Scentiments.com voted Hot 100 website for 2009!

Here is the article as feature in Internet Retailer Magazine.

Social scentsPeople wear perfume and cologne to send a message. It’s a social act that says other peoples’ opinions matter. Scentiments.com, which features deeply discounted prices, makes buying fragrances a social experience, as well.
Product pages offer visitors many ways to seek others’ opinions about a product, or to express their own. A Share This link allows a visitor to e-mail a friend, post a comment to a page on Facebook or other social networks, or to comment on more than three dozen social web sites, from familiar ones like Digg and StumbleUpon to the Chinese-language Funp.
“It’s similar to word of mouth,” says Howard Wyner, CEO of Scentiments.com. Consumers are always bragging about getting a great deal, he says. “That’s the tipping point, not just buying the product, but buying it at the best price out there.”
In a recent 30-day period, Wyner says, 1,400 visitors used the sharing tool, from ShareThis Inc. Most e-mailed friends, while others posted to Facebook, Google Bookmarks, MySpace and other social networks. It all helps build qualified traffic, Wyner says.
The site also added customer reviews in September 2007, and now has about 50,000 reviews posted. That helps make the site a more useful resource for customers, Wyner adds. Consumers also can e-mail the retailer’s Fragrance Guru and get advice from employees who can sample products stored in the company’s on-site warehouse.
When an item is out of stock, consumers can click an Alert Me option and provide their e-mail address. Fragrances are often unavailable, as a suddenly hot product can disappear quickly. Scentiments sends out an e-mail when the item is available again. “We get huge conversions when those e-mail go out, 35-45%,” Wyner says.
Recognizing that consumers may be skeptical of the site’s low prices, Wyner prominently displays the company’s high ranking from BizRate, which summarizes consumer ratings of companies, and provides answers to questions about its low prices and quality of goods.
“Scentiments makes great use of visitor assurances and carries an extensive selection,” says Ethan Giffin, founder of e-commerce consulting firm Groove Commerce