How to Get More Ecommerce Product Reviews for Your Online Store

ReadyCloud

5 years ago

Product reviews go hand in hand with conversions, increased average order value and long-term loyalty and retention. No wonder recent studies confirm that 92% of shoppers spend time reading product reviews and base their buying decisions on what they read. Before we delve into how you can get more of these reviews at your online store, let’s first dive into some statistics about online product reviews.

Read on to learn more.

These Statistics Prove Product Reviews Work

How important are ecommerce product reviews for your bottom line? We searched far and wide to grab the most pertinent statistics about online product reviews to help drive home the fact that your store needs them in place on all your product pages.

Here’s what we were able to find:

37% of shoppers use review sites to find information about products before purchasing.
63% of shoppers use search engines to find product reviews.
Product reviews can drive 54% of customers to an online store for a purchase.
Product reviews are considered the same as word of mouth by 87% of consumers.
Bad reviews can deter as many as 87% of consumers from buying.
More than 90% of consumers read at least 5 product reviews before buying.
Almost 70% of consumers will make a buying decision after reading 1-5 reviews.
Nearly 60% of shoppers look to 2-3 review sites to find info before buying.
Almost 75% of shoppers consider reviews 90 days or older to be irrelevant.
Around 70% of shoppers will leave a product review if a store asks them to.
Nearly 70% of shoppers want to see mixed positive and negative reviews about products.
Almost 80% of consumers who buy after reading a positive review are satisfied.
Positive product reviews can increase spending by as much as 31%.
Positive product reviews can increase smartphone shopping conversion rates by more than 120%.
The average order value increase from online product reviews is approximately 18%.

How to Get More Online Product Reviews

Now that you’re better educated on why products reviews are a must-have for any ecommerce store, how can you go about getting them for yours? Here are some helpful tips that you can use along the way to ramp up the reviews sections of your store’s product pages.

Only Feature Verified Customer Reviews

Why should you use verified product reviews at your online store? Here is some food for thought. Before shoppers commit to making a purchase, at least 37% of them look at product reviews, with many comparing the products that you’re offering on at least two or more review sites.

Given that a bad review can deter as much as 87% of shoppers from buying, whereas positive reviews help 80% of shoppers mentally seal the deal and make a buying decision, the choice is simple: Featuring verified reviews has the potential to give your online store an 18% sales uplift.

Take things a step further by only featuring verified product reviews. These go the distance in helping improve the relationship with your existing as well as prospective buyers because there’s a stronger sense of trust associated with them. A report by Broadly finds that the majority of shoppers trust verified reviews as much as they do a word of mouth recommendation from a trusted friend or family member, further cementing the fact that positive product reviews can drive as much as 50% more engagement and can increase consumer spending by 30% or more during a visit.

Create Review Friendly Product Pages

To get the reviews you want on your product listings, you’ll need to create user-friendly pages that encourage shoppers to leave these reviews. The good news is that many of the leading shopping cart services make it easy to do this. If you’re selling on 3dcart, Shopify or Bigcommerce, review options are already built-in to the backend. To make these more apparent to users, have a look at the app store for your shopping cart service. You’ll quickly find numerous options you can consider that can make it more attractive for a shopper to leave a product review at your online store.

The screenshot above illustrates how attractive a review page on a Shopify store can be made simply by integrating an add-on from the App Store called Target Bay. This unique app adds a variety of features to your product listings that encourages new product reviews from users. It’s an automated system that can increase review gathering by as much as 120%. Keep in mind that this is just one of many different options that you have for adding product review enhancements to the pages of your shopping cart.

Email Customers for Reviews

Naturally, once a customer has purchased a product, consider sending them a follow-up email that asks them to leave a review about their experience with said product in exchange for a perk, like 10% off their next purchase. Or, you can just blatantly ask them for a review in a follow-up email, similar to Target’s strategy. You’d be surprised to learn that 70% of buyers will leave a review if you just ask them to.

Keep in mind that sending a post-purchase email may not result in all recipients racing to pen a review about a product they’ve just purchased and likely have not received nor have had the time to use. However, a timed strategy can resend them the review request a few weeks later. As the above stat defends, there’s a good chance these customers will respond in kind with a review when requested to.

Another great place to source product reviews from customers is via your existing social channels. Places like Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest are optimal for sourcing reviews from existing, satisfied customers. With social commerce valued at more than $4 trillion (and that’s as of last year), you can bet that most of your shoppers have a presence on one or more channel, and that some of your sales might have come from these channels, too.

If you have a social media manager, they can easily filter through the people who have liked your store’s page, finding many who have purchased products from you in the past. A simple outreach message sent to them with a perk like a coupon code giving them 10% off their next purchase can do wonders for you getting more product reviews.

Make Reviews Worth Their While

Who doesn’t love getting something for nothing? If your ongoing review tactics are not working, considering adding a few perks to the pot for your shoppers. Something as simple as a gift card can go a long way in getting a positive review (and it can even be a gift card, coupon code or value-added proposition that’s only redeemable at your store; e.g. $25 dollars off your next purchase).

During the checkout process, you can grab even more reviews if you add a perk that upgrades their purchase to qualify for free or discounted shipping or even a trinket; think small things, like a keepsake, memorabilia etc. to get the ball rolling. As Power Reviews suggests, you can even do something like hosting a reviews sweepstakes, which encourages customer reviews in exchange for a prize won later, something that has been found to increase sales uplift by 83%.

Make it Easy to Leave Reviews

One of the best things about online shopping and ecommerce in general is the ease by which you can shop online and its sheer convenience. That said, if you make it hard to leave product reviews, you can’t really be all that surprised when nobody’s taking the time to write and post them. To ensure that you’re getting as many reviews as possible, look into adding a platform that can help.

Now we’ve already mentioned an app called Target Bay and a service called Power Reviews, but what other services and apps can you consider for your online store?

Here’s a short list of the most popular ones:

Trust Pilot
Feefo
Yotpo
Kiyoh
eKomi
Reziew
Bazaarvoice
Reevoo

Need Even More Tips?

We’ve got you covered in these related guides about product reviews:

ReadyCloud Can Help You Get Product Reviews

One of the best ways to get a product review from your customers is by sending them a post purchase email and requesting one. About 70% of the time, the customer will comply and write a review about that product they’ve just purchased. ReadyCloud makes it easy to get these post purchase product reviews with integrated Action Alerts.

Action alerts lets you use an unlimited combination of filters and settings to send automated SMS and email messages to your customers. To get more reviews using Action Alerts, you’d just need to filter your customers by purchase activity and set Action Alerts up to email a customer right after they’ve made a purchase, requesting a product review. As you can see from the above screenshot, you can customize each message you send out in minutes and start getting more reviews and better conversions today!