Once upon a time (in the not so distant past) the idea of asking for feedback from customers — then displaying this feedback for all shoppers to see — was a pretty radical concept. But today, consumers have come to expect reviews for just about anything — recipes, hotels, restaurants, movies, and of course, products. In fact, PowerReviews research found that 95% of consumers consult reviews, and 86% consider this content to be essential when making a purchase decision.
It’s clear that ratings and reviews are an important tool for consumers as they search for products that best meet their needs. But this content is also good for businesses. Read on to learn how ratings and reviews help businesses like yours drive traffic, sales and insights.
Reviews Drive Website Traffic
In an ideal world, a consumer would navigate directly to your website every time she’s in the market for something you sell. But in reality, that’s often not the case. For many consumers, the purchase journey starts with a quick Google search of the product they’re looking for. In fact, our research on the path to purchase found that more than a third of shoppers start the purchase journey on a search engine, compared to 21% that start directly on a brand or retailer site.
Search engines prize fresh, relevant content. Generating a steady stream of ratings and reviews helps keep your site’s content relevant and fresh with keyword-rich, permanent assets on your product pages. Then, search engines can crawl this content and shoppers can find it, which will bring you more traffic. At PowerReviews, we’ve found that a product experiences an average 108% lift in traffic when that product goes from having no reviews to having one or more reviews.
Reviews Increase Online Sales
Today’s shoppers expect to find plenty of information about the products they’re considering. And while brand-provided product descriptions are important, more and more consumers want to hear about the experiences of others like them.
Displaying ratings and reviews can help give your consumers the boost of confidence they need to convert once they’ve landing on your product page. At PowerReviews, we’ve found that when a product without reviews adds one or more reviews, the conversion rate for that product increases by 65%, on average. And this boost in conversion results in a lift in sales. On average, PowerReviews customers see a 92% sales lift on a product once it generates at least one review.
Reviews Increase In-Store Sales
Ecommerce growth continues to outpace overall retail growth. But today, the majority of transactions still happen within the four walls of a brick-and-mortar store.
PowerReviews research found that 70% of shoppers would like to access product ratings and reviews while shopping in store. And a recent Harvard Business Report study found that conducting prior research on a retailer’s website lead to 13% greater in-store spending among omnichannel shoppers. Consumers are actively looking for reviews while they’re shopping in-store, so collecting and displaying this content can help you boost your in-store sales.
Reviews Provide Actionable Insights
Ratings and reviews are a treasure trove full of insights that can help you improve your products and the customer experience. For starters, reviews can help you identify product issues that you can work with your manufacturer to fix. For example, InStyler, a leader in hair tool innovation noticed that several of the reviews for a comb attachment product mentioned that the teeth of the comb broke off, something the company didn’t notice when developing the product. As a result of this feedback, InStyler completely reworked the piece to better serve their customers.
Ratings and reviews can also help you identify ways to improve your product descriptions, which will allow your consumers to find the products that best fit their needs. For example, Room & Board, another PowerReviews customer, analyzed review content for their rug collection and noticed that several reviews mentioned price as a negative aspect. Room & Board used this feedback to enhance their product descriptions to better educate consumers on the quality of the rugs and why they were priced at the point they were.
Ratings and reviews have become a key part of the purchase journey. Plus, they’re an important tool to help you drive traffic, sales and insights. If you’re not already, now’s the time to establish a strategy to start collecting and displaying this powerful user-generated content.
PowerReviews and Mavrck, a Powerful Channel for Collecting Reviews
There is no question that reviews are a powerful tool for growth, but sometimes collecting a meaningful volume of reviews can be challenging. PowerReviews and Mavrck recognize this challenge and have partnered to give merchants another channel for collecting reviews: their most influential and passionate customers. Mavrck’s technology allows brands to identify and leverage these influential customers to create, amplify, and submit content through a white labeled experience. Brands and merchants have leveraged Mavrck’s technology to collect tens of thousands of highly valuable reviews on products ranging from makeup and paint to mattresses and toilet paper. Need a final cherry on top to the power of Mavrck and PowerReviews? Since these highly engaged consumers and influencers already love you, they tend to leave great reviews!
Author Bio
Theresa O’Neil
Senior Vice President, Marketing
PowerReviews
Theresa is an ecommerce, digital marketing and retail geek focused on helping companies drive more sales and create actionable insights online and in-store. At PowerReviews, Theresa serves as senior vice president of marketing, where she is responsible for the development and execution of programs to raise awareness, generate leads, and support direct and indirect channels to grow revenue and profitability.
Interested in learning more about this partnership? Let us know here.
