We tell a lot to our customers and partners about the benefits of reviews in eCommerce and today we want to talk specifically about how to use feedback to increase conversion.
Our numerous observations of online stores have led us to the conclusion that many eCommerce site owners do not effectively use such tools as reviews. The fact is that on most sites, all reviews are concentrated in a special section "Reviews" or in the form of carousel on the main page of the store. At the same time, the product cards have practically no reviews from customers and do not bear the valuable load on the potential buyer.
We conducted a small survey among the owners of such websites and about 75% of them complained about a low conversion and high percentage of bounce on product pages.
Having extensive experience in the field of eCommerce, we have assumed that problems with conversion are associated with an insufficient amount of information about products, in particular, with a lack of reviews about them. To confirm our theory and show our partners a working case for increasing conversion, we did a little experiment.
As part of our experiment, we conducted two A/B tests in the online stores of our customers.
Working case #1
The first store has a large range of goods and a large volume of sales. For the test, we took two products that met the mandatory conditions:
· Products must be from the same category;
· Products must have similar characteristics and price range;
· Products must have identical demand and must not have a seasonal decrease in demand;
· Both products must have the same initial conversion.
On the first product, reviews were included in the product card, on the second product - no. Also, we made recommendations on how to customize the Wiremo widget, so that in the process of analyzing, new buyers could also participate in adding reviews.
The experiment lasted for 2 weeks. And despite such a short period of time, we managed to get the following result:
· Conversion without product reviews: 3.26%;
· Conversion with product reviews: 3.83%.
Thus, the A/B test showed a 17% increase in conversion due to the presence of reviews on product cards, which confirmed in practice the hypothesis that reviews on product cards affect the conversion.
Working case #2
For the second experiment, we contacted a small online store selling a highly specialized product and only the target audience visits the site.
Criteria for the selection of products were the same as in the first test. But the results were even better than in the first experiment:
· Conversion without product reviews: 2,64%;
· Conversion with product reviews: 4,49%.
Due to the fact that the site is small and the customer comes for a highly specialized product, the impact of reviews on conversion is much higher than in a large online store. Reviews help to better understand the specification of the product, its functionality and other characteristics that only those who have already made a purchase can know about. This once again proves the importance of the Wiremo widget for small eCommerce sites.
Why does this work?
The fact is that many customers come to your site from low-frequency queries on search engines. Thus, they immediately go to the product page and do not want to waste time searching for reviews in other sections. If they do not find product reviews right away, they will search for them on another site.
If you are creating a carousel of reviews only on the main page of your online store, reviews from all sections are concentrated there and it will be very difficult to find feedback about a particular product. The buyer is not interested in reading reviews about products he does not need. You must give the buyer only the information he came for, otherwise it may turn him away.
As soon as you set up the display of reviews on the product cards, regardless of which page your potential buyer has visited, he is more likely to find information about the product he came for and this will increase the likelihood of making a purchase.
This is very simple, but important advice that we give to all our customers. After all, our task is to help you increase your real conversion with the help our reviews widget.
