DENVER, CO -- In ecommerce – selling stuff on an online store – the constant battle is to get more visitors to the site, converting more visitors to customers, and selling more stuff. The armaments for this battle are wide and varied – a great site, SEO, great product, exemplary customer service, etc. – but often overlooked is the power of customer reviews.

The conventional wisdom is that fully 70% of people looking to buy from an ecommerce merchant read and rely upon customer reviews during their research, and this percentage increases as the age decreases; to wit, if they are under 30 years of age customer reviews are even a greater factor in the shopper’s research.

Of course, this isn’t necessarily a measurement of influence; study after study shows that the top influencer in an online buying decision – good or bad – are recommendations from family, friends, and social network “friends.” Still, customer reviews from unknown other shoppers on the site tell a story and act as “green lights” or “red flags” in a purchasing decision.

As such, with all of the opportunities to gather reviews and customer feedback, ecommerce merchants who aren’t fostering the practice are at best clearly missing out on an important marketing tool, and at worst leaving themselves subject to the vagaries of the Internet. Fortunately, there are several steps an online merchant can take to boost the use and effectiveness of customer reviews.

First it should be noted that there are basically two types of customers reviews – on-site and those housed on third-party sites that contain information about all kinds of companies, including customer reviews and admonitions.

Obviously, any on-line merchant has the most control over the on-site customer reviews, so it is best to begin there. Most shopping cart technologies and software that e-merchants use as the backbone of their stores – programs like Magento, PrestaShop and BigCommerce, just to name a few – have a built-in Customer Review feature on product pages that come with the basic program. This allows customers to post comments about specific products from a click-through button right on the page detailing the product at issue.

The trouble here is that these customer review areas are product-specific, or at least accessed on the product page, so they aren’t natural places for the customer to post a review concerning the entire shopping experience – responsiveness of the merchant, the checkout process, the follow-up, overall customer service, ease of a return for a wrong size, etc. To get a broader response, merchants will have to create, or have their webmaster create, a custom “Customer Review” section with a tool bar button on the homepage or a click-through button at checkout.

The other type of Customer Reviews are those maintained by third-party websites where a growing number of web users are motivated to post reviews. These include such stalwarts as Yelp, Citysearch, Google Maps, Yahoo Local Business listings, Yellowbook, Superpages, Merchant Circle, Showmelocal, and Yellowbot. These are, by and large, massive directories of businesses – not just merchants – that contain that contain basic information on a company or a website – name, address, phone, etc. – a business description (which businesses themselves often may edit), years in business, number of employees, directions, and, of course, customer reviews. Since these directories are built from a variety of databases, the chances are that nearly every business and online merchant is listed without actually signing up.   

As with all such things – it’s called human nature – reviews posted in on-site and in the third-party directories will tend to be from people either wildly enthusiastic and positive about the utility and value of the product and/or service, or from those who are disgruntled – and no matter what you have, there will always be both types.

Again human nature being what it is, many online merchants and their staff members feel compelled to edit or remove the negative comments, but the general recommendation from experts in the field is to not do this. People reading customer reviews as part of their shopping research know very well that the world is full of pinheads who complain about everything, so a customer review that contains only glowing reports will look like the negatives have been removed or that the merchant has planted only positive reviews. By the way, most people doing this type of research also know – or at least suspect – that the merchant is planting positive reviews, so there is a natural tendency to take them with a grain of salt, as it were. Here’s what to do:

• Don’t post, or have friends post, “planted” glowing reviews. A lot of business people and their marketing agents do this, but most people in the general public can see through the sham and will begin to form a negative impression.
• Leave in the negative reviews. It will add an air of authenticity and, as stated earlier, visitors already know the world is full of pinheads.
• Many of the third-party customer review sites allow for the online merchant or company personnel to register and to respond to the posts (a company can obviously do this in their on-site review sections). Experts argue that it is bad form to constantly respond to negative reviews by defending the company or, worse, bad-mouthing the negative poster in a response. The better course of action, they say, is to apologize and explain how what steps the company took to resolve any problem. When this course is taken, the aggrieved party will often respond back with a positive review of the resolution which will work to the company’s benefit (high integrity quotient). An added note: not all negative reviews deserve a response; everyone knows some people are wacky and won’t be satisfied no matter what happens, and their own posts will say everything necessary to convey that message.
• Respond, respond, respond. Quickly. Don’t remove negative reviews – respond to them quickly and seek the fastest form of resolution. If possible try to ascertain the poster’s identity, email them or even call them and fix the problem. As stated earlier, a fixed problem will mostly likely lead to an additional review post, one that turns a negative into a positive.
• Be careful not to respond too often – there is a fine line between being responsive and being defensive, and in being defensive there is a suggestion that systems aren’t working as well as they should.
• Some of the third-party sites, like Yelp, allow businesses to respond to reviews both publically and privately, and it is a good idea to respond expeditiously to both negative and positive reviews.
• Post messages on the company website – on the home page and plenty of other pages, particularly checkout – encouraging people to post customer reviews either on-site or in third-party sites. Providing links to the third-party sites can also be a good thing – it will show clearly that customer feedback is encourage and that constant improvement in customer service is a company goal.
• Further reach out for reviews from frequent site visitors, especially those people who are frequent shoppers and buyers. Contact information has probably been collected, so email them with encouragements to post a customer review – don’t suggest a “positive” review, but rather assume that a frequent visitor/shopper is not just a fan, but a super fan.
• In the vein of asking for and encouraging customer reviews, also it is wise to send such requests on the social networks: Tweets on Twitter, post requests on a Facebook page, etc.
• Some experts believe that those in the under-30 crowd don’t like to be solicited for reviews. It is important for this age-group just to have a Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, etc. presence because by their very nature these social networks are a collection of people’s experiences anyway. Heavy social site users give “customer reviews” when they walk in the park, so it’s a sure bet they will have something to say, however mundane, about any business or online merchant they come in contact with.   
• A BIG don’t: don’t offer incentives, like discounts, when asking for customer reviews. People will know about these offers and just assume the reviews were posted for the incentive and are not heart-felt observations. 

Many experts believe that the whole arena of customer reviews, especially for ecommerce merchants, is a numbers game – the more the merrier, no matter whether they are positive or negative. It’s kind of like that old adage about publicity – I don’t care what you say about me, just spell my name right.

Remember, the idea is not to boost the positive reviews or hide the negatives, but rather to create an air and a reality of integrity and responsiveness. And activity. In the end the object is to create buzz, to get more visitors, and to convert more shoppers to customers.

Here at Unleaded Group, we have specialized in creating vibrant, active websites since our founding in 1996, and we have a particular focus on creating ecommerce websites that sell. Our website design and development services are unparalleled in the industry, and we maintain high-level partnerships with such popular and powerful solutions companies as ExpressionEngine, Magento, PrestaShop and BigCommece. Call Unleaded Group at 720-221-7126 for completer details.