Improve Site Conversion and Consumer Loyalty with Customer Reviews

[admin]

If you think about it, buying something on the internet without speaking to someone is actually quite odd. You can’t see the person you are buying from or verify that they actually have an item in stock. You don’t know where they are, how they got there or what they have done. Nonetheless, [...]

More... (http://onlinebusiness.volusion.com/articles/customer-loyalty-strategies/)

[Strapworks]

I don't think you really delved into the bad side of customer reviews enough (more positive and "why not do it" hype).
What about competitors leaving bad reviews, surfers reviewing the product as bad even though they never bought from you, customers using product review as a way to vent about your customer service or policies, customers trying to reach you by leaving a message in reviews, etc.
Now, I am not getting down on customer reviews, we use them ourselves and like them. But, if you are going to write a review about something that could benefit your business you also need to thoroughly know how it can possibly hurt your business.
I think you probably should have referenced the thread
http://forums.volusion.com/t8-.html
http://forums.volusion.com/t3038-.html
http://forums.volusion.com/t2546-.html
I think customers are more likely to trust your company if you clearly have your address, phone number, and other contact info clearly visible on all pages of your site. You also have a clear policies page and visible site security.
There are many things you can do to make a customer comfortable with ordering from you, you just need to learn your industry and what the customer is looking for.
Obviously from your stats 72% of merchants do not have customer reviews and not all of those companies are failing.
Just my two cents

[dianeb]

I think customers are more likely to trust your company if you clearly have your address, phone number, and other contact info clearly visible on all pages of your site. You also have a clear policies page and visible site security.
There are many things you can do to make a customer comfortable with ordering from you, you just need to learn your industry and what the customer is looking for.

From a different slant, my business has gone up and up despite removing or minimalizing some of these well known, well tauted trust features. I had originally removed my phone number when my business was generating too many sells for me to keep up with. But as a side note, I found that people who are too afraid to buy on the internet tend to be high maintenence customers. I'd rather be fulfilling orders than managing high maintenence customers.

I've focused my energies having a better site than my competition (which changes regularly) I don't carry every single product that is available for parrot enthusiasts, but the producst that I would use with my own birds. The productst that I carry are very well described with good pictures and totally SEO'ed with keywords, alt tags and utilization of V's SEO tools. I spent money to have a logo and website design done, as well.

I also focus my energies on remaining #1 or less preferred #2 on organic lisings in Google for my most generic keywords - bird supplies and parrot supplies. That way, when my competition is paying through the nose to get a listing on the most searched keywords in my niche, I've saved a ton on advertising costs up front. On Friday I dropped to #2 on bird supplies in Googles organic search. I took it seriously and spent 4 hrs. tweaking my site to get back to # 1 -

But all that work wouldn't have done squat had my site not been tweaked to my target market which I strongly believe that you really have to get. If you're dealing with educated women your site design needs to reflect it. Very expensive book collectors, your site needs to look very professional with lots of keyword loaded content on EACH product and EACH category. In my business, at least, it totally amazes me how my competition fails to capitalize on the importance of keywords in category names, product descriptsions, alt tags etc. Mining wordtracker.com results or google adwords results totally pays off in the long run. - I have put my time in tweaking keywords to gain organic search results and focusing on the way that I perceive my target customer as "thinking" and buying.

[jay]

Nice thoughts. I'd like to add a couple as well.

In terms of product reviews, we do something a little bit different. We only allow reviews from customers that purchased the product from us. At first, many may think this is a bit unfair, but we discuss it in our "review policy" and let folks know that we feel like our service affects the customer's perception - especially if something goes wrong. To be credible, we will never edit reviews - not even for typos. We just went live a few months ago, so I can't say that I have huge experience here. But, our goal is to be as fair and honest as we can be - even if we make mistakes.

From a customer perspective, another thing that makes me comfortable with a site (when I'm buying) is knowing who I'm dealing with. We're a small company - just two people - and we don't mind showing it. We actually see it as an advantage to our huge competitors. Since there's only two of us, we have pictures of both of us and a little bio about each in our "About Us" section. As we add more staff, we'll add their pictures and bio's. Our blog let's folks get to know a bit more about us as well. I'm always a little guarded when I land on a site and they go out of their way to hide who they are - or they speak in generalities, trying to make themselves look bigger than they are. I want to know someone's name - who's running this thing, etc...

Just some thoughts.

Thanks!

Jay

[Patti]

I really like customer reviews, and I wish we had more of them. Even the "bad" reviews are good in that they educate future customers on the weaknesses of a product. Unfortunately, in over a year we've had only three or four customers come back and post reviews. I find it interesting that one product received a scathing review, and after that review was posted the sales for that product actually increased.

We do monitor the review section and we will remove any reviews that are off topic. The only thing that makes me nervous about them is that it's possible for someone to come to our site in the middle of the night and post nasty garbage all over the place and it will be live before we have a chance to see it and remove it. It hasn't happened yet.

Jay - I respect your decision to go public with all of your information, but I've found that it's not a good idea for me. I had to hide my identity because I was getting more calls from people trying to sell to me than people trying to buy from me.

[jay]

Hi Patti,

To keep the bad reviews off your site, I would suggest setting up one of the offensive language filters. I filter on the letter "a" - so it pretty much catches every post. This way, I get first shot at reading the review before it goes public. If it conforms to our policy, then I simply set the review to active. If not, I have a chance to contact the reviewer first and possibly fix a less than favorable situation. If you're interested in adding the filter, it's a bit hidden. You do so in V5 in the Customers / Customer Review section. Use the Edit Offensive Language Filters link, which is just below the tabs in the upper right hand corner.

Regarding getting the calls, I agree - we do get a few calls and people act like they know me before they call. It's a downside to consider. The upside is that the customers seem to know me a bit as well.

Thanks!

Jay

[admin]

Jay, it sounds like you have a good understanding of how customer reviews can help you.



Patti, maybe you could include a note when you send your product to encourage customers to leave a review. That might help.


Although it is helpful to leave some of the more negative reviews up in order to establish credibility, it is not helpful to leave reviews that are in no way constructive. Even review giants such as Amazon and Target have moderators to remove attempts to contact or blatantly slam them. Just use your better judgment when determining what review is helpful and what is not.



-Michelle Greer

[ritchey]

From personal experience shopping on Amazon, reviews help a lot on deciding if to buy a product. I read someplace they also increase the conversion factor tremendously, and help on SEO because they are content. And the rate the reviewer feature helps filter out which reviews are good and bad.

Now if Volusion would make it easy (see feature request) to request reviews that would help a lot. With my last cart that was semi-custom, the programmer only took 3 hours to do this.

Waiting for customers to add a review is not fast enough. Link to thread I started requesting this feature.
http://forums.volusion.com/t3263-.html

[Patti]

Although it is helpful to leave some of the more negative reviews up in order to establish credibility, it is not helpful to leave reviews that are in no way constructive. Even review giants such as Amazon and Target have moderators to remove attempts to contact or blatantly slam them. Just use your better judgment when determining what review is helpful and what is not.

Absolutely.

The one bad product review was very constructive, which is why I elected to leave it. In my opinion it only helps to educate the customer. I'd rather have a customer know a product's weaknesses up front.