As an online retailer, you want to ensure customer satisfaction. One of the ways you can check their satisfaction is through product reviews. Keeping your customers happy is the most powerful tool you can have in your e-commerce business. 63% of customers are more likely to purchase a product from a company that has product ratings and reviews.
Good reviews mean the customer was delighted enough with your product or service that they will recommend it to their friends. In this digital age, you want to make sure that you include online reviews on your website. 70% of consumers say that online reviews are one of the primary reasons they visit a website.
Online reviews can also be a compelling way to convince uncertain pre-buyers to jump off the fence and purchase from your store. For this reason, you need to encourage your customers to write and leave reviews on your website. Product reviews can help increase ratings and customer conversions.
If you are a customer and are asked to write a review by one of the businesses where you purchased products, perhaps you would want to learn how to do a product review. In this article, we shall cover the following topics:
- Reasons You Need Product Reviews
- Benefits of Product Reviews
- Steps in Creating Product Reviews
- Tips in Creating Product Reviews
Reasons You Need Product Reviews
Creating product reviews is all about building trust. How will customers buy your products if they don’t see any proof that you are trustworthy as an online seller. As an online retailer, you would be concerned about the overall customer experience. Store and product reviews play a crucial role in sales and customer generation. Here are some reasons you need product reviews.
1. It can bridge the trust gap
Product reviews can bridge the trust gap between potential customers and your company through current customers. Current customers can be valuable resources for generating sales. 93% of customers read online reviews before making a purchase decision.
In order to drive sales to your online business, you need to encourage your existing customers to leave online reviews on your website. Encouraging product reviews will help build trust for new customers. Also, it will help you identify selling and pain points from their feedback which can be very helpful for your marketing and sales teams.
2. You Can’t Compete Without Reviews
Especially in the ecommerce industry, customers expect reviews. They help you make a sale and gain valuable insights. When there is a level playing field in an industry, reviews can prove valuable to your business. Generating online reviews will help you either stay competitive or fall behind. It can help do some of the marketing heavy lifting for your online store.
If you don’t have a system where customers can post online reviews at least address or respond to negative reviews. 53.3% of customers expect businesses to respond to negative reviews within a week but the majority end up disappointed. 63.3% say they never heard back from a business about their review. If you don’t do this, you will fall behind your competition.
3. Customers Look At Stats
If you are not into crunching numbers, it’s time to look at them because customers now judge Sellers based on their star rating. According to Vendasta, 94% of consumers would use a business with a four-star rating and 57% of consumers would use a business with a three-star rating.
The trust rating of a business is another important statistic that customers nowadays consider before making a purchase. Getting the trust of your potential customer is important if you want to get their business, 68% of consumers trust reviews more when they see both good and bad scores.
For marketing purposes, Wordstream studied the effect of ads with selling ratings on click-through rates (CTR). They found out that ads with seller ratings increased CTR by 28%. Also, reviews beside a CTA resulted in a 3% increase in conversion rates.
4. New Ideas
Aside from helping increase your sales, customer reviews help you know what’s good, bad, and can be improved about your products or services. Product reviews can help with your marketing campaign. When your review focuses on certain aspects of a product or service, it’s probably either a) a key selling point worth marketing; or b) something that needs improving or marketing more positively.
Either way, your marketing should focus on customers telling a story or developing an idea based on your product or service. Your marketing campaign should synthesize what customers are saying. Review your reviews regularly to find both quantitative and qualitative analysis of your business and your offerings.
5. Product Reviews Help You Build Online Presence
When your competitor uses the same manufacturer-supplied description and specifications, user-generated content can be the only thing that will separate your business from the competition. Reviews provide useful content for your customers. It will also increase your chances of getting a high rank on search engine results pages.
Most reviews are common questions, concerns, and recommendations that signal to Google or Bing that your product or service solves or addresses a certain problem. They will make your ads, in ad-extension forms, and organic results stand out from the competition.
Benefits of Product Reviews
Nowadays, with a new breed of customers, having compelling product descriptions and beautiful images is not enough to sell your products. Product reviews can have an amazing impact on the customer journey and your conversion rate.
Although product specifications and price are important, what other customers say can impact purchase decisions. Customer reviews are completely unbiased. They come from real customers. In most instances, product specifications were written by talented marketers who have zero or minimal experience using the product itself.
1. Product reviews create more informed customers
Don’t underestimate the power of product reviews. You may have a high star-rating but you should also focus on the content of the review. 82% of consumers say that the content of a review has convinced them to make a purchase. When it comes to product reviews, the content itself is the most important part.
Product reviews contain a host of amazing information that cannot be found elsewhere. It can mention things like sizing, durability, stability, suitability, and others. They contain personal insights that can provide customers with more information and determine if the product suits them. Only after reading the review will the customer say that the product or service meets their expectations.
