(Direct Newsline)—Wal-Mart has launched customer product reviews and ratings on its Walmart.com Web site, allowing customers to evaluate and pass judgment on all products listed on the site, both online-only and in-store.

The company said that it had run a limited test of consumer-generated ratings and reviews last June, with favorable results and almost double the number of review submissions anticipated. A significant number of these came in the electronics, home and garden, media and baby categories.

At the time of the site-wide launch last Friday, the company said, almost 15% of the products in these categories had received user reviews.

Customers can submit reviews by viewing a product page online at Walmart.com, while others receive an e-mail invitation to write a review a few weeks after they’ve ordered and received a product. Reviews go up within about five days of submission, and e-marketing bloggers report that they contain both positive and negative comments about items on offer through Walmart.com.

“Reviews and ratings [are] the number one customer-requested feature online at Walmart.com,” said Cathy Halligan, chief marketing officer for Walmart.com. “We know close to 75% of Wal-Mart’s 130 million customers are active online, which present a significant opportunity for our online reviews and ratings platform to connect our customers to one another.”

Wal-Mart recently completed the four-month rollout of its Site to Store feature, permitting online shoppers to order items over the Web and have them shipped to a designated Wal-Mart store for pickup, with no shipping fees.

Finally, Wal-Mart may be encouraging community over the Web with reviews, but as a prime brick-and-mortar outlet for the last Harry Potter book, it took steps to make sure crucial information was not divulged when the book went on sale last Saturday at 12:01 a.m.

The company launched a micro-site, MakeThePledge.net, to get store employees and customers to keep mum about the ending of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.”

And while a survey of pre-order customers revealed that 89% vowed not to skip ahead to the end to find out who dies, Wal-Mart stores prepared for those eager readers who might not be able to resist revealing the big finish in the checkout line by giving away 50,000 pairs of ear plugs the Friday before publication.

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Wal-Mart has launched customer product reviews and ratings on its Walmart.com Web site, allowing customers to evaluate and pass judgment on all products listed on the site, both online-only and in-store.

The company said in a release that it had run a limited test of consumer-generated ratings and reviews last June, with favorable results and almost double the number of review submissions anticipated. A significant number of these came in the electronics, home and garden, media and baby categories.

At the time of the site-wide launch last Friday, the company said, almost 15% of the products in these categories had received user reviews.

Customers can submit reviews by viewing a product page online at Walmart.com, while others receive an e-mail invitation to write a review a few weeks after they’ve ordered and received a product. Reviews go up within about five days of submission, and e-marketing bloggers report that they contain both positive and negative comments about items on offer through Walmart.com.

“Reviews and ratings [are] the number one customer-requested feature online at Walmart.com,” said Cathy Halligan, chief marketing officer for Walmart.com. “We know close to 75% of Wal-Mart’s 130 million customers are active online, which present a significant opportunity for our online reviews and ratings platform to connect our customers to one another.”

Wal-Mart recently completed the four-month rollout of its Site to Store feature, permitting online shoppers to order items over the Web and have them shipped to a designated Wal-Mart store for pickup, with no shipping fees.

Finally, Wal-Mart may be encouraging community over the Web with reviews, but as a prime brick-and-mortar outlet for the last Harry Potter book, it took steps to make sure crucial information was not divulged when the book went on sale last Saturday at 12:01 a.m. The company launched a micro-site, www.makethepledge.net, to get store employees and customers to keep mum about the ending of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”.

And while a survey of pre-order customers revealed that 89% vowed not to skip ahead to the end to find out who dies, Wal-Mart stores prepared for those eager readers who might not be able to resist revealing the big finish in the checkout line by giving away 50,000 pairs of ear plugs the Friday before publication.