Why product reviews are important for online shops 26 September 2024  |  Cate

Product reviews play an important part in the ecommerce industry, with Amazon and other big names establishing the precedence for user generated content that provides customers with honest feedback about their products. But why are product reviews so essential for your online shop?

The importance of product reviews

Product reviews are created by your customers, the people who have used your product in a real world environment, and therefore, are a more reliable source of information about the product than you are. Not only have these customers had actual experience of the product, but they are also in no hurry to sell you anything, so will be must more honest about their likes and dislikes. Other customers are then more likely to respond to this honesty and, in turn, this can help to drive sales.

According to research carried out by iPerceptions, 63% of consumers indicate they are more likely to purchase from a site if it has product ratings and reviews.

Reviews and star ratings can also help with SEO. If you are having reviews regularly posted on your site, this will be seen as constantly updated, relevant content, which is one of the most important things Google looks for when indexing your site. Not only that, the review stars can be picked up by Google Rich Snippets (built into your Bluepark site as standard) and these can then appear within your Google organic and paid listings, including Google Shopping and Google Ads.

You can see in the example above that reviews can make your listings stand out and show your business in a positive light right in front of potential customers. This, in turn, gives your brand a sense of authority and trust, which helps convince people to purchase from you.

Not all reviews are positive

Don't be afraid to publish all of the customer reviews you receive, even the negative ones, as this will show that the reviews are genuine. Always respond to negative ones visibly on your website, offering solutions to the customer’s issue, to show that you are willing to listen to your customers and that you are proactive at sorting out their problems.

Not all bad reviews will be seen as such because what might be a negative feature for one person might be positive for someone else. For instance, someone stating that a pair of jeans was a little too short for his 6ft height could be seen as a good thing for someone who is 5ft 6.

Negative reviews, whether aimed at your service in general or a particular product, can help you identify issues that you weren’t aware of. For instance, your delivery company maybe damaging fragile goods whilst in transit.  If you start getting regular reviews telling you of this then do something about it, perhaps look into a new service or invest in better packaging.  This, in turn, can then lead to less complaints and fewer returns.

Sending product review emails

Sending out a post-purchase email, asking your customers to review the products they have recently bought, is one of the best ways to ensure you have regular reviews posted on your site. Most people won’t just voluntarily go on to your site, without any prompt, and leave a review, so the majority of reviews you do receive will come from the feedback email.

Having a triggered, post-purchase review email instantly gives you a reason to contact your customer that won’t come across as intrusive. Most customers expect these emails nowadays and are normally happy to respond, especially if they have had a particularly good experience, or a particularly bad one! This extra interaction helps to increase engagement with your customers, showing that you want to know their opinions and that you are listening to them.

Product review email best practices

Make sure your product review email is designed with your brand in mind. It should be recognisable as belonging to your company on first glance, so that there is no doubt as to whom it is from. Use the Bluepark Email Template to create a consistent, branded email wrapper that can be used for all triggered emails from your website. Add social icons with links through to your social profiles to encourage further engagement.

These emails are also a great way to encourage follow-on purchases. Links to your website or specific categories can tempt customers to click through and place another order. However, getting the review is the main reason you are sending the email, so keep it clean and uncluttered, without too many distractions.

Make the email personal to the customer by using their name and keeping it relaxed. Use a more chatty voice, much like you would on your socials, but remember that you are a business, so keep it professional.

Make sure you think about the timing of your review email. Sending it too soon, or weeks after they have received their goods, is not going to get the biggest response. Work out the average time it takes your orders to get to someone in your main selling region and set it accordingly. If you are unsure, test different times over a certain period to see what works the best.

Lastly, think about offering an incentive to encourage more people to respond. Many offer a prize draw, like the Victorian Plumbing example above, but a better option is to offer a discount on their next order, like Neal's Yard Remedies have done. This will then encourage them to come back an place another order.

Other ways to optimise your product reviews

Branding your reviews

When it comes to the star ratings, it's always best to stick to stars, rather than changing the icon to something else. This is because people recognise stars as being representative of a star rating or review rating and anything else can cause confusion. However, changing the colour of the stars can help them look more branded.

The two above have chosen to make their stars green because they match their branding and, as both brands are associated with nature, organic, etc, green is a very fitting colour. Likewise, if your main branding is red, change the star colour to red. Just make sure they stand out enough to spot at a quick glance, but don't overshadow the add to basket call-to-action button (the most important element on the page).

Get the type of feedback you want

When leaving a review, many people are unsure of what to write and will either just leave a few words or will waffle on about the delivery driver or that it looked nice next to their yukka plant. None of these responses are of helpful to you or your potential customers. Therefore, it's always useful to provide guidelines of dos and don'ts when leaving a review and linking to it on your review request email.

Urban Outfitters have kept it simple with straightforward text instructions broken down into three lists, things to keep in mind when writing a product review, the reasons why a review might not be live on the site, and the incentives they may offer for review requests.

Matalan, on the other hand, have created a fun, colourful page with imagery, instructions of how to leave a review, details of their incentive, and a further nudge to encourage customers to share their experiences via their socials too.

Add reviews to all touch points

Once you’ve started to receive reviews, make sure you use the best ones on all customer touch points. Feature them on your homepage via our Featured Reviews block or Latest Reviews block, include them in your email newsletters, add them to product signage within your bricks and mortar shop, feature them on leaflets or bag stuffers or add the best customer service one to the bottom of all despatch notes; the list goes on. Just remember, you have all this wonderful feedback, so make sure everyone has a chance to see it.

Don’t forget your social media profiles

Whenever you link to a product on your socials, remember to include a quick snippet of a good review in the text. This will help to boost its appeal to potential customers, particularly if the review has some helpful tips in it.

Social sites, such as Facebook, even have their own reviews section built in, so why not encourage your customers to leave reviews there too.

Expand your best reviews into blog posts

Have you had particularly good reviews for one of your products? If so, then why not ask the reviewers to contribute to a blog post about that product. Ask them to expand on their review, to give you more detail on how they use it or what they accessorize it with, depending on the type of product. Ask them to send in images or videos to add to their comments to really make it come to life.

External review sites

Many companies these days are using external review sites, such as Trustpilot and Feefo. These sites can collect both company reviews and product reviews, but you often have to pay for product reviews. If you didn't want to pay, you can still often use them for free for company reviews and then stick with collecting product reviews through Bluepark.

Company reviews differ from product reviews because they are about the level of service the company offers and the experience the customer had when purchasing their products or using their service.

Adding your company to an external review site can increase your brand awareness, as it puts you in front of many people who wouldn’t find you through normal routes. They help build trust and confidence in your services which, in turn, will increase your traffic and conversions. But, make sure you choose one that offers genuine reviews from verified customers and that has a licensing agreement with Google. This agreement will allow your ratings to appear within your paid search results and within your My Business profile in organic listings.