Advice from a Dooyoo lover (dooyoo.co.uk in general)

Member Name: Shuyanin59

Product:	dooyoo.co.uk in general
Date:	01/08/03 (76 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: You can trust to most dooyooers' reviews, A wealth of info about new products and services, customer-friendly altitudes on the part of administration

Disadvantages: it does take time to get used

“Why so pale and wan, fond lover? Prythee, why so pale?”
John Suckling (1609-1642). From “Advice to a Lover” (1637).

First and foremost, this paper is intended for the newly fledged dooyooers and all those who find it still hard to get the most of the site’s services after the renovation. I guess many people find themselves in a predicament when they begin their member activities at dooyoo. I do not always support the harshest critics of the site’s renovation (and I will focus below on an ill-defined feature that I consider a revolutionary service). But I have to admit that such services as “dooyoo Guided Tour” and “dooyoo Tools” are mind-boggling and absolutely useless as help tools for new members.

Firstly, I’ll share my views on the site’s “mechanics” – or what happens to your review after it is posted, and, secondly, give some general guidance and practical advice on how to use available services to best advantage.

Judging by my two-year-long experience with dooyoo, the site’s machinery works like this. Once accepted, your review’s headline will be highlighted in bold, inside an attractive “New review” box at the site’s Home, for a limited period of time (you can count on an average of 15 minutes of being “world famous”). After that, it will be replaced by another opinion, but will stay, though somewhat overshadowed, at the starting point for all dooyoo members and visitors for another 15 minutes. The number of featured new opinions at dooyoo Home at any given time varies from 3 to 5, depending on the timing and advertising space available. So, at best, you can count on 75 minutes of “super” exposure. Hence the importance of the title and timing.

Next, your opinion will disappear from dooyoo Home whatsoever. To monitor it’s whereabouts, you will have to click on either &
#8220;Newest reviews” (inside “Info lists” box) or “More new reviews” (inside “Other new reviews” box). And this takes us closer to one of the major points I am writing here about.

I am sure that, like me, 80 percent of dooyooers begin their routine visit to dooyoo by clicking “Newest reviews” that lead you to a table specifying Author, Date/ timing, Title and Product/ category. The table contains over a hundred of recent reviews. Your opinion will be kept there for two or three days on average, and so you’ll get two days of “first-rate” exposure in addition. After that, little, if anything, changes at all. I mean the number of reads of your opinion does not grow perceptibly after three days since it has been posted. It comes to a dead halt after a week or so, in most cases.

But take a closer look at the table. Until recently I would ignore the drop-down menu next to the table’s heading. (It is preset at “All categories”) But it is a very useful tool that, impact of this review permitting, may lead to a very positive revolution inside dooyoo.

All the search categories are listed in the drop-down menu. There is no need to sift the reviews through, to pick and choose your favourite categories from the general list. All you have to do is click on a category of your choice – and you’ll get a most fresh assortment of recent reviews.

The most important thing is that this simple, effective, but ill-defined feature of dooyoo machinery helps to prolong the time of your review’s exposure significantly and make your related activities (reading or posting reviews) more orderly and purposeful.

By the way, it is thanks to the “All categories” list of the menu that I usually learn about newly introduced dooyoo categories. Sometimes I use the menu as a short cut to a category of interest, too.

The more
dooyooers will use the drop-down menu, the more the proportions of the upturn in the number of reads, comments, short and long reviews posted, and dooyooMILES awarded, and, last but not least, in the level of customer satisfaction that we all hope for.

What follows is a collection of advice on how to use the site to advantage.

· Do not forget to log in. You cannot assess other dooyooers’ opinions unless you do.

· Read the “Dooyoo Advice Clinic” (Home/ dooyoo.co.uk > Community: Your info center: Help) thoroughly and carefully. It is an indispensable help tool to any dooyooer, a well-structured source of useful information on issues not covered here.

Notably, you’ll find invaluable practical advice on how to write a good review if you click “User help users” (grammar of the original preserved). Earlier, there used to be a whole dooyoo Section covering the subject. You may want to try your luck with dooyoo search engines, if you need something more.

If you have any query or feel like reporting a bug, go to Dooyoo Advice Clinic. They are trying their best to be attentive, polite and efficient.

· Subscribe to Dooyoo monthly magazine (Home/ dooyoo.co.uk: Newsletter). It contains useful info about new features, contests, incentives, sponsorships etc.

· Never create your opinion online within the site’ system. I’ve burned my fingers at that when working at my first opinion. As I am no good at typing, it took me about two hours to take (and edit) the writing from my notebook to the monitor screen, but oops! – To no avail. After an ill-defined period the system seems to switch off on its own, if it happens to fail to detect any activity of yours within itself. (If putting down an opinion inside a specially designed field isn’t an activity, then what the hell is, you will ask. I know the shrewd answer the dooyoo management will readily give &#
8211; “ASK THE SPONSORS!”) Mind, I am speaking about the “old” system, the one that used to be before the site was renovated. But I feel it is more than likely that your efforts will come to nothing, and you will lose your text irretrievably and will have to start over from scratch if you choose to ignore my warning.

So it is practical to compose, type, edit and spell-check your opinion in MS Word, then copy and paste it into the “Write your opinion” field.

· You’ve got your opinion “posted” and… do not like it? Has the look of it changed beyond recognition? Why does every sentence begin with a small letter? Where are my capital I’s? Where are all my quotation marks? Why have they been replaced with interrogation marks?

You are likely to put these questions… Do not worry. It has nothing to do with an illiterate editor. Blame it all on computer software, but demand that dooyoo administration should do something about it. Otherwise you and me will contribute to the degeneration of the English language into its claptrap-mobile-teenage variation now prevalent in almost every chatroom.

· Do not expect that they will highlight your opinion at their Home once more, after you revise one of your previous reviews. They won’t, no matter how thorough the revision you’ve done might be.

· The timing of your posting an opinion is as important as its title. As a rule of thumb, publish your opinions on a Friday evening, or any time during a weekend or national holidays. Your opinion will be likely to get more limelight then.

· Place your short opinions here and there across the site. These will bring you no dooyooMILES but may help you draw attention of some bleeding heart(-s) to your personal profile, where all of your reviews will be displayed. (“May” or “might” – it depends entirely on quality of your opinion
. Remember: short reviews cannot be edited. If you make them concise and smart, you will eventually succeed. If you make them irrelevant, shallow and spam-like, you will achieve the opposite: a bad reputation.)

· Exchange comments with other dooyooers. Be thankful for constructive comments you receive.

· Be creative and fanciful about your personal profile page.

· If you cannot otherwise find a product or a service of interest, use dooyoo search engines supplied under every category.

· I find the site’s Travel section particularly useful. When I choose a destination for a regular vacation, I always consult with it. No regrets so far. Before the renovation, the section was by far easier to locate and handle. Now I have to use bookmarks to check on the latest about Spain or Croatia. It’s not a bad idea, is it?

· Visit the site frequently and monitor and rate new and old reviews in the categories you are interested in. Visit personal profile pages of the people whose opinions you like and support, and you will eventually find more insights, valuable advice and information that will help you make correct buying decisions.

· Your opinions will be searchable through the Google search engine. So do not be surprised, if a number of reads on the part of non-members exceeds that of dooyooers by far.

· And finally,

Why so dull and mute, young sinner?
Prythee, why so mute?
Will, when speaking well can’t win her,
Saying nothing do’t?
Prythee, why so mute?

John Suckling. From “Advice to a Lover” (1637).

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