5 Reasons Customer Reviews are Crucial for your E-Commerce Site

        by Daniel Silverstein, Growth Specialist at leadgeni.com.

We have all been there. Your sales have stalled, and you don’t know how to fix it. You’ve tried pushing more advertisements online, yet they aren’t producing the desired results. You know your products are great, but the rest of the world is left in the dark. There doesn’t seem to be an easy solution, and you think you’ve exhausted all potential options.

However, there just might be a hidden gem that you haven’t tried yet: customer reviews. Authentic customer reviews are the best way to push your e-commerce site to the top.

Detailed below are the five most important reasons customer reviews are critical for the success of your e-commerce site. If you aren’t using customer reviews on your site, then you’re already behind the competition.

1. Increase Sales

As the culture change in shopping habits shifts toward online sources, customers are looking at online reviews now more than ever. They’re more likely to purchase products that have existing reviews as they gain confidence from reading the opinions of previous customers. Reviews can also lead to higher search traffic when integrated with third party search engines, such as Google and Bing. The stars that appear on Google will make your business stand out over others, encouraging more people to click on your products and therefore increase sales.

Of course, keeping up with market changes and trends is imperative for any e-commerce company. The ratings and reviews provided by customers help to understand the constantly evolving e-commerce landscape. Staying up-to-date with how customers feel about your products can help your business change with the market and keep up with competitors. By keeping up with current trends, you increase sales to customers who wouldn’t have purchased an outdated version of your product.

2. Increase Brand Awareness

Numerous times, the main issue is that people simply have not heard of your product. Brand awareness is key to maximizing sales of your product, and increasing it can seem like an unsolvable challenge. The best way to let your customers know about your site is to optimize your online appearance. Integrating ratings into Google can help push your site to the top. You should use an efficient and accurate review gathering site that distributes your ratings and reviews across the internet, including major search engines like Google. As customers continue to see your product while searching for their interests online, they become more aware of your e-commerce site and are more likely to make a purchase. While reading the authentic reviews from prior customers, they trust the online opinions of others and use that to influence their purchasing decisions. Be the next e-commerce site to spread your product across the web and allow your customers to communicate with each other.

3. Let your Customers Sell your Product for You

No one knows how great your products are as well as your customers themselves. In today’s internet-based society, customers often share their reviews on social media to their peers. Additionally, many SaaS review platforms like eKomi are providing the opportunity directly to the reviewers to share their thoughts on social media. These social recommendation features make it easy for someone to post their reviews across the internet. The hundreds of millions of people on Twitter and billions of people on Facebook create a widespread network of reviews and ratings, allowing your customers to sell other customers on your product directly.

According to a recent Bright Local report, 86% of consumers read online reviews for local businesses, indicating the importance of these customer reviews on social media to potential customers. Ratings and reviews on social media can show a positive customer experience, allowing your customers to explain how great of an experience they had with your product. In fact, 90% of consumers said that positive online reviews influenced their purchasing decisions (Dimensional Research). The next time you scroll through your Twitter feed, see if you notice the millions of people recommending products from other e-commerce sites. Your site could be the next one.

4. Boost Website Visibility

Advertising costs can pile up in a hurry. As you try to push your brand further up the ladder, you see the costs rise, sometimes at an uncontrollable rate. Often, the best way to combat these rising costs is to optimize how people find you. As such, every company knows boosting website visibility through SEO is important to push your brand to the top and as the featured topic of conversation among peers.

You can enhance SEO by using user generated content, posted across all major search engine platforms. With more conversions on sites like Google, where people are more likely to click on your product if it has gold stars next to the name, you can reduce your advertising costs and increase visibility by rocketing to the top of the rankings. Find a company like eKomi, which integrates its APIs directly into Google products, so your products become more noticeable to consumers. Increasing the volume of customers arriving at your site from search engines can help improve advertising efficiency while reducing costs.

5. Improve Brand Loyalty

Brand loyalty can be tough to build. With so many people changing their opinions seemingly constantly, it can be hard to maintain trust from your customers. Reviews are a great way to increase conversion rate and build trust. Existing online reviews would provide the groundwork for brand loyalty as customers see that their peers had previously enjoyed the product, so perhaps new customers might too. Often, awards are not enough to convince your customers that your product is great; they prefer to hear directly from previous customers themselves. Authentic customer reviews will keep your customers loyal to the brand as potential customers can see firsthand the reactions and opinions of your product. People often look for validation on their opinions, and seeing other online positive reviews of your product would supply this validation and solidify their trust for your brand.

No matter what type of products your e-commerce site sells, customer reviews are crucial to sustaining a profitable business. Services like eKomi help build your brand loyalty and awareness, leading to lower costs and improved marketing strategies. So if you haven’t already, get authentic reviews for your site as there’s no better time to increase your conversions and build trust.

Book a free consultation with an eKomi specialists to get started right away and learn more about how customer reviews can help you succeed:

In this free online consultation we’ll analyze your business’ challenges and show you strategies that have helped other successful companies grow trust, loyalty, reputation and returns.