Control Over the Corporate Website is Shifting to the Customers

Two days ago, a new feature of Google toolbar that allows you to contribute helpful information or comments about any web pages – “SideWiki” announced. At this moment it is appears on Firefox and IE browsers (Chrome and other browsers to come soon).

Is it a good or a bad news? I would say it depends, if your web pages get good and positive comments from consumers, then it shall be a good thing otherwise it might not be, so it has both positive and negative impact to your company.

Even the new feature just released, however it does bring a certain level of impact to the corporations and companies.

In a recent Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey of over 25,000 online consumers from 50 countries’ study, they found that recommendations by personal acquaintances and opinions posted by consumers online are the most trusted forms of advertising globally.

The Nielsen survey shows that “90% of online consumers worldwide trust recommendations from people they know, while 70% trust consumer opinions posted online”.

Did you see the point? What this tells you?

Its means customers trust each other more than you, with Google’s new released Sidewiki, now they can assert their voices “on” your web pages – they can contribute and write down their opinions on your corporate site’s page, extranet (social side) and intranet as well.

Consumers can now rely on their friends or other contributors to get additional information about your products and services, also your competitors. They can rate or discuss the positive and negative experiences about your company, or your products and services, even though not everyone writes; rates and contributes content in every location, however, their words do have influential power. Not to mention the further power results that consumers will bring out when they use other Google’s extending social reach features, like profiles and gmail etc.

What and how will you do toward Google SideWiki shifts power to consumers?

Are you still thinking that your website is belonging to you? Are you hesitate or be reactive to see negative content? With every web page now potentially social, will you going to develop an internal strategy and ongoing program to ensure and monitoring the conversation, participating as you would in blog discussions, and influencing the discussion?

Will you use your in-house people to handling the task or will you use outsourcing services to manage it for you? Will you start and develop a social strategy now?