How to Skyrocket Your Conversions With eCommerce Consumer Reviews in 2020

Consumer reviews have turned into a necessary factor that determines whether a potential buyer will invest their time and money in your products or not.

As we live in an era where scammers and fraudulent products are on the rise, consumers need proof that your brand doesn’t belong to the scamming sphere.

The easiest way to establish yourself as a trustworthy brand that keeps its promises and delivers nothing less than an excellent customer experience is to have the best online reviews that will incentivize even the most difficult customers to give you a chance.

To increase your conversions and see your business thrive, we’ll take a look at the best way you can leverage consumer reviews to build a trustworthy eCommerce business and achieve long-term growth.

Now Let’s See How to Power Up Your Conversions With Consumer Reviews

1. Display Reviews on Your Landing Pages

One of the most difficult things you have to deal with when you start an online store is how to get your target audience to buy from you. 

Positive consumer reviews, in this case, are your ticket to show your potential shoppers that your products actually work and are your best chance to improve your credibility and trustworthiness.

According to statistics, 91% of young consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations from family and friends.

As you can see, consumer reviews have become a valuable source of authentic information that isn’t bound by industry.

The best way to use consumer reviews for higher conversions is to inject them on specific pages to help you boost your credibility.

To take advantage of this technique, you can use reviews when you create a landing page for new products or collaborations to show uncertain customers that the new products are amazing and work as described.

Here’s how Morphe does it:

Consumer reviews can be your ultimate weapon to boost your eCommerce revenue, especially when you combine them with other elements that will add urgency and lead your potential buyers to make a purchase.

For Morphe, saying that the offer is of a “limited time only” adds urgency to their page that drives the potential shopper to check out the products.

However, your consumer reviews are what will ultimately incentivize your shoppers to buy from your eCommerce store.

With reviews like these, Morphe has found the perfect recipe to convert more with online reviews:

Making consumer reviews part of your pages will give your potential customers an in-site source of authentic content that will clear up any misconceptions and lead them faster towards conversion.

If you want to have high-converting pages, you should use an amazing landing page builder to give you all the necessary tools to create the best review-infused landing page that will boost your conversions and revenue.

2. Let Your Customers “Review the Reviews”

What if I told you that you can allow your customers to review the reviews?

While this may sound a little Inception-y, you can actually allow customers to evaluate existing reviews in terms of helpfulness. 

Since it’s pretty common for eCommerce businesses to have a plethora of various online reviews, showing which are the most informative and helpful will help your shoppers pay attention to the perks of your products.

If you want to take advantage of this practice, you simply need to do it like Amazon:

Adding the “helpful” action will give other customers the chance to “review specific reviews” and boost their engagement with other users.

Allowing customers to indicate if the review was helpful is a smart tactic to help potential shoppers pay attention to positive reviews and, overall, power-up your customer lifecycle marketing endeavors.

For Amazon, this tactic seems to be working great as the reviews with the “helpful” indicator are ranked higher among their reviews.

Since consumer behavior has changed in the digital age and consumers tend to be influenced by their peers’ actions, leveraging the power of positive consumer reviews is a must if you want to increase your traffic and conversions.

3. Fuse Consumer Reviews into Your Emails

After designing your eCommerce business using the best eCommerce software out there, it’s time to use the right strategies to promote your amazing products to your target audience.

Emails, in this case, are one of the best marketing channels that not only offer you a channel of communication between you and your customers but also have the best return-on-investment compared to other channels.

According to DMA’s report, for every $1 you spend on email marketing you get a return of $38.

So, fusing an already powerful marketing channel that helps you reach, nurture and incentivize your subscribers with amazing consumer reviews can be your secret weapon to increase your traffic and have more sales-ready shoppers.

Ipsy, for instance, is a subscription-based brand that sells beauty product bags called Glam Bags.

To boost their potential shoppers’ purchase intention and make sure that their customers are aware of the benefits of their product, Ipsy sends an amazing email that highlights real experiences from existing customers.

Here’s their email:

Ipsy manages to showcase some of the Glam Bag products and, at the same time, present their subscribers with unique star ratings and reviews of existing customers.

If you want your review-injected emails to work, then you need to go the extra mile and get yourself acquainted with all the things that will affect the success of your campaigns.

For instance, according to some of the best actionable email marketing statistics, sending an email on a Tuesday is by far the best day to get more opens and click-throughs.

So, knowing when to send your review-injected emails can help you get more customers aboard your eCommerce business and contribute to your customer retention efforts.

4. Use a Personalized Filtering System

When consumers usually search through review pages, they filter results based on standard criteria like “most recent”, “highest-rated” or “lowest-rated”.

However, as consumers have different needs and specific goals in mind, giving them a personalized filtering system that will allow them to search reviews based on their unique needs will help you deliver content that’s more relevant.

To understand more, let’s take a look at Function of Beauty’s filtering review system and how it manages to show potential customers results that match their preferences:

Function of Beauty takes a completely different approach when it comes to showing their potential shoppers’ existing customer reviews.

Instead of the traditional filtering system, the brand allows shoppers to filter results by hair profile, giving them an advanced personalized system that narrows down the results to the customers’ hair goals.

If you think about it, Function of Beauty leverages the core principle of customer segmentation and implements it on their review page to increase potential shopper engagement and deliver the right results to the right people.

By using this personalized filtering system, the brand gives potential customers more personalized results that show them the experiences that customers with similar needs had while using the product.

Leveraging more complex filtering systems, especially when you have products like Function of Beauty, will help you deliver the right pieces of information to the right person and get more conversions than you ever imagined.

5. Use Negative Reviews To Improve Your Business

Negative reviews are bound to happen whether you like it or not since your customers’ expectations and your actual product can vary significantly.

However, if you want to succeed, you should be able to handle bad reviews and use them to your benefit.

Negative reviews can give you valuable insight and, when you embrace them, help you optimize your business and see better results in terms of lead generation and revenue.

So, when you receive a negative review you should first evaluate its content and decide whether you should reply to it or not.

Keep in mind, though, that targeting every single three-star review with a slightly negative comment but a positive disposition isn’t what you should be doing.

According to a study by the Spiegel Research Center, while displaying amazing reviews can increase your conversion rate by 270%, showing only five-star reviews is considered “too good to be true”.

Instead of targeting three-star and four-star reviews, you should focus on replying to reviews that can truly harm your brand image and discourage other customers from purchasing.

Here’s an example from Lego:

In this case, Lego took the time to reply to their one-star reviewer in an honest and helpful way that acknowledges the issue and offers extra assistance.

Targeting such reviews can help you win back customers who had a negative experience due to defective products and, at the same time, help you identify crucial issues in production and fulfillment.

Takeaway

Taking advantage of consumer reviews is your ticket to boost the credibility of your business and combat customer uncertainty.

If you want to take advantage of their power and see your conversions go through the roof, then you should take a look at some of the best practices from successful eCommerce businesses and use them to create your own consumer review strategy.

So, don’t forget to display your best reviews on your website, use them into your email campaigns, find a clever filtering system to deliver personalized experiences, learn from negative reviews, let your customers evaluate existing reviews and in no time you’ll have a powerful tool to boost your conversions like a pro.

Author: Marilia Dimitriou