Category: Blog

Power Points:

Reviews are made to be read, on your product pages and anywhere else they can help you sell.
Repurpose your reviews, and you can enjoy more engagement, more clicks, and more sales.

Reviews – by their very nature – are immensely powerful validation of a product or service from someone who has actually used it. They therefore typically have way more credibility than any marketing in your own words.

As a result, brands and retailers are increasingly recognizing the conversion value of review content above and beyond the product page.

In fact, customer reviews are commonly now used in marketing emails, social media posts, throughout company websites — and even on in-store displays and product packaging.

Which – at the risk of repeating myself – makes a ton of sense given the inherent credibility and validity that comes with feedback from your customers in their own words.

If you’re not currently using review content left by customers in your marketing, this article is for you. But even if you are, read on to see how other brands and retailers are doing it to perhaps get your creative juices flowing.

Plus, it’s highly likely that at least some of these ideas will be brand new to you. Many of the brands and retailers we work with are getting super creative with how they use reviews in their marketing, and they’re enjoying tons of positive customer feedback as a result.

So, without further ado, here are 21 fresh ways to use reviews in your marketing this year.

Email marketing

Emails and reviews go together like PB&J. Here are five of the best real-world examples of using reviews in email campaigns that we’ve seen recently.

1. Use reviews to hype holiday promotions

Which is more interesting: A generic email telling you about a holiday promotion, or one that features a review from a real customer raving about what a great gift your product was?

We love this example from LobsterGram because they use the review as the sales copy for a holiday email promotion. This is a super-efficient approach because not only do you save your marketing team the trouble of creating new copy, you probably end up being more persuasive as a result.

The holidays are coming, so now is an ideal time to start thinking about how you can repurpose reviews in your holiday content. And remember, you can use this technique for any holiday — back to school, Halloween, New Year’s — you name it.

2. Support your latest product launch

Incorporating reviews in your product launch is a great way to get buy-in. Get customers excited about your new product by telling them what other people think, like this example from Banana Republic.

3. Make reviews the main event

Need some inspiration for your next email campaign? Elevate reviews to be the star of the show.

This example from At Home is one of our favorites. They sent out an email with a subject line that read “You rated and reviewed; we rounded up your faves.” Talk about building intrigue! The call-to-action-based subject line invites people to open the email and take a look. The email itself featured top-rated products with star ratings and snippets from 5-star reviews.

Power Pro Tip Review-focused emails like this one can be a clever way to reignite interest in your brand — especially if you sell the kind of products that people only shop for occasionally, like furniture.

4. Add to cart abandonment emails

The average cart abandonment rate hovers around 70%. Bring that number down by including reviews in your cart abandonment emails.

For some shoppers, a visual reminder of the items they had in their cart might be enough to convince them to come back and buy. But many shoppers will need something more persuasive — like a 5-star review from a real customer. Here’s an example from Bowflex.

5. Augment broader campaigns and messaging

Do your emails feel like they’re missing something? If you’ve got some extra space, include a recent positive review in your marketing emails.

It’s the perfect opportunity to highlight something positive about one of your products, build a sense of community among your customers, and, of course, remind people to leave their own reviews! Here’s an example from Saje:

Your website

Reviews don’t deserve to be siloed on your product pages. Feel free to repurpose them throughout your website. Here are four ideas to try.

6. Add reviews to your homepage

Your homepage is a centerpiece of your entire marketing strategy. Your messaging and presentation of that message needs to be highly impactful but also attention-grabbing and succinct.

Your customers are generally more persuasive than your marketing team and often talk in blunter terms that are more likely to directly resonate. Take a cue from Suja and highlight snippets from your reviews on the homepage.

7. Turn reviews into headlines

Your website is no doubt made up of a ton of headlines across category pages, product pages, landing pages, and so on.

Struggling to come up with something that hits the mark?

Turn to your reviews like Molekule did. We love this approach because it’s unique, and it brings a sense of authenticity to the brand.

Whether you have a small marketing team or you just need a little inspiration, look to your reviews to see if you can pull anything from there.

8. Include review snippets in sliders

Traditional Medicinals features reviews in their image carousels (this example is taken from the homepage). We love this example because not only do they show the star rating with the review, but they also include a call-to-action.

If the person is a new shopper, they can click to read more. If they’re a returning customer, there’s a subtle reminder to write their own review.

9. Transform reviews into images

We’re starting to see clients utilize reviews as an alternate image in product photo galleries.

Pop your best reviews into your favorite graphic design tool and transform them into a graphic. You can use them as graphics in your own product gallery as well as on other retailer websites.

Here are two examples from Soylent:

Social media

Social media is all about conversation. Why not use this marketing channel to promote all the wonderful things customers have to say about your brand? Here are five ways to get started.

10. Include reviews in your Instagram Stories

It’s tough to think up new Instagram Stories content daily — let alone multiple times a day. Give yourself a break and showcase your customers’ voices, like Continental Tires does.

Power Pro Tip Include shoppable links for each reviewed product to drive conversions. Here’s an example from Osprey Packs:

11. Add them to your Instagram Story Highlights

After you share the reviews in your Instagram Stories, save them to your Story Highlights so customers can see them forever. Here’s what to do:

Create a Story Highlight and name it “Reviews.”
Then, whenever you post Stories featuring reviews, save the Story to this Highlight.

