Product reviews are arguably the most useful way to eliminate shoppers’ concerns regarding a product. A majority of the people are influenced by product reviews in their purchase.
No matter whether you are a popular brand or just started out, product reviews do play a crucial role in your eCommerce business as far as credibility is concerned. Credibility is one of the key elements that decide the success of your brand in the long run.
Merchants often overlook the importance of product reviews. The major focus remains on designing the site look and optimizing the checkout page but nothing really matters if you are not getting good reviews on your products.
The importance of product reviews can be understood by the fact that 90% of the consumers read online reviews before making a purchase and 88% of the consumers will be prompted to take an action after reading positive reviews. (Stats collected from Invesp)
What is Product Review?
Product reviews are the opinions or feedbacks of customers for a particular product. Many online businesses put up a review section on their website to allow customers to rate and review the product they purchased.
A product review helps other users get a clear idea of the product before purchasing it. They can read the reviews and make their mind clear, and decide whether the product is worth purchasing or not.
If you have not added a product review section on your eCommerce website, only because of fearing negative reviews, you are losing out on a huge number of potential customers.
Importance of Product Reviews
In this write-up, I have provided 6 reasons why product reviews are important to your eCommerce business. Let’s have a look.
1. Product Reviews build Trust
When a user lands on your website with the intention of making a purchase, the first thing that they look for is reviews.
A product having good reviews would surely be able to help the prospect in his/her buying decision. They would likely put their trust in your products as well as your Brand.
Amazon displays average ratings for products based on customers’ feedbacks, right on the top of the product page, and at the bottom are the customer’s reviews. Whenever a prospect visits the product page, they are straight away displayed the product ratings along with the number of people who rated that product.
Related: 8 Ways to Build Customer Trust and Loyalty
2. Product Reviews provide better insights into the product
Hearing from people’s past purchase experience helps the prospects identify whether the product has earlier matched customer’s expectations or not.
I mean, Brands will obviously try to highlight every feature of the product in the best way possible, but it is the customers who will give honest feedback on the product.
When a customer leaves a review for the product, he is helping others understand what they can expect from the product, how is it performing, what are its flaws, what are its pros and much more.
3. Product Reviews let you rectify the issues with the product
If a majority of customers are pointing out the same problem in the product, it is for you to take the onus of rectifying the defect so that the issue gets resolved. Yes, there are possibilities of a damaged or defective item reaching the customer but it happens with a few customers only.
If the problem is major, you need to look into it and get it fixed as soon as possible. Put simply, customer reviews help you find the loopholes in the product and provide you with an opportunity to improvise on those areas.
4. Product Reviews work as Social proof
One of the major benefits of product reviews is they can do wonders to your Brand. You would have often seen brands highlighting what their customers have to say about their products or services. These are what we call as testimonials and they make a significant impact on a prospect’s purchase.
Display testimonials through your social media pages and on the home page of your website. It is one of the best ways to promote your brand that can attract a large number of potential customers to your website and also leave an excellent impression when a visitor lands on your website.
5. Product Reviews boost Conversions
If you delivering up to your customer’s expectations, product reviews are going to play a huge role in your conversions. People would openly do the marketing for you by leaving positive reviews. And even a single positive review can lead to an increase in the conversion rate.
Yes, there will be a few negative reviews as well but till the time they have a low count, you do not need to worry much. Each and every customer cannot be satisfied. If the product has the quality and people have given positive remarks to it, more and more people will be encouraged to buy that product.
6. Product Reviews reduce possibilities of Returns
If you do not display product reviews, how are online shoppers going to decide the product quality? They would not be confident enough to make a purchase. Moreover, they will have doubts regarding product quality.
Let’s understand it this way. You have a product but provide no customer reviews. Now users can only hope that the product does not turn out to be defective or has a low-quality. It is very much possible that they receive a genuine product but if in case they don’t, they will be left with no choice except placing a return request.
Now let’s figure out how this could have been sorted with product reviews. A product having good ratings and reviews would likely face fewer returns, simply because most of the customers are satisfied with it, whereas on the other hand, if negative reviews are dominating positing ones, it simply means that most people have faced some kind of issue with it. And hence people would not even go for the purchase, in the first place.
Related: 8 Simple Tips to Reduce Product Returns eCommerce
The Bottom Line
Customer is the king. They are the ones who can either take your business to new heights or bring it down drastically. Their feedback is highly important as it will only be their experience that will decide how good your product is.
And there is no shame in having negative reviews. They are people’s honest opinions which you give a reality check. And it also shows that you welcome whatever a user has to say with open arms.
Since there is not any technology yet that could let users examine a product online, the importance of product reviews becomes supreme.
Make reviews more fun with Review Reminder and Incentives module.
With the Review Reminder and Incentives module, you can offer your customers rewards for every successful review posted. You can set the timing for the review reminders to be sent over email, customize those emails, set the incentive value and much more.
Every review posted will be first submitted for approval. Only after you approve, the end customer receives the rewards. Sounds exciting, doesn’t it?
The Product Review Reminder and Incentives module is available for PrestaShop, OpenCart, Magento, and Magento 2 eCommerce platform!
If you would like to add something to this content, feel free to leave a comment below. Or if you need any assistance, you can contact us at support@knowband.com
Great write-up.
I really appreciate the way you have written and explained. Worth reading it.
Thanks for sharing it with us.
Good work..!!
Thank you, Daniel. Glad that you liked the content.