Having a products rating and review function on your e-commerce site can really enhance your business. It is a great sales tool to entice buyers into making a purchasing decision. Over the past few years as online shopping has grown exponentially, more and more ecommerce businesses are beginning to use this kind of rating and review system. Big name online retailers such as Amazon have made it an integral part of the online shopping experience. Consumers can find out what to expect if they purchase the product and can read about how other people feel about the product. This allows consumers to trust both your products and your store.
A large percentage of online shoppers go on the internet to research products before they buy. In 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 purchase something if they see reviews and 59% value the critique of real people over that of experts. Online shoppers are now used to reading and writing reviews as well as basing a product's quality on user ratings.
There are plenty of advantages for having a products rating and review function added to your online store. Here are just a few of them:
- You get free word of mouth advertising
- Product reviews contain user generated content that is constantly being updated so search engines will keep crawling your product pages
- User reviews will have keywords that you might not have optimized for such as competitor brands, which will also help your search engine rankings
- Sometimes consumers who write a review on your site will also leave a review on other web sites which will link back to your product page, thus increasing the amount of backlinks to your website
- Consumers will be more willing to buy from your store
- These reviews will help you figure out which products are a hit with consumers and which ones you should get rid of
So what happens when you get a negative 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 e-commerce site's credibility. An ecommerce web site with nothing but good products rating and reviews will seem less genuine according to most consumers. A product that has an equal amount of positive and negative reviews or a majority of good and a few bad reviews is very prevalent. If you sell a complete line of similar products, your overall product sales should still grow even though a particular product with bad reviews will get less sales. Negative ratings and reviews can also help reduce the amount of returns or complaints, because the people buying the product should get a good idea of what to expect when they receive the item.
The more reviewers who take the time to write a product review on your web site the better. It not only shows that your products are popular, but also that a lot of people are buying from your ecommerce website. A good way to get more people to review your products is to request their opinion after some time has lapsed from the date they bought the item. You can offer them an incentive such as write a review for an opportunity to win a free gift, a discount or a gift certificate. It's important to have the products rating and review process as easy as possible, include a star rating system and add categories to produce more organized reviews.
Now is the time to add a products rating and review system for your ecommerce site. Let consumers rate and review any or all of the products within your online store. With the right ecommerce solution, you can easily manage ratings and reviews from your own store admin and choose to either automatically or manually approve new submissions.
What you need is a full service all-in-one hosting, design, and marketing software made specifically for e-commerce businesses. One that lets you set up your store in minutes, and provides powerful tools to help with not only managing your consumer product reviews, but also SEO, product marketing and mobile commerce. Check out the best possible e-commerce solutions available at http://www.makeanonlinestore.com and try them out yourself absolutely free, no credit card required!
