E-consultancy reports that 61% of customers read online reviews before making a purchase decision, and they are now ESSENTIAL for e-commerce sites.
Why does your eCommerce site need customer reviews?
User reviews increase conversion rates! They can eliminate any doubts potential customers may have about a product, or can help with product selection.
The SEO benefits of Reviews
Improving conversions and customer experience should be the main purpose of user reviews, However there are considerable benefits for SEO including:
- Fresh, unique content for search engines
- Improving rankings for ‘product name’ + review
- Increased CTR on results pages
- Long tail targeting
- Key SEO considerations for user reviews Indexation
- Non-duplication
- Breadth of content
BAD REVIEWS ARE VALUABLE TOO
All reviews are valuable, and a mix of positive and negative reviews help to improve consumer trust in the opinions they read. However too many bad reviews aren’t always good for business.
HOW TO ATTRACT REVIEWS FROM CUSTOMERS
Ideas include:
- Use a reviews provider
- Email customers post-purchase
- Ask for reviews on product pages
- Make the process as simple as possible
- Offer incentives, post-purchase for leaving reviews
HOW TO PRESENT REVIEWS AND RATINGS
It’s great to have lots of reviews, but once the number gets to a certain point, it’s important to organise the reviews and help shoppers make sense of them. Some ideas include:
- Rate this review / was this helpful?
- Average review score summaries
- Use in filtred navigation
- Online reviews for in store customers
- Using charts to display review information
- Show some detail
- For travel sites, use TripAdvisor reviews
- Use reviews in PPC
- Use them offline
You can read the full article here.