The Power of Ecommerce Customer Reviews
Posted on Tuesday, Oct 19, 2010 in "E-commerce"
eCommerce is an industry that gained popularity exponentially as customers began telling their families and friends about their experiences shopping online. In fact, this concept can be seen in any major movement or industry that has gained popularity quickly. The best way to increase the amount of people that visit your site, and most importantly, purchase items from your store, is to increase the amount of people that share information about your products. There are many ways to create a buzz about your site, and one of the best ways to convert visitors into sales is to incorporate the capability of customer reviews on your eCommerce site.
Using Shopping Carts for Customer Reviews
One of the best ways to get your customers to leave reviews about your products and services is to use shopping cart applications that let your customers rate and leave comments about their experience with your site. If you can provide an enjoyable shopping experience consistently then there is a good chance that you will have several positive reviews within a few weeks. Shopping cart reviews may be the best kind of reviews, as your future customers will see the previous customer reviews below the product description, and this will greatly influence their buying decision.
Using Forums for Customer Reviews
Another way to build up your client base is to enroll in online forums that are related to your industry. Not only can you subtly advertise on these forums, you can also receive good feedback from the members after you have made a couple of transactions with them. Forums are a great way to build your online presence because they are commonly indexed in search engines. When someone looks for product reviews of products you are selling there is a good chance that they could stumble upon the customer reviews on the various forums you are a member of. Forums are some of the most powerful social tools on the internet because they are communities that greatly influence the opinions of their users.
Using Directories for Customer Reviews
There are also a lot of shopping and business directories online that list online stores and document the reviews of previous customers. For example, the Google Shopping directory lists the reviews of products that are searched for by search engine users. When you execute a search for a particular product in Google the results that are returned may contain shopping results form various stores on the internet. Usually the stores that appear are the ones with the lowest prices or the most customer reviews. By ensuring that your site is listed in these directories you can maximize your chances of having your customers leave reviews on these sites for other future customers to see.
Customer reviews are definitely one of the primary deciding factors for many online shoppers. The internet is a massive community, and many people are afraid to be a guinea pig for any purchase. By having customer reviews online you can increase you customer’s confidence and increase the overall amount of sales you are bale to make.
