This brief is to inform Online Retailers & Web Development Teams of the increasing importance of online product reviews. With the rise of social media we need to exhort product reviews from social shopping sites to continue to increase conversion rates for our customers.
How Google Is Changing How Product Reviews Are Displayed:
For websites they trust & coded correctly they are listing product reviews in organic search engine rankings. For example, if you type in drooling bar into Google, Drooling Dog’s yelp profile page appears with reviews:
Google Product Search (Google Shopping) has also began to crawl other comparison shopping sites such as BizRate & Shopzilla, Epinions & Shopping.com, PriceGrabber, and ResellerRatings. Product reviews from these trusted sites are showing up in Google Shopping Results:
Why Is This Important For Online Retailers?
Social product reviews (i.e. from customers) are even more important than ever. A product review listed on Shopzilla now appears in Google’s Shopping Results! A review of a company on Yelp now appears in Google’s Organic Search Engine Results!
Companies spend millions of dollars to make more money online. Fortunately for them, have their web design team install product review rich snippets and effectively manage their data feeds can push their company well ahead of their competitors with minimal investment.
Easy Solutions For Web Designers:
Google Checkout: When you install Google Checkout into a website you are in a sense encouraging customers to review your products & services. Why? Google encourages users to review your product / services after the checkout process. So by simply having the option to pay with Google in an eCommerce Web Design you allow customers to write reviews that Google will index in Google Base. This is an example of how Buy.com does it.
Comparison Shopping Review Software: Every comparison shopping site is different. Shopping.com allows you to Integrate Their Product Review Software into your online retail store. So, instead of having internal product review software you use Shopping.com. Everytime someone reviews your product it updates on Shopping.com & epinions.com. This means your reviews also show up in Google’s Shopping Results since Google’s spiders their reviews!
Amazon Marketplace: Amazon.com reviews show up in Google’s Shopping Results. Amazon.com also advertisers their products in Comparison Shopping sites, google ppc, and everywhere imaginable online. This means if you are listed on Amazon.com you allow Amazon.com to create the reviews for you. Especially if you are the low cost leader, everytime someone reviews a product on Amazon.com your chances of selling that product greatly increases.
The Old Fashion Way: Hammer it home user great customer service. After a customer orders & has received the product send an email or give them a phone call. Technology is advanced, have your web guys develop a software application that sends an automatic email 7 days after a product is shipped is not out of the question. A simple follow up asking if they received the product and if they could review the product on your site if they liked it is a very cost effective way to increase product reviews.