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#AskYieldify: Customer Reviews for eCommerce
Published: Jan 16, 2019
Let’s put your big e-commerce questions to our team of expert consultants. First up – everything you ever wanted to #AskYieldify about using customer reviews on your e-commerce site, with Théo Devred, Senior Consultant.
Q: What’s the best way to incorporate reviews into my e-commerce site?
A: First I’d recommend taking a structured approach to ensure you’re getting the most out of your reviews. We usually begin by running some tests to understand the review formats that work best to drive a positive impact. For example, you could start off showcasing the average star rating, or some selected quotes:
Then if you work with a third party reviews platform like Trustpilot, bring this into the mix to see how it impacts conversions across different devices and at different parts of the customer journey.
Finally, keep on iterating. There are so many ways you can present review information, so keep testing to understand what works best for your audience. Something we’ve found super effective is to show the number of 5-star reviews e.g:
Q: Does it matter if I don’t already work with a reviews platform?
A: No – get creative. While third-party platforms like Trustpilot, Feefo or Avis Vérifiés can provide a level of authenticity and help build consumers’ trust, everyone has to start somewhere.
You’re probably already sitting on a goldmine of user-generated content you can utilize. We’ve worked with clients to highlight reviews from platforms such as Facebook or Google Reviews, and seen a positive impact from this.
Q: What’s the best point in the customer journey to show reviews?
A: Again, unfortunately, there’s no one size fits all answer to this question. Focus on understanding the users and their motivations at the point in the journey you’re working to optimize.
For example, with upper-funnel visitors on a travel booking or finance site highlighting the ease of completion can be a great way to move visitors further along. Once visitors are closer to the end of the funnel, then this messaging might change to focus more on reassurance.
Q: For star-based rating systems, is there a difference between showing say, a 3-star and 4-star review?
A: Short answer, yes. As we’ve mentioned, optimizing the customer journey is not a ‘one-size fits all’ approach, and this is also true for reviews. In order to understand which rating levels work best, you should test it out. Here’s an example of how we analyzed the data behind e-commerce customer reviews for a travel brand:
As you can see, the ‘breakeven’ point was just under 4 stars. At this point, showing the ratings actually had a negative impact. So we segmented the approach – for products with a lower rating showing an overlay that directed abandoning visitors to similar products with a higher rating, and continuing to show the star rating for 4 star and above products. This approach saw the conversion rate on lower-rated products increase positively.
Q: How can I get more customer reviews?
A: Of course, to use reviews on your e-commerce website it’s good to have a supply that is constantly refreshed. Getting reviews can sometimes be a challenge. Success is all about understanding the customer lifecycle, and the most appropriate stage of the customer journey to ask for reviews.
Beauty is an industry that is particularly reliant on consumer reviews for building trust. To this end, we worked with one of our beauty clients to support its reviews program.
Using Yieldify’s historical targeting feature we were able to encourage returning customers who had made a purchase between a particular time frame to review their recent purchases. As they navigated through the site returning visitors were targeted with a notification welcoming them back and asking if they’d like to leave a review:
Got an e-commerce question you need help with? #AskYieldify! Feel free to tweet us, or email us at marketing@yieldify.com, for a chance to have your question answered by our e-commerce experts.