subject: Ecommerce Products Rating and Review [print this page] Ecommerce Products Rating and Review Ecommerce Products Rating and Review
Having a products rating and review feature on your ecommerce site can really enhance your business. It's a wonderful sales tool to entice buyers into making a purchasing decision. Over the past few years as online shopping has grown exponentially, more and more e-commerce sites are beginning to use this kind of rating and review system. Big name online retailers such as Amazon have made it an important part of the online shopping experience. Consumers are able to get an idea of what to expect if they purchase the product and can read about the experiences that others have had with it. This allows consumers to trust both your products and your store.
A large percentage of online shoppers browse the web to research products before they make a purchase. As a matter of fact, studies have shown that 77% base their decision to make a purchase on products rating and the reviews of other customers. 63% of consumers are more likely to buy a product if there are reviews and 59% value the critique of real people over that of experts. Online shoppers have grown accustomed to reading and writing reviews as well as relying on user ratings to determine product quality.
There are plenty of benefits of having a products rating and review function added to your online store. Here are some examples:
You get free word of mouth advertising
Product reviews contain user generated content that is updated often so search engines will continue to crawl your product pages
User reviews will have keywords that you did not intend on optimizing for such as competitor brands, which can possibly improve search engine rankings
Sometimes consumers who write a review on your web site will also leave a review on other sites linking back to your product page, therefore increasing the number of backlinks to your website
Consumers are more likely to purchase from your online store
These reviews will help you figure out which products are worth keeping and which ones you should get rid of
So what happens when you receive a bad product review? It turns out that bad reviews are not as damaging as one might think. Negative reviews are actually needed in order to preserve an online store's credibility. An ecommerce site with nothing but positive products rating and reviews will appear less genuine according to most consumers. A product that has a balanced number of postive and negative reviews or a majority of good and a few bad reviews is very prevalent. If you sell a complete line of complimentary products, your total product sales should still increase even though a specific product with bad reviews will receive less sales. Negative ratings and reviews will also help decrease the amount of returns or complaints, because the consumers should have a good idea of what to expect when they receive it.
The more people who take the time to write a product review on your site the better. Not only does it show that your products are popular, but also that a lot of people are buying from your online store. A good method to have more people review your products is to ask them after some time has lapsed from the date they bought the item. You can try to offer them an incentive such as write a review for an opportunity to receive a free gift, a discount or a gift card. It is important to make the products rating and review process as simple as possible, include a star rating system and add categories for more organized reviews.
