Credibility, Conversions and SEO: Why Reviews Drive Ecommerce Success

The reviews your online store collects are directly tied to an increase in your sales. How do reviews grow your business? They do it by building credibility, lifting conversions and improving SEO. Keep those three words in mind — credibility, conversions and SEO — because they are what will grow your business by feeding on your customers' reviews. Let's start by explaining why credibility matters in the online world and how it translates into conversions. It's important to be clear that your customers' trust is completely tied to the feedback your brand receives. That credibility grows as your online reputation is built — not only on your own store, but also on social media. Conversions happen when a user's initial search for a product or service turns into a sale. And that is exactly what a review strategy is designed to encourage.

Figures that show why reviews matter

• 90% of users check third-party reviews before making a purchase.
• 90% are influenced by positive reviews.
• 86% are influenced by negative ones.
• A third party's opinion is 12 times more credible than the brand's own.
• So far, only 30% of consumers leave reviews and ratings of the products they buy. 92% of the information shared is positive.

63% of consumers prefer to buy from an online store that allows reviews from other users. And on average, they spend 11% more on their purchase. Got 50 ratings? You can also get up to 4.6 times more conversions.

The review culture: how to manage reviews

The review culture is spreading fast (6 out of 10 online stores already include user reviews on their pages), so it's becoming urgent to adopt tools that set us apart from the rest. What should we look for in these review management tools? The basics: they should make it easy (and encourage users) to leave post-purchase reviews on our website. It's even more useful if the tool makes our job as a business easier — a simple, intuitive interface to manage reviews. And one essential thing: that reviews become a source of clicks, content and return. Given what users value, we should also demand — from the review tool and from ourselves — transparency and proper customer service. That's what makes the difference when a user decides which brand to trust. And by transparency we mean being honest with your customers, and letting them know it. Credibility in your brand, your products and your actions is what drives purchases and customer engagement. That's why you need ecommerce review tools that guarantee the authenticity of those reviews. Forget about deleting negative reviews: customers will trust reviews as long as they look impartial and not manipulated by the brand. The review manager you choose should NOT have a filter that removes negative reviews. On the contrary, your job is to make it easy and encourage reviews so they grow overall — and positive ones along with them, since the two go hand in hand. This is the heart of using user-generated content to build trust. The more information you gather about your customers and their experiences, the greater your chance to improve your product or service and turn those reviews into positive ones.

Reviews improve your ecommerce SEO

Unique and constant content

It's essential that product reviews are factored in when building an ecommerce marketing strategy. To improve SEO, we have to ask ourselves what Google likes and what it will reward in our store to rank it in the top positions. And yes, one of the things Google appreciates (a lot) is the creation of unique, constant content. In its eyes that counts as "quality" content — one of the factors it values most. For a deeper look, see how online reviews help your SEO. Your page becomes more dynamic if, after every purchase, it adds a review that appears on the page of the product bought. You'll be generating fresh, constantly updated content across different parts of your site — and to search engines, that's a point in your favor. What's more, when a customer reviews a specific product and that review text appears on a page that usually only includes the product photo, name, price and description, you'll improve SEO because you've increased the content on that page.

More clicks

Another SEO advantage? When you have reviews from customers who bought your products, users generate more clicks to read them, and that tells Google your page is highly relevant. So you'll climb the rankings in organic search. Rich snippets (Google's review stars) appear in search results when someone looks for a product from your store, with the corresponding ratings. Your customers' reviews and the rich snippets for a product are also shown right on its product page, where your users need them most to decide to buy. Learn more about rich snippets for ecommerce. The main traffic sources in ecommerce are direct (32%), SEO (27%) and social media (19%). Don't neglect reviews, and encourage users to leave them. And if you want to push your organic results further, take a look at these free SEO tools for ecommerce. Benefit from reviews by earning a return in more clicks, loyalty and sales. Your customers' reviews help you get many more. If you have any questions, get in touch.