Holiday Post #4: Customer Reviews

Customer reviews. Are you doing them?

As part of our holiday research in 2006, we surveyed over 10,000 online visitors to one or more of the top 40 online retailers. We found that almost half of the online shoppers that recalled seeing customer product reviews cited them as the primary factor in their holiday purchase decision-making. 

A few key points:

• Customer product reviews drive satisfaction and loyalty and provide a competitive advantage for sites that offer them;

• Customer product reviews are a powerful influencer of the purchase decision for the critical group of first-time buyers;

• Internet pure plays lead adoption of customer product reviews, providing a competitive advantage online over multi-channel merchants;

• Shoppers on sites with customer product reviews were 5% more likely to buy online, 5% more likely to buy from the retailer the next holiday season, and 4% more likely to purchase from the retailer the next time they are in the  market for similar merchandise.

It can be a tough decision for those of you who are afraid that consumers will be brutally honest and slam a product. This is more of a risk for manufacturer sites than it is for retailers that offer many manufacturers of the same product. But in my opinion, it’s gotten to the point where companies that want to sell online have to offer customer product reviews to be competitive because if you don’t have them, your customers will just go somewhere else to see them.

Just remember, customer reviews are not a product development or a product management tool, they’re a marketing tool. Understand their value to your customers, don’t overestimate their value to you, and they can and should be a great addition to any retail website.

Comments

[Marine grade plywood]

Manufacturer sites should be a superset of retail sites, handling not only middle persons, such as distributors and reps, but end-users—consumers—as well.