How can customer reviews help your e-commerce site?

Nobody’s surprised at how quickly e-commerce sites have grown in popularity: today’s consumers want access to things from all over the world, and they want to research their investments before buying. With the rise in ecommerce, the competition between different sites has grown increasingly intense. One thing that makes a big difference in sales and can set an ecommerce site above its competition is the presence of customer reviews. Even for small businesses with brand-new ecommerce options, customer reviews can make a world of difference in sales and subscribers. Here’s how.

Reviews inform potential customers.

The modern consumer wants to be informed before she invests her hard-earned money in a product or service. In fact, 61 percent of customers want to read online reviews before they make a decision about purchasing a product.

Reviews give buyers a real-world opinion of a product, both good and bad.

Some business owners worry about allowing online reviews on their site. After all, what would happen if some customer left a negative opinion? As it turns out, even negative reviews do their part in increasing sales. In fact, potential customers suspect something is not quite right if all the reviews are positive. No business can be that perfect. An estimated 30 percent of customers believe all positive, glowing reviews are phony. A recent study found that even bad reviews help improve conversion rates by 67 percent, meaning that it is ideal to a have a mix of both positive and negative reviews.

Not only does the presence of negative reviews make the site’s customer review aspect seem genuine, it also helps customers know what the worst aspect of a product is, according to an MIT technology review. In other words, if a customer is reading a review for a phone, and a negative review states that the phone’s battery life begins to dwindle after a year of use, the customer can then decide if that is a big enough issue to prevent them from buying the product in question. Many times, complaints about color options or superfluous issues like those are not a big enough problem to prohibit a sale.

Customers have a chance to share their thoughts.

Aside from helping potential customers decide if a product is right for them, having customer reviews on an ecommerce site also gives previous customers the chance to express their feelings. Many times, happy customers want a way to share their positive experience with a product or service, and a customer review section is the ideal location for them to do so.

They’re easy to create.

If you’re an ecommerce site owner, you should utilize customer reviews if only for fact that reviews increase conversion rates – and adding them is a simple process. You could encourage customer feedback by offering a reward (like a freebie or a discount on a product) for opinions, or you could just provide past customers with an easy way to leave feedback. Regardless of how you go about garnering reviews, it is important that you understand the many benefits of customer reviews on your ecommerce site.

Ecommerce site owners should always be looking for ways to increase their conversion rates and overall customer satisfaction. Adding a customer review option to a site is an easy way to do just that – and it’s all-natural advertising.