Do product reviews impact purchase intent?

How Important Are Product Reviews & How To Leverage Them

For e-commerce businesses product reviews have the potential to be one of your most valuable tools - user-generated content that doesn’t need to cost you money, but can help boost conversion rate.

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Reviews are hugely important in consumer purchase decision-making. The fact is that; 

• 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations
• Customers are likely to spend 33% more with businesses with “excellent” reviews
• 86% of people hesitate to buy from a business with negative published reviews. Beyond product reviews, negative statements about shipping and customer service can be just as impactful.

(Invesp)

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Quality reviews provide benefits including;

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• Improving your conversion rate - Customers who engage with authentic reviews are 4x more likely to make a purchase (Review.io)

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• Growing your basket value - Quality reviews can grow baskets up to 28% (Review.IO)

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• Increase consumer trust in your business - 74% of consumers say that positive reviews make them more trusting of a local company (Zoho Commerce)

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Beyond the power of positive reviews, managing, engaging and resolving negative feedback has never been more important. Consumers are finding more decision-making value in the flaws negative reviews highlight over positive ones. It’s estimated that a negative review can cost you up to 30 customers (Zoho Commerce).

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Reviews Can Be More Than A Quote

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Leading review providers like Reviews.IO offer far more than text-based product page integration. They aim to bring unique, relatable content to landing pages, and boost your visibility in Google Shopping through integrated Sellers Ratings.

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Video should now be a core part of a review strategy, Reviews.io suggest that adding customer videos to your website and paid marketing can boost conversions by up to 20%. Their brands say video reviews help customers see how a product fits into their lifestyle more transparently and provide greater insights.

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Many review platforms now enable you to collect data on key product attributes via additional custom questions, in addition to gathering valuable product research these are a fantastic visual addition to the reviews on product pages. They are giving customers a concise and quick gauge of the key features of the product. Again, this type of data collection benefits both parties, for example, clear customer feedback on fit is a great way to minimise costly returns resulting from misleading sizing charts or customer sizing bracketing. 

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More and more key review providers are now offering review syndication, this enables businesses to sync and distribute their review content across multiple sites, such as Bazaarvoice or the additional marketplaces you sell through. This is a great way of maximising the value of your user-generated review content and increasing the visibility of your products.

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Tactics To Boost Your Review Volumes

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• Ask for reviews at the right time. Factor in average delivery windows and realistic time for the consumer to engage with the product into your automated flows. This is particularly important if you seek authentic, valuable user-tested feedback for video UGC that will feel genuine to consumers.

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• Experiment with incentives. Understand what is most valuable to your consumers, such as discounts on future purchases, exclusive perks or brand engagement. Tailor the incentives to deliver the specific review content that is most valuable to your business, this could be a high volume of text reviews to support the launch of a new product and landing page or lower quantities of higher-value video UGC. The more time-consuming the review for the consumer, the stronger the incentive may need to be.

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• Pay special attention to your core base of loyal, high-value customers. Specifically, follow up on their sales that still need to be reviewed. These are the people most invested in your products, highlighting them as important brand advocates can help sustain their loyalty and they are likely to have valuable feedback that can aid product development.

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If you are curious to understand how growing your product review strategy and content generation could benefit your business the team at Reason can help you figure that out.

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