Imagine that you are walking down a shopping lane with a friend looking for a new dress to buy. All of a sudden two people come out of a store in a happy and joyful mood, discussing the good time they had and the great offer they got on clothes. There is no denying the fact that after hearing it, you would be enticed to enter that store yourself and it is likely that youÔÇÖd ultimately buy something from there. For a store, no salesperson can make such an impact.
We often forget the one thing that drives sales for a business the most is its customers. In the current business dynamics, ecommerce stores ought to take their customers more seriously and invest in them to ensure business growth.
Nowadays, a vast majority of people, including you and me, read customer reviews before making any decision online. Be it booking a hotel, ordering a meal, going to movies, or buying any product online, we rely on the experiences of other people with that product/service.
So, rather than believing the sales personÔÇÖs pitchings, people have more faith in what other customers have to say about your offerings. This means that product ratings, reviews, comments and feedback for your ecommerce stores can affect your business massively.
Here in this post, we will see how you should make use of customersÔÇÖ opinions on your products/services to your advantage.
Use word-of-mouth marketing to your advantage
By now it should be clear that reviews and ratings are highly crucial for ecommerce stores. This is why you must ensure your store has a built-in system of reviews and rating.
A recent survey stated that star rating is the most popular and effective rating system across the globe. According to the survey, customers are likely to trust the quality of a product/service, if it has a rating of 4.7 or more. As the rating goes down the likeliness of people purchasing that item also goes down. It falls dramatically once it goes below 4 stars.
Customer review is another aspect of the online word-of-mouth marketing, which truly reflects the popularity of a product. A product with 100 reviews and 4.5 rating will get fewer hits than a product with 1000 reviews and 4.2 rating. This is why you must always encourage customers to write reviews for the product they have purchased.
If a person buys from your online store and does not review the product or at least rate the product, you miss an opportunity of enticing more customers. When prospective buyers see a huge number of ratings and reviews on your store, then it highlights that many people buy from you, thus adding a trust level in your online store.
ÔÇ£42% of the ecommerce store owners report an increase in average order value after inclusion of reviews.ÔÇØ
Suggested Read: Different Ways to Increase the Average Order Value of your ecommerce store
Go the Social way
Reviews are basically opinions of your customers about the products you are selling. Although reviews have a big impact on enticing a person into buying a product, their applicability is limited to your website. By sharing the reviews on social media you tend to expand its impact range.
Data shows that when a product review is shared on Twitter, the conversion rate for that product jumps as much as 8.4 times. Same is the case with Facebook and Instagram. Moreover, if people associate their social media profile along with their reviews, it adds an authenticity factor which is highly crucial.
Related: Take Your Ecommerce Store to the Next Level with Social Commerce
Enable conversations on reviews
Most ecommerce marketplaces limit their reviews and rating feature to buyers only. In a marketplace environment, this practice is not ideal as it can easily put negative impact on the product listing.
Therefore, always ensure that your ecommerce store has an option that allows sellers to reply on negative reviews on products and handle customer grievances. This will surely give a big boost to your ecommerce store in terms of customer relationships.
In the end, you have to remember that a happy customer not only brings repeat business but also recommends your store to others.
Amazon has been touted as the most customer friendly ecommerce marketplace just because it takes its customer reviews seriously and encourages conversations between buyers and sellers.
Influence CustomersÔÇÖ perception about your store
Over the years, ecommerce stores have invested a lot of money and time in building relationship with its customers. Nowadays, they are more focused on influencing customer perception about them based on their online reputation.
If your products are getting reviews and ratings from users on a regular basis, then it creates a perception in the mind of a new user that people are buying from your store. This will bring customers in droves and eventually increase your online reputation as the defacto place for shopping.
As an example, consider these two stores below housing same products at same price. From where do you think, an average customer is more likely to buy?
That option is more likely to be store A, because it has far greater reviews than Store B. It gives a feeling that more people shop from Store A as compared to Store B.
ÔÇ£85.57 consumers read reviews often before making an online purchase. Most of them tend to not buy from online stores that do not have any reviews on products.ÔÇØ
Conclusion
The ecommerce landscape is continuously evolving and now customers have their say in it. So, it is logical that you donÔÇÖt ignore the importance of customersÔÇÖ reviews and use them to boost your business. When used strategically, as described in the post, reviews can become one of the most powerful pieces of social proof and persuade people to make purchase from your online store. By and large, marketplace owners need to realize that customer has been and can become the best salesperson of their business.
