries minimal and discreetly placed advertising) has a library of well-cataloged, super-specific criticism that allows women to do their prepurchase research among peers they trust, despite or perhaps because of their pseudonymity.
— From Someone Just Like Me Said, ‘Buy It’ at the New York Times. Hat tip to Kevin! "Oracles of beauty advice", by the way, is a quote from this article.
Can I put “Oracle of Beauty Advice” on my business cards? 🙂
It does have such a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? 😉
And hooray for Makeup Alley. It, and later NST, are what got me started on my perfume journey seven years ago one summer when I’d fallen in love with Angel and was curious to know if that happened with lots of other wearers of the juice. I found the reviews for it there while performing a Google search and the rest is history. 🙂
Oh, I do think you should!
“Oracle” has such a nice ring to it. 🙂
Great articles! Thanks! Now back to work….
🙂
The advantage of getting advice from disinterested fellow-consumers is kind of obvious, isn’t it? I find it quite funny the way they make it sound like a really subtle point – that the reviewer on MUA does not have a ‘conflicting agenda’! And the beauty guru who (works for DnG?) is skeptical of the ‘masses’, what a laugh…
It’s obvious to me, but obviously not to many in the industry, LOL…
Yeah, I guess the obvious can be pretty obscured by financial interests!
Imagine if you could add e-commerce functionality to NST content? A link at the end of any review or product mention would whisk you directly to a “buy it now” page for that specific product… most of us readers without willpower would have our accounts drained very quickly!
It is easy enough to do, and many blogs & websites do just that…even if they don’t have their own branded e-commerce, they link directly to places that sell the products. To each his own, of course, but as a reader, I don’t find that the practice inspires confidence in the content.