Review of online reviews
Recently, I have been looking into how reviews impact sales. In eCommerce reviews are now considered a checklist item for any product detail page but why? And do they have to be positive? And is more reviews better? I did a bit of digging around to find out.
Do online reviews matter?
If a friend tells you that you should buy a certain product, watch a tv show, go to a restaurant - you know a bit about that person, do they have similar (i.e. good) taste, are they known for good recommendations or do they often watch tv shows like Keeping up with the Kardashians and Real Housewives of Beverly Hills? With online reviews, you have no idea about this person, yet surprisingly 84% of people trust online reviews as much as they trust personal reviews. Add to that, less than 25% of people trust what are in advertisements. So, 3 times more likely to trust a random stranger view of your product than your view. It makes sense, you are biased, but who knows the motives of this random stranger. The psychology behind it is that we love to follow a crowd. We have seen restaurants with lines out the door, while the one next door stands empty - it could serve similar food but if no one is in there eating you ain’t going to be the first. So if other people are saying it’s good/bad it must be. In a great study done here, displaying reviews can increase conversion by 270%.
Do the reviews have to be positive?
For business, only 13% of consumers will consider using a business that has a 1 or 2-star rating. But what I love from How Online Reviews Influence Sale is that if a product has too high a rating it is seen as too good to be true.
This same report said Previous PowerReviews research found that 82% of shoppers specifically seek out negative reviews. So you can’t have all good reviews, or you will be seen as marketing, and you might be down to a 24% trust area. You can also see that items like light bulbs still had a high purchase probability at 1 star. This could be a brand that people trust over the anonymous reviewer.
Do I need lots of reviews?
This is where reports start to vary because, in my opinion, money becomes involved. If you ask someone who sells syndicated reviews, or even worse, fake reviews, they would tell you that you need heaps - this article says 150!!!
But other articles say between 5-10 is sufficient; 90% of consumers read 10 or fewer reviews. Recency is a factor; if your reviews are over 3-6 months old, they could be considered too old to be relevant. So, even though you don’t need a lot, it would be good to get a constant stream trickling through.
Just tell me what to do?
In summary:
Yes, reviews increase conversion.
You only need 5-10 reviews that are from the last 3-6 months.
They shouldn’t all be 5 stars; best if you have someone who really hated it for you to look more authentic.
You can always test these theories out on your own site with some AB testing to understand your reviews' real impact.
If you would like to leave me a review of my review of reviews, please do so below.
