Not everyone in this world is a seller but most of us have played the role of a buyer and purchased some or the other thing either offline or online. Don’t you had those typical questions in your mind whenever you tried a new store? We always have doubt about the quality of the products, pricing etc.
You must have asked your friends or family members before you have made the decision of buying something from that new store. Taking suggestions or reviews have been there throughout our lives.
The word-of-mouth, reviews or testimonials are the oldest advertising ways which have influenced several buyers before purchasing anything. Whether we buy from a local store or an online store, the reviews from the existing customers play an important role in purchase decision.
So, let us discuss about the customer reviews and at the end of this blog post you will get the answers for the questions: What is a customer review? How it is different from testimonials? Why these reviews are important for a product? And how it is beneficial for a customer and the eCommerce business?
What is a Customer Review?
As per the definition of the customer review, it a feedback given by the customers or consumers for the products or services they have purchased or used. These reviews are posted on the eCommerce or online shopping websites.
These customer reviews are generally read or rather referred by other customers to get the idea about that particular product or service before they could actually buy that product/service.
As per the Local Consumer Review Survey 2015, 92% of the customers refer these online customer reviews to get the knowledge about the product/services and the business/brand. And out of those 92% people, 73% form an opinion about the product just by reading 1 to 6 reviews.
Nowadays, 80% of customers trust and believe in online customer reviews just as they believed in word of mouth or recommendations.
Difference between a Customer Review and Testimonial
In a business, it may seem that a review and testimonial are same. Because they both involve the feedbacks from the consumers or clients. But, a customer review is different from a testimonial and there should be different ways to answer or handle these two.
A customer review is the feedback which the customer writes on product pages, search engines or a separate review website. The reviews can or cannot be shown to other users. The reviews are conversational because the shop owners can reply to those reviews.
On the other hand, a testimonial is the feedback given by your best customers or clients which is posted on the website. They are non-conversional. But you have the option to select the best of testimonials which you may wish to show to your other users/visitors.
The Importance or Need of Customer Reviews
The answer to the question why it is important could be that, it affects your reputation and conversion rates. Most of the customers read the reviews about the products, services or brand before they even interact with that website or store.
According to a survey performed by Bright Local in 2015, 88% of the customers get influenced before they take the buying decision. The customer reviews abolish any doubts which a customer may have about the product or services and helps them to finalize the product for purchase.
Some stats shows that people believe more on the online customer reviews instead of product descriptions mentioned on product pages. All these points informs that the business owners should spend their quality time in getting the customer reviews or feedback.
Benefits of Customer Reviews for an Online Business
Now that you know about the reasons for having the customer reviews on the online stores, let us see what benefit it gives to the online businesses.
- Helps in business marketing: When a customer posts any review for you, it appears as an advertisement for your business. It brings the awareness among the users and visitors about your name and product. It tells them about your products/services.
- Higher sales rate: When you receive more reviews for your products, this ultimately means that your products are getting sold with higher rates. The combination of good and bad reviews work together and shows that you believe in transparency. And this helps in building trust in your brand.
- Customer recommendations: There is a large population who still believes in recommendations rather than only product reviews or descriptions.
- Shows areas of improvements: There will be some reviews which may suggest that you need to make some improvements in your products/services to perform better. And it is the responsibility of the business persons to not neglect those reviews and take those as the area or scope for improvements.
When you reply to a customer review, it helps to build a relationship with the customer and brings more loyalty in customers.
With this, we will wrap up this post now. But in the future posts, we will cover the other aspects of the customer reviews which will eventually help the eCommerce business owners to grow and form a strong reputation among the population of shoppers.
If you have any questions or doubts about customer reviews, you can get in touch with us anytime. We would be happy to talk to you!
M-Connect Media
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