What is MomsOutLoud.com? (Part Two)

Some of you may be surprised to know that the idea of MomsOutLoud.com is based on actual research.  Sure, a lot of it is what we call “secondary” research (reading other research studies that were done for other purposes)….but given my consulting background, of course I had to do my own.  So I did an online survey – of 50 local Moms – which if the results weren’t so consistent and intuitive, I wouldn’t have considered this enough data.  But the answers from each Mom were very similar, and it mirrored my own feelings, so I ran with it.

I asked these Moms – a 50/50 mix of working and stay-at-home – several questions about their satisfaction with their ability to find information about local services and activities for their families and themselves.  The big findings?

First, 67% of Moms were generally satisfied with their ability to find information about the existence of businesses they needed (most using directory listings on the web, Google searches, etc.) — BUT:

ONLY 33% of Moms were satisfied with their ability to find information about the quality of different service providers.

So, in light of this dissatisfaction on quality ratings/reviews of different businesses, how did these Moms find out how good a particular business is?  The most common way was word of mouth, i.e., recommendations from friends — used by almost all Moms (95%).  This made total sense to me, as it is my most trusted source of advice.  But then, I was very disappointed (but not surprised) to find that:

54% of Moms used trial and error to figure out if a particular business was good quality or not.

This dissatisfaction with the ability to find information about the quality of a business, evidenced by the reliance on trial and error, made me realize there was a market need for Moms to share their recommendations with each other.

And that, my Mom friends, is the background for why one of the main features of the site, MomsReview, was built.  It is a place where you can do one of two things:

1)  Search our directory of local kid- and Mom-focused businesses, which has over 1000 businesses in the Dallas/north Dallas suburban area.  When you search for providers (which you can do by category or by keyword), you’ll see the list of the companies in our database.  This list will be longer or shorter depending on how many miles from your home zip code you chose to search, or if you limited the search to companies with a certain minimum review score.  On the list, the name of the company, its address, and if it provides a coupon to MOL Moms will be shown, along with its average review score (based on the reports that have been submitted to MomsOutLoud.com).  From the company name in that list, you can click to that businesses profile to read more about it (if they’ve chosen to provide their information to MomsOutLoud.com).

2)  Submit a report on a local kid- or mom-business.  This is where you can tell other Moms about your experiences with different businesses around our area.  This is where the true power of MomsOutLoud.com exists.  By submitting a review of a great business, giving them a high score, and telling other Moms why they’re great, you can reward the businesses that give great customer service, have a great product, and go “above and beyond” expectations.  Rewarding businesses that are truly great gives them more business (because other Moms will try them out), and it also raises the bar for competing businesses.  This way, our collective voices can help improve the quality of service we as Moms are given.

On the flip side, if you know a business that does not live up to expectations, you can also share that opinion.  However, as the saying goes, “you catch more flies with honey”…. and rants are not productive for anyone.  But constructive feedback is essential to our local businesses because it will help them better succeed, so MomsOutLoud.com does encourage solution-oriented feedback where needed.

Given that we’re launching in two weeks, what should you expect when you go to MomsReview on the site?  Our directory has been loaded, and we will be working with a very small user group over the next two weeks to user-test the site by entering reports on many of these businesses.  But, for the most part, the ratings on these businesses will be few and often-times not there.  YET.

This is where all of the Moms in our community come in.  We’ll be giving away prizes to all the Moms who enter reports into the site in these early months as a way to generate action.  However, we hope that many of you (like the woman who came up to me at the Baby Loves Disco event), are happy to share your opinions just because you like to help other Moms.  For MomsOutLoud.com to be truly useful and helpful to all local Moms, every Mom in the community needs to share their experiences and opinions on the site.

We look forward to hearing what you think about the local businesses in our community – and to help provide an avenue for you to share your views with the other Moms in the MomsOutLoud.com community!