Interesting article in Internet Retailer recently about how companies were using user-generated content, in this case reviews, to generate sales.
On of the selling points of the social shopping engines, is that shopping is a social event. The Yahoo/Harris Interactive poll late last year showed that “60% of U.S. adults who plan to shop on the Web viewed recommendations from friends and family as the top factor when choosing a small online retailer for holiday gift buying”.
Most of the coverage about social search engines has been written from the social point of view, and not from the retailer’s point. So the question has always been, does user-generate content and customer reviews translate into more sales?
Senor executives at three of the largest e-commerce sites all answered that question is a resounding yes.
Sam Taylor, senior vice president of HP Direct, the company’s online and catalog division: “We’ve seen that when consumers are considering a major purchase, they value unbiased and unedited consumer reviews,”
“On products with a broad set of reviews, we’re averaging conversion rates that are 20% higher than products without reviews,” says Jacob Hawkins, senior vice president of online marketing for Overstock.com Inc.
“This is one of the most exciting things that we’ve had come down the pike in a long time,” says David Seifert, director of operations and direct marketing at Bass Pro Shops, where reviews are driving conversion rates up 20% to 30%. “Customers really have an affinity for this, because they would rather believe other customers than the retailer any day of the week. There are very few things like this that we can implement this easily and quickly, get this kind of response from customers, and make this kind of money off of it.”
If you are selling products online then you should consider giving users the ability to write reviews of you products. Implementing a user-generated reviews system is not easy, but it appears that the impact on your bottom line will be substantial.
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john cass 02.15.07 at 1:25 am
David, really the question is do you display all consumer information, both negative and positive? I think yes, looking at companies realistically gives them more credibility.
David Wilson 02.15.07 at 11:50 am
Great question John. There is a delicate balance here that needs to be maintained. I think that a company needs to shows both positive and negative comments. If every review is glowing, then it will not look authenticate to users. On the flip side, companies need to make sure that there is not a concerted effort by people to flood the web suite with negative comments about their products.
So yes, the reviews should contain positive and negative reviews, but companies need to have safeguards in place to stop the user-generated issues that Wikipedia has.
Tim 02.22.07 at 6:47 pm
Interesting discussion. The question was also recently discussed at the kelsey blog
http://www.kelseygroup.com/blog/blog_comment.asp?bi=1399&m=10&y=2006&d=&s=
Dave Forde 04.18.07 at 10:55 pm
David - do you thing the same rules apply whether it be a B2B or B2C site? Would people still be willing to post a review if it is say email marketing services vs. an MP3 player?
David Wilson 04.19.07 at 9:32 am
Dave, that is a great question. I don’t think that reviews are strictly for the B2C market. A combination of reviews and testomonials can really help a business in the B2B market.
Valintino 05.09.07 at 5:57 am
Hello, Your site is great. Regards, Valintino Guxxi
Bob Gilbert 09.30.08 at 1:11 pm
We would very much like to provide an online venue for our customers to post their reviews about our products. The question I have is what online platforms are available for B2B customer reviews? Everything I see is B2C focused and very expensive. We are not a big online shopping engine with a huge budget. We sell networking equipment, have 4500+ customers, and want a way to share the details of customer experiences with folks investigating our solutions. Is there an online reviews platform that is suited for our B2B needs?