Why You Should Be Grateful for Product Reviews This Thanksgiving

The Impact of Online Reviews

Most online shoppers read online reviews before making a purchase decision. Statistics and insights into consumer psychology back this behavior. Reviews also impact a business’s digital reputation as customers share their experiences. This influences brand awareness, perception, credibility, trust, and loyalty.

On the flip side, negative reviews and ratings can damage a brand’s reputation much more than how positive ones improve the brand’s image. This is because most customers trust negative reviews more than positive comments. Research also shows that even a few negative comments can drive away more than 20% of your potential customers! Another survey shows that almost 95% of online shoppers change their minds about a product because of a negative review.

What may explain the impact of online product reviews on purchasing decisions? It is mostly about social proof. In the absence of physically testing a product, customer recommendations and reviews give online shoppers some assurance that others have tested it. However, there are specific aspects of marketing and sales where consumer reviews have a critical role. Let’s explore these.

How Online Reviews Influence Sales

There are several ways how online reviews affect business. For instance, search engines highlight brands with positive customer reviews. When companies encourage customers to leave reviews and engage with them (even negative ones), it improves their search engine rankings and online visibility to people who search for their products online.

It can also improve higher click-through rates as more users may visit a website with positive reviews. Once they click through, positive reviews can influence conversion by building trust and credibility. Consumers are more likely to purchase from a business with a strong online reputation.

And of course, reviews also provide information about a product or service. This is essential when one talks about the impact of online product reviews on product returns. Generally, the more information people have at the time of purchase, the lower the chance of a product return.

But that’s not all. Customer reviews are fresh content, ranked by search engines like Google. Providing a platform for your website visitors to leave comments, ratings, and reviews is an excellent way to generate content and boost engagement without spending time and money. Moreover, when customers have good things to say about your business, they may also share their reviews on social media as well as websites like Yelp, which also improves local SEO.

In short, reviews are crucial in the online shopper’s journey from visibility to clicking through, and ultimately conversion. So how can you leverage this “free” marketing tool and the impact of online reviews on customer decisions?

How to Leverage Online Reviews this Thanksgiving

Using online comments to your advantage begins with a review management strategy. It includes more than just monitoring negative or positive comments. You must analyze what your people are saying to gain insights into customer experience and user behavior. Done right, it can increase sales and develop customer loyalty.

1. Be thankful for your customers

We don’t have to tell you your customers are windows into the soul of your business. Although this sounds dramatic, no one understands your business’s customer experience better than your customers. You know your business machinations, but to be more successful, how customers perceive you is what counts.

Customer reviews are the gold mine of information you need to delve deeper into your shortcomings to be better at what you do. So, while ‘tis the season to be grateful for customers, it is also a reminder to leverage their insights to your advantage. Take their comments to heart and watch your business soar.

2. Product reviews: the good and the bad

There are two types of business owners: The first loves reviews and uses them to their advantage, while the second shies away from reviews in the fear customers will have nothing but bad things to say. However, we’re here to tell you even negative reviews can contain positives or upsides about your products and company.

It’s all about really listening to your customers to understand why they might have something less flattering to say.

For example, if you have poor product information, you’ll find more customers commenting on various disappointments.

‘It looked bigger in the picture.’

‘I didn’t realize it can’t be used in such and such way.’

‘I’m allergic to peanuts.’

The sky’s the limit with possible complaints if your product information fails to set customer expectations accurately. Using reviews to improve your customer service, website, policies, and product information enables your company to thrive.

Share your improvements with the people making the comments, and you are likely to gain back their trust.

3. Listen to your customers

Product reviews provide surprising insights about who your target audience is. You might have a target you market to right now, but certain products might attract a niche market or unexpected demographic you hadn’t considered. Their comments tell you why they are using specific products providing a new segment you can tap into. Also, they might bring product features to light you never considered as positive attributes. For example, say you sell camping gear.

Up until now, you’ve targeted the rugged outdoorsman who is all about rainproof, lightweight materials. However, through customer reviews, you find a lot of discussions about how great your gear looks. You just discovered a hipper demographic who loves the fact your camping gear is glamper-friendly. This higher-end target loves creating FOMO-worthy posts on social media and depends on your on-trend flannel to do so.

On the flip side, you might find people are less keen on a feature you found important, such as a special kind of clasp no one ever mentions.

You can downplay the less important points and up play the new attributes people love. In fact, you can even call out that segment with a line such as “And glampers love the rugged black and red plaid design that creates an attractive, upscale look to their campsite.”

Who knew?

4. Acting on your findings

Product reviews provide a reliable source to improve your product descriptions. When you review what people are saying through different marketplaces, you can rewrite your product descriptions to suit those specific customers based on the thoughts and comments they share. Using a product information system (PIM), you can segment your product descriptions to resonate with the different types of customers frequenting each marketplace.

You can leverage product reviews using feedback specific to these marketplaces to create a better sense of customer loyalty. You can also combine product reviews from other sources such as Google, Yahoo, Facebook or industry-specific review sites to share on your own website and product pages.

This feedback enables you to measure the level of satisfaction your customers share to create more meaningful customer experiences.

Round up – How customer reviews influence your sales (and what to do about it)

To sum up, customer reviews impact purchase (and product return) decisions in online shopping. Negative comments can damage your sales, but you can always create positive experiences by engaging your critics and improving your product or service based on their feedback.

In other words, customer reviews are something to be thankful for. It is a treasure trove of market research, content generation, and advertising. This Thanksgiving, thank your customers for their business and encourage them to leave more reviews.