Product reviews are great for online businesses even the ones that are not positive. According to a 2009 study conducted by “The Nielsen Company”, 70% of the shoppers do trust consumer opinions / reviews posted online. These days, majority of customers look for online product reviews before purchasing a product. Statistics shows that e-Commerce stores that offer product reviews have increased their average order rate as compared to other online stores that do not offer this feature.
Today, we will discuss some reasons that makes product reviews a must-have for any online store.
Trust, loyalty and enhanced shopping experience
It is a known fact that when it comes to product reviews, people tend to trust product reviews posted by others they don’t know. As it makes the customers think that these other people are not trying to sell me anything so the product reviews are honest and simply based on personal experiences. Every customer wants to spend their hard-earned money on a good product. Product reviews gives your customers an unbiased opinion about the product. In many cases, if a customer is not 100% confidence about the product, positive reviews can certainly change your customer’s mind and motivate him/her to click on “Buy” button.
Having product reviews on the store site shows that you have confidence in your products
As an online business owner, if you truly believe in your product that it can benefit your customer then there is no reason to be scared of posting product reviews on your store site. Your confidence in displaying product reviews can easily boost your customer’s confidence to make the purchase. Several studies show that having product reviews on the store site has a positive impact as compared to having no reviews at all.
Better search engine optimization (SEO)
Every online business understands the importance of having right keywords on the store site related to the product or services that they offer. Having product reviews on the site allows customers to post important keywords again and again that can certainly help in search engine optimization (SEO). Product reviews are a great way to have quality content on your website related to your products/services which is indexed by all major search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo. The more original content you have in your product reviews, the better it will be for SEO.
Negative reviews are not bad for your e-Commerce business
Many online businesses think that negative product reviews might impact their sales and revenue. But the reality is quite different. The negative reviews actually help your store site by making your customers believe that the reviews are unbiased. As a customer, if you only see positive reviews on a store site, wouldn’t you become suspicious about the site or the product? When customers see negative reviews they get a true impression that as a store owner, you are not hiring writers to post positive reviews for your products and services.
Interesting Fact: Journal of Consumer Research conducted a research on how negative reviews impact the sales. The research raises the intriguing possibility that brands might benefit when polite customers write reviews of their products—even when those reviews include negative opinions.
Helps online stores to improve their products / services
Product reviews is one of the best ways to receive feedback from your customers. Product reviews can be a very important factor for your customers in making a decision to buy a product from your online store. Let us say, if an online store is offering a product that comes with installation manual which is not easy to understand. Many customers might post a negative feedback about the complex installation instructions that came with the product. Now this is a great chance for the online store to listen to its customers and make change to improve the installation process.
Interesting fact about how product reviews influence buying decisions: According to a survey conducted by Dimensional Research , 90% of shoppers claimed that positive online reviews influenced their buying decisions, while 86% of the shoppers claimed that their buying decisions were influenced by negative online reviews.
nopCommerce offers the feature of product reviews which is one of the best forms of marketing. Asking for feedback on products gives customers a voice and lets others know what people think about your products. nopCommerce also supports review helpfulness feature (“Was this review helpful for you?”)
Author: Lavish Kumar