No longer is a compelling product description and beautiful images enough to sell your products. Your customers want more trustworthy sources of information and real-life insight. They want product reviews.
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These days, no eCommerce site is complete without a good sprinkling of reviews. Whilst company reviews are nice, individual product reviews can have an amazing impact on the customer journey and your conversion rate.

While product specifications and price are of course important (no consumer will be convinced to buy a television that is too large for their home), it is the presence of other people's opinions which is the most influential factor in deciding to purchase.

Why? Well, they're completely unbiased. They come from real customers with real arms, legs, ears,  homes and families. Often, product specifications are written by talented marketeers who have little-to-no experience with the product itself. It's easy to see which would be more compelling.

Reviews are important for your brand so featuring authentic, genuine product reviews on your site has a whole host of benefits which we're going to discuss today.

1. Product reviews create more informed customers

82% of consumers say the content of a review has convinced them to make a purchase. Whilst incredible, it's not the stat here that's most important. Nope, it's the word, 'content' that we should pay the most attention to.

Sometimes, it's easy to forget just how many benefits reviews can have. We place so much emphasis on the overall star rating that the content of them is often forgotten. And yet, when it comes to product reviews, the content itself is usually the most important part.

Product reviews contain a whole host of amazing information that can't be found anywhere else. Reviews can mention things like sizing, durability, stability, suitability and so much more. It's personal insights such as 'for my wide feet, the shoes came up a little narrow' that help customers get exceptionally informed and find products that are perfect for them.

It's why most consumers say that the product or service they purchase after reading reviews meet expectations.

2. Valuable insight helps you to improve

It's not just your customers that benefit from all that lovely User Generated Content. Product reviews can provide amazing insight into your current offerings so you can continually adjust and improve your offerings.

If comments are repeatedly made about things such as quality, you can speak with the manufacturers to get things looked into. If customers claim shoes are coming up small, you can put a note into the product description about this. If a pair of headphones repeatedly gets bad reviews, it might be time to drop them from your offerings.

Your product reviews can provide you with truly insightful feedback about your current range to help you tailor it to your target audience and make it the best it can possibly be.

3. Increased transparency

There's something extremely brave about enabling customers to leave product reviews. There's something extremely powerful about allowing customers to openly review you, and showcasing feedback, good or bad. It shows you have nothing to hide, value the opinion of your customers, acknowledge that you're not perfect, or perfect for everyone, and also that you have faith in your product range.

And you needn't worry about those odd negative product reviews - 68% of consumers trust reviews more when they see both good and bad scores.

4. Increased trust

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Of course, all those positive product reviews are going to have some serious benefits for your reputation.

Ecommerce Businesses can have a rather hard time building trust. Without smiley Sales Assistants or products available to touch and try, convincing customers becomes a little harder.

That's where product reviews come in. They provide proof to potential customers that you have a history of doing (successful) business, and can, therefore, be trusted. Not only that, but positive reviews helps to fill customers will confidence that the product on offer will deliver on its promises.

5. Social proof your products

We all want one everyone else has, right? That's how trends work.

Product reviews can make every one of the items you sell super desirable. Instead of seeing every positive product review as a great piece of feedback, see it as a vote in a popularity contest.

Product review collection can even result in an 'iconic product' such as Everlane's Wide Leg Crop Pants. They've received an astonishing 5,551 reviews with an average rating of 4.64 and become somewhat of a phenomenon for the brand, with loads of press and mentions off the back of it!

Talk about a snowball effect.

6. SEO benefits

The benefits of product reviews aren't just limited to on-site - you'll see some amazing things happen to your SEO when you start to collect too.

User-generated content provides Google with the thing it loves most: content, and lots of it. Product reviews are usually full of really relevant, rich keywords, to help further build context around your eCommerce site and improve your Google rankings.

Plus, under product listing in Organic Search Results where stars are displayed, you'll see an increase in click-through rate. This is one of Google's ranking factors, so - yep, you guessed it - this will also help you reach the top spots in the SERPs.

7. Increased Visibility Google Shopping

When it comes to Google Shopping, product reviews are not just beneficial, they're really quite essential. Google Shopping is extremely competitive, and the addition of stars to your product listing can really make all the difference when it comes to attracting the attention of potential customers.

8. More conversions. Bigger baskets

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As a result of all the glorious benefits we've mentioned, your customers will be:

  • More informed
  • More confident
  • More trusting

And as a result, they'll be more likely to convert. Not only that, but they'll probably also buy more. We're talking more, bigger sales.

Reviews produce an average of 18% uplift in salesCustomers who visit a site and interact with reviews spend 11% more than those who don’t

In Summary

Trying to compete online without product reviews will be an uphill battle. Customers are beginning to expect UGC as standard, and failing to provide it will leave you at the bottom of the pack. Take advantage of it, however, and you'll see a whole host of amazing benefits that will help you continuously adapt and improve.

Start collecting product reviews and reap the rewards of customer feedback today!

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