2. Valuable insights helps you improve
It’s not only the customers who will benefit from your product reviews but they can also help you adjust and improve your offerings. For example, if the review is about quality, you can speak to the manufacturer to get things looked into. If they claim that the shoes they purchased is too small, you can put a note into the product description about it. If the headset you are offering constantly gets bad reviews, maybe it’s time to reconsider dropping them from your offerings.
3. Increased transparency
Allowing customers to leave feedback about your products can be extremely powerful. It only means that you value their opinion and acknowledge that you are not perfect. 68% of customers trust reviews when they see both good and bad scores.
4. Increased Trust
Positive reviews can have a huge impact on your reputation as a business. In e-commerce, building trust can be rather difficult. Unlike in a physical store where there are sales assistants and touching of products, it is a little harder to convince online customers.
This is where product reviews can come in handy. They provide proof to potential customers that you have a history of doing successful business and are therefore worth trusting. If you have positive reviews, customers will be confident that the product you are offering will truly deliver on its promise.
5. Social proof of your products
Product reviews can make your offerings super desirable to customers. Think of positive product reviews as a vote in popularity contest and not just as a feedback from your customers.
6. SEO Benefits
The benefits of product reviews are not limited to just the reviews, when you also start gathering information, you will discover surprising changes in your SEO rank.
User-generated content provides Google with its most beloved things – content and more. Product reviews often contain really relevant and meaningful keywords that help create context around your ecommerce website and improve your ranking on Google.
You will also see an increase in CTR on the list of products marked with an asterisk in “organic search results”. This is one of Google’s ranking factors, so yes you guessed it, it will also help you get to the top of the search results list.
7. Increase awareness of Google Shopping
When it comes to Google Shopping, product reviews are not only helpful, but also very important. Google Shopping is extremely competitive. In terms of grabbing the attention of potential customers, adding an asterisk to your product list can really make a big difference.
8. More conversions. Large basket
Thanks to all the brilliant achievements we’ve talked about, your clients will be:
- More informed
- More confident
- More trusting
As a result, they are more likely to convert. Not only that, they can buy more. We are talking about more and more sales. Testimonials increase sales by 18% on average. Customers who visit the site and interact with reviews spend 11% more than users without reviews.
Steps In Writing Product Review
Here now are the steps on creating a compelling product review:
1. Master the product
As a vendor and independent reviewer, you need access to a verifiable product. You can keep buying and promoting the manufacturer and then requesting the right to use it. Your company’s marketing representative will likely be happy to give you access to the product, at least as long as you need to explore the product.
2. Become an affiliate
However, the best way is to become a participating partner.
This will bring additional benefits, for example, you will charge a flat and sometimes even recurring fee for each transaction you recommend. It makes sense to become a member because you are promoting these products anyway, so why not cut your income and earn passive income?
Becoming an affiliate is a different matter, so you can learn more about how to become a LiveChat member here.
3. Know your product
After joining an affiliate program or accessing the product in any other way, be sure to research and research the product. You want to be an expert. Be curious and find out all the information about the brand and the product itself. Before you start commenting, include your competitors in your research and the industry in general.
4. Honest. No exaggeration
Total transparency is the key to success. Pay attention to the prizes and remember the following points:
People will quickly tie up two people, and if you are dishonest, they will find out (they will inevitably make a fuss). It is best to look at the product through the eyes of the buyer. There is no point fooling your audience into believing that your product is free from defects. Instead, keep your balance.
Honesty wins your trust, users will become loyal and visit your blog or website when they want to buy.
5, Face to face with other players
Product comparison is essential for a good evaluation. They provide their readers with a clearer view of the entire category. Your readers will know what these options are and will be more confident in choosing the recommended model.
Talking about alternatives will give you confidence, especially if you can say more than “Hey, they’re available too!”
6. Discuss
Every time you post something (not just comments), you need comments and discussion. Let people voice their opinion, create a dedicated space for discussion, and try to build a community.
This will invite your readers to comment. User-generated comments are very helpful. For example, millennials trust user-generated content 50% more than other media.
Therefore, authorize users to create this content!
The more social proof you collect under your own comments, the better. There are also several good reasons for SEO. The discussion thread lengthens the page, which helps it index and rank better.
7. Conclude the product review with a take-home message
The last paragraphs are great for expressing your personal opinion. This is where you can be a bit subjective and be free to express your opinion. Go through all the points you mentioned in the comments, quote a price and let readers know if there is a free trial (remember, the word “free” is intoxicating; if applicable, use it in your article and underline that the free option can generate interest. Usually it works wonders). Summarize everything and make the final decision.
8. Use five-star ratings and detailed snippets
Use CSS and HTML on your overview page to enable a simple 5-star rating system and add detailed summaries to appear in search results. This is not difficult.