Want to know how to make the power of Web 2.0 work for you? Consider adding consumer-generated content to your site. The easiest and most powerful way? Add customer reviews.
Whether they buy online or off, consumers researching shopping decisions online absolutely adore reviews written by their fellow shoppers. Here’s a chart with data, plus some real-life data from MarketingSherpa Case Studies:
Click here for chart.
As you can see from the chart, the majority of consumers we surveyed prefer sites with peer-written product reviews: 58% “strongly” or “somewhat” prefer sites that include reviews, while only 14% don’t trust them.
* After Petco added reviews online, top-rated products were converting at a 49% higher clip; shoppers using the ratings section of the site for navigation spent 63% more than shoppers using other navigation column hotlinks; and shoppers who read reviews and shopped via ratings’ navigational hotlinks had an average order size 40% higher than that of the average shopper.
* The president of AWinestore.com told us that adding customer reviews was one of the critical factors that helped his e-commerce sales leap 80% in a single year. (The industry average is 20% growth.)
* Libida.com, an e-commerce site for women, considers reviews so critical to conversions that it inserts fliers into all fulfillment packages offering reviewers $25 off their next order (even if the reviews they wrote were negative ones) .
You don’t need to be an e-commerce marketer to take advantage of the review factor. If you’re selling to consumers offline, use the Web to collect real-life reviews for repurposing offline. If you’re a b-to-b demand-generation marketer, consider adding reviews to your white paper and/or webinar offers. The psychology is the same — fans love to write them, and prospects love to read them.
Everyone can steal an idea from Amazon.com’s book — review away!
Anne Holland is president of MarketingSherpa, a research firm publishing case studies and benchmark data for its 237,000 marketing executive subscribers. For more information on MarketingSherpa’s new Ecommerce Benchmark Guide (mentioned above) go to:
http://www.sherpastore.com/e-commerce-benchmark.html?8966
© MarketingSherpa, Inc. 2007
Other articles by Anne Holland:
The Thank-You Page Should Say More Than Thank You
How to Grow Your Opt-In List More Quickly and Easily
New Eye-Tracking Test Results: E-mail Campaign Click Patterns Surprise
New Data on Search Marketing Click Fraud: Three Action Items
Newest Eye-Tracking Study Results for Google
Absolutely Pitiful E-Commerce Shopping Cart Abandonment Stats…and Four Ways to Improve Yours
Study Data: Reasons to Get Evangelical About Evangelism Marketing
The Year’s Best and Worst Lead-Generation Offers
The Two Easiest (and Most Overlooked) Ways to Improve E-mail Response
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