Reevoo receives a round of investment funding

Reevoo, a reviews site that is based on the "trusted review", has received $5 million in funding. We reviewed the site this summer and thought it was a brilliant way to handle reviews to reduce fraudulent reviews. Check out our interview with CEO Richard Anson from October.

Richard Anson, Reevoo CEO, commented; "We are delighted to have the Eden team backing us. They have an outstanding track record. Their investment will allow us to enhance our service for existing retail clients, move in to new sectors and develop Reevoo.com into the definitive place for people to choose what to buy. Fake reviews are unfortunately a growing phenomenon, and we founded Reevoo to help retailers, manufacturers and consumers combat this. There is a plethora of sites out there today where it is just too easy for book reviews to be written by the author, hotel reviews by the proprietor or product reviews by the manufacturer. Ultimately consumers will lose trust in these sites and we’ve built Reevoo to help people choose what to buy based on real, genuine, confirmed reviews."

Some notes from their release:

Reevoo, the online publisher of genuine customer reviews, whose clients include Comet, Dixons, Currys, Jessops, Orange and Misco has today announced that Eden Ventures has led a $5M investment round to expand the business. The investment will make Reevoo’s genuine customer reviews service available to online shops across a wider range of product categories, as well as enhancing Reevoo’s service to current retail clients.

Reevoo was founded to address three trends: online retailers are looking to drive higher numbers of sales from visitors to their web sites; shoppers are demanding the opinion of other customers to help them choose what to buy; with the rise of fake reviews and advertorials, trust is increasingly hard to gain and maintain on the web.

Reevoo collects customer reviews on behalf of its retail clients and only confirmed purchasers receive a questionnaire giving them the opportunity to review a product. Genuine reviews help people choose what to buy based on real experiences and therefore increase conversion rates and sales for online retailers. On retail clients’ websites, shoppers can read these genuine reviews via the ReevooMark, where full customer scores and comments for that product are displayed, unedited and supported by the Reevoo badge of third party independence.

I like Reevoo and believe this is the reviews model that will work over the long run. I hope one day Amazon adapts the same model, whereby only people who have purchased the item can review it. While there will always be ways to trick the system, this is a great way to limit the liability and risk.