Consumers today are savvy and they value recommendations from their peers. When customers are trying to decide whether or not to purchase a product, they’re looking for honest reviews. 93% of customers are influenced by product reviews and 91% of customers between the ages of 18 and 34 trust an online review just as much...
Consumers today are savvy and they value recommendations from their peers. When customers are trying to decide whether or not to purchase a product, they’re looking for honest reviews.
93% of customers are influenced by product reviews and 91% of customers between the ages of 18 and 34 trust an online review just as much as they trust a personal recommendation. It’s clear that eCommerce reviews are important and can have a measurable impact on sales.
With reviews, it’s critical to be authentic. eCommerce reviews provide powerful social proof for specific products and for your brand as a whole. They provide credibility for your brand and your products, which helps encourage trust in new customers, so they’re more likely to make a purchase.
As brands have been recognizing the power of online reviews, more of them are turning to influencers to get authentic feedback. Knowing how to source honest reviews and what they should look like is key to getting good eCommerce reviews.
How many reviews do you need?
In an ideal world, all of your products should have reviews. You want to drive sales on your whole inventory, so it makes sense to get reviews on all your products. If you’re just starting out, you want to focus on your hero products, since those are your best sellers.
The number of reviews varies from brand to brand, so it’s a good idea to ask your retailers for a benchmark of the number of reviews that brings in optimal sales. For some, it might be 10 to 15, for others, it may be 50 to 100.
Reviews help consumers trust you and your products and the more authentic reviews you have, the more visitors to your site and potential customers will recognize the credibility of your brand.
Do I only need 5 star reviews?
Many brands might think that you only want positive reviews. While it would be great if everyone adored your product, that’s just never going to be the case. Your products aren’t going to work the same for everyone, it’s just a fact of life! A mixture of reviews is healthy because it shows authenticity. One of the worst things a brand can do is remove false reviews to try to improve their image.
Reviews are so effective because, like user-generated content, they’re created by real people and not by a brand. A well-rounded variety of product reviews will not only be the most genuine and accurate portrayal of your product, it will also be more useful and beneficial to your customers.
What should good reviews say?
Whether you’re asking influencers or current customers to write a review, you need to know what an effective review should look like. Since many eCommerce reviews include some prompts, you can use these to make sure you’re getting reviews that are honest and focused on the product so they’re useful.
Reviews should focus on the using the product, the results, and its effectiveness and should not mention other products (whether they’re yours or not) in the review. For example, if you sell skincare products, the reviewer should focus on their personal skin experience and how the product improved or helped.
You want the emphasis of the review to be on the specific product so it provides as much helpful information as possible, without any confusion.
How do you get reviews?
Whether you have fewer reviews than you need or are starting from scratch, there are several tactics that can help you generate authentic eCommerce reviews. Current, happy customers are a great source of authentic reviews. You can reach out to your customer base and ask them to submit a review based on a recent purchase via email.
When a customer makes a purchase, you can build campaigns that request reviews after an item has been delivered so you can request feedback while it’s fresh in their minds. You can also pick a different cadence, whatever works best for your brand and products.
If you’re working with influencers, sending them a product in exchange for their honest review is usually the way to go. You can provide guidelines for their reviews on social media–specific things to address or mention like ingredients–but it’s very important that their review remains unbiased and discloses that even if their opinions are authentic, they received the product for testing purposes to abide by FTC guidelines.
Building social proof for your brand can help drive sales and boost customer loyalty. Generating honest, authentic eCommerce reviews for your products helps customers recognize that your brand can be trusted and helps them make informed purchasing decisions. Whether you’re reaching out to loyal customers for product reviews or partnering with influencers, it’s important that reviews are focused and honest.
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