As an eCommerce brand, it’s important to take note of your goals when choosing a reviews solution. Doing so will ensure that you’re not only collecting reviews, but that you’re collecting high-quality reviews that can be used to meet your business needs.
In a recent Yotpo Reviews Consumer survey, 61% of consumers stated that user-generated content (UGC) such as reviews always influences their purchase decisions. Not only can reviews act as a form of social proof, but they can also boost brand trust and conversion. If you want to get the most out of your UGC, it’s important to turn to a solution that is built specifically for eCommerce brands. Here’s why.
Product trust is on the rise
More often than not, shoppers will Google a brand when they want to learn more about it. This allows them to understand what kind of products you offer, how reputable your business is, and most importantly, what customers are saying about your products. By reading product reviews, consumers can determine whether or not they’d like to move forward with a purchase.
For example, when South Africa’s largest and most trusted toy store Import a Toy was looking for a reviews provider, they wanted to ensure that new and returning customers could convert quickly and easily. And once the brand partnered with Yotpo for reviews, Import a Toy collected over 1,000 product reviews within their first 10 months — boosting social proof and product trust. The brand also grew their average star rating to 4.9.
Brands should own their reviews
While it’s important for brands to publish both positive and negative reviews, they should still have the ability to control how and where they’re displayed and moderate them to weed out reviews that are fake or harmful. eCommerce brands should also own their reviews, and have the ability to share them across channels.
Plus, it’s important to host reviews on your own eCommerce site for SEO purposes. Once Import a Toy started leveraging Yotpo Reviews, they were able to display their product reviews directly to their site, which allowed them to impact SEO as well as the path to purchase for their customers. If your reviews aren’t hosted directly to your site, they may not boost your Google ranking for the keywords that are important to your business.
eCommerce brands need advanced review functionality
Reviews solutions built for eCommerce understand what shoppers are looking for and how to provide it. AI-powered features such as filtering on reviews, customer Q&A, and custom questions can help shoppers make better, more informed purchase decisions.
Import a Toy leverages the Yotpo Reviews’ Custom Questions feature to better understand the play experience that consumers have with their toys and whether the amount spent on their products was worth it. Custom Questions also allows the brand to take note of their shipping processes and services, which can lead to higher customer satisfaction and fewer returns.
The brand found success with the Reviews Carousel feature as well. The Reviews Carousel allowed Import a Toy to add a revolving display of customer reviews to their homepage to showcase what previous customers had to say about the products they sold.
Reviews should integrate with the rest of your martech stack
eCommerce brands often have complex martech stacks, and it’s important for your existing tools and technologies to work together. Otherwise, you could end up with leaks in your sales funnel or gaps in your analytics.
The reviews solutions you choose should integrate with the tools you use every day, including your eCommerce platform, Google, CRM, and other third-party apps. Because Import a Toy is using Shopify for their eCommerce site, the brand was able to integrate their site with Yotpo Reviews seamlessly. Once the integration was complete, Import a Toy was not only able to collect more product reviews, but they were also able to keep track of their on-site review engagement all from one platform.
The customer experience should be seamless and personalized
When customers visit your eCommerce site — whether that’s to find a specific product, make a purchase, or leave a review — they’re looking for the process to be seamless. Impact the customer experience by making it easy for them to navigate to your reviews and find the information that is most relevant to them.
In Import a Toy’s case, a lot of their eCommerce shoppers are either searching for the kind of toys and puzzles that will allow them to build or create something that is fun and easy, or something that will really challenge them. In either case, capturing key, in-depth details about the products within reviews can really help customers determine whether the item is the best fit for their specific needs. Because the product reviews are displayed directly to the Import a Toy’s product detail page, the brand is able to create a more seamless customer experience.
Plus, with personalized review requests sent via email, you can boost your order to review rate the way Import a Toy did. In less than a year, Import a Toy’s order to review rate was almost at 20%.
eCommerce brands need to collect actionable insights
Reviews solutions that are built for eCommerce brands capture the kind of actionable insights that online retailers need. Engagement rates, sentiment analysis, and customer behavior at the product level are important metrics to collect as they allow you to measure how UGC impacts your bottom line, in real-time.
With Yotpo, you’ll get an integrated reviews solution that is designed to help eCommerce businesses grow. Yotpo Reviews give brands the tools they need to collect, display, and measure UGC so that they can turn their happy customers into brand advocates.
