eCommerce Content Tip #3: Use Product Reviews Effectively

Product reviews can assist an ecommerce site in building credibility, increasing customer confidence, and providing valuable information for the development of product descriptions.
  1. Offer product reviews on your site
    This January 2007 Marketing Sherpa study showed that the majority of consumers surveyed preferred sites with peer-written product reviews.
  2. Work to increase the number of reviews on your site
    A recent article in The Economist shows that products with ten or more reviews (in one instance) had a “drastically” higher conversion rate than products with fewer reviews. How can you get more product reviews? Consider sending an email to customers the day their shipment should arrive. Ask if they received the product and if they are happy with the product and with your company’s service. Invite the customer to reply and also invite them to share a review on your website.
  3. Allow negative reviews of your products
    The recent Economist article also shared that having some negative reviews on your products will give your site more credibility as if they are all positive it will be hard for users to trust. The key will be that hopefully, the negative reviews are a small proportion of your overall comments.
  4. Use reviews to write better product descriptions
    Look at what people are talking about in the reviews. This tells you what your customers find to be important. You can use information from the reviews to write better product descriptions. If customers give a product a top rating because of a specific quality or characteristic – make sure to include that in your product description. You may also consider using the same words or similar words to describe your products as your customers are using to describe the product in the review.

Lori McDonald

President & CEO

About

Lori McDonald 

Lori graduated from Purdue University with a Bachelor’s degree in Computer-Electrical Engineering and leads Brilliance Business Solutions with over 20 years of computer engineering and software development experience.  She is an Episerver EMVP, a Microsoft Certified Professional and a regular contributor on Practical eCommerce. Her status as a recognized industry expert has resulted in regular speaking engagements at business conferences.

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