The Value of Customer Reviews for eCommerce Brands
Guest author James Perin, Digital Communications Specialist at Feefo, looks at how eCommerce websites can benefit from customer reviews.
For eCommerce brands, the case for reviews is a simple one: they increase conversions.
Did you know that even a product with a one star review has 107% more chance of selling compared to a product with no reviews? But the benefits to conversion rates are just one of many reasons as to why your business should use customer reviews. For any company operating in the digital landscape, there’s a whole host of additional benefits, including but not limited to the following:
Improved eCommerce SEO Campaigns
We all know that Google loves rich unique content. Reviews and feedback integrated onto your site can facilitate this. Whilst product descriptions may be very similar across eCommerce sites, reviews can add incredible user value. Additionally, you can improve rankings for specific product and service pages. 85% of consumers investigate businesses online prior to engagement – many simply search “Product or Service Name + Review”, which means you’ll benefit from this search traffic.
Finally, thanks to rich snippets for reviews, there is the potential for star ratings to appear in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) for your brand name and product / service names. Assuming you’ve got a good ecommerce SEO strategy in place, and are optimising all areas of your site, user reviews is one addition that you shouldn’t overlook.
Higher PPC Click-Through Rate With 3rd Party Reviews
Utilising Google’s paid search facilities such as Search Ads and Product Listing Ads (Google Shopping) can help your eCommerce business attract more customers. Whilst you’re no doubt optimising your search campaigns to achieve better ROI, many eCommerce businesses are seeing a dramatic increase in click-through rate (CTR) with star ratings and reviews.
Google state that stars can increase CTR by an average of 17%, however some of our merchants have achieved more. Additionally, merchants have experienced lowered bounce rates on landing pages, more overall sessions, as well as increased number of page views per session and time spent on site.
Social Media Marketing Opportunities
Showcasing your customer’s feedback as part of your overall digital strategy assists with both your content marketing and social media marketing efforts. Every time a customer leaves a review they have the option to share it on Social Media, opening up the potential for extended users to hear about your brand. The knock on effect can be an increase in followers, engagement and site visits – as well as helping consumers make that purchase they have been considering.
Improved Customer Service and / or Products
Last but no means least, reviews can assist your overall business offering by allowing you to see where you can improve, amend, change etc. At Feefo we have a new product called Insight Tags, which allows merchants of Feefo to categorise and label their feedback, the outcome means that merchants can see trends in real time. So, for example, if all of a sudden you start to see a dip in ratings because of delivery, you can nip the problem in the bud before it has a damaging impact on your business.
Summary
There are a plethora of ways that reviews can add value to your eCommerce business. The best thing we recommend is to see if a review platform like Feefo will work for your business. Feefo offers free trials, so what are you waiting for? See how customer reviews can propel your online business, today.