Check out how Osprey Packs and Shindigz are doing it:

12. Feature reviews in your social media posts

You can also show off your reviews in your traditional social media posts, like Healthy Choice does. We love how they paired the review with a delicious photo of one of their meals!

13. Give your ads a boost

Reviews sell, so why not include them in the content you’re creating specifically to sell? (We’re talking about social media ads.) Saje Wellness shows how it’s done:

14. Highlight reviews on LinkedIn

That’s right. You can even use reviews on LinkedIn. Just take a cue from The Hartford.

Insurance can be a dry topic, but they keep it interesting by using reviews in their social media posts. They replace the auto-generated thumbnails for their LinkedIn posts with a positive customer review instead.

The five gold stars capture attention on the busy news feed and get people to read their reviews. Brilliant!

Other marketing communication

Our clients have even found creative ways to leverage reviews in their other marketing communications, including print communications and product packaging. Check it out.

15. Go from online to offline

Customer reviews offer more context to your product descriptions. Consider how you can incorporate them into your print catalogs and marketing materials.

This example from Trek Bikes is fantastic because it leverages social proof in two forms: industry awards and customer reviews.

16. Add reviews to product packaging

Make your product packaging multipurpose: highlight customer satisfaction while also boosting review volumes at the same time. Here’s an example from Derma E.

On the front side of their product insert, they include a QR code asking recipients to leave a review. On the flipside, they feature a positive review alongside instructions for using the product.

17. Augment with more specific directional detail

If you have extra space, give customers additional information to guide them in their research.

Hook them in with glowing review content, and then provide specific detail to help them identify whether the product is right for them (e.g. key specs like product dimensions or top-rated use cases). Here’s an example from Topo Athletic.

In-store

Did you know 70% of consumers want to access product ratings and reviews while they’re in store? Here’s how to give the people what they want.

18. Stand out in the product aisle

NYX Cosmetics includes star ratings in their standup display at a Target. The star icons arrest attention, and instantly convey that your product is trusted by shoppers.

19. Display reviews on the shelf

Instead of listing out product benefits generated by their marketing team, Benefit Cosmetics displays stats generated from real people, like “94% said eyes look more wide open”

Power Pro Tip If you’re short on space, try squeezing in a quick review in the shelf pricing label, like Bliss does.

20. Use a QR code

You can only fit so many reviews on a shelf display. Invite shoppers to read more reviews by scanning a QR code. Just follow this example from Sensodyne.

21. The product itself

Finally, you can always include reviews in the spot that’s so obvious you might have missed it — the product itself! Here’s an example from Yeti:

This example I found in a post by Surabu Pokhriyal, Global Head of Ecommerce at Colgate Palmolive, on LinkedIn. This was from her own personal shopping experience in Costco – she actually provides a super interesting take on this in terms of the blurring of store and digital channels and how they work together in the customer journey.

But from a reviews perspective, I love the way the packaging cites 40,000 reviews from a range of different locations. This builds exceptional credibility.

Kylie Sheehan

Kylie Sheehan is an Enterprise Customer Success Manager at PowerReviews. When she's not helping her clients optimize their Ratings and Reviews strategy to help them grow their sales, you can find her doing home renovation projects (and spending the majority of her time at Target and Home Depot)!

Power Points

Millennials are the largest living generation. Today, there are 72.1 million in the U.S.
Millennials are the generation with the most digital buyers. Today, 85.9% of Millennials make purchases online.
On average, Millennials make 60% of their purchases online.
Millennial shoppers depend on ratings and reviews to make informed purchase decisions, regardless of channel. 99.9% read reviews when shopping online and 63% do so when shopping in-store.
Millennials don’t write reviews as frequently as they read them. Just over half write reviews multiple times per month.
Understanding what motivates Millennials to write reviews can help brands and retailers generate more content from this large, important demographic.

Millennials, people born between 1981 and 1996, are a force to be reckoned with.

Today, there are 72.1 million Millennials in the U.S., making it the largest living generation. And they’re willing to spend money with the brands they love. According to Statista, Millennial-led households in the U.S. spent an average of nearly $60,000 in 2019.

There’s no denying that the shopping habits of Millennial consumers are vastly different from those of the generations that came before them.

Namely, Millennials shop online more than older generations — and they depend on feedback from other consumers throughout the purchase journey.

In order to attract and retain Millennial shoppers, brands and retailers must understand these key differences — and adapt their strategies accordingly.

Reviews are Essential for Online Millennial Shoppers

Millennials were the first generation to grow up with the internet. So it’s probably not surprising that they’re also the generation most likely to shop online. According to eMarketer, 85.9% of Millennials were digital buyers in 2020, compared to 78% of Gen X and 60.9% of Baby Boomers.

When they’re shopping online, they depend on reviews and other types of user-generated content to navigate the journey and make informed purchase decisions. In fact, 99.9% of Millennials say that they read reviews when shopping online at least sometimes.

Reviews influence where Millennials choose to shop online — more so than any other generation. 85% of Millennials say they specifically seek out websites with reviews, compared to 76% of Gen X’ers and 70% of Boomers.

Millennials Seek out Websites with Reviews

And if Millennials can’t find the content they’re looking for, they’re likely to pass on the product altogether. Nearly half (48%) of Millennials indicate that they won’t purchase a product if there are no reviews for it, compared to 42% of Gen X shoppers and 39% of Boomers.

Of course, glowing reviews help Millennial shoppers understand how great a product is. But this generation also wants to learn about the worst case scenario before committing to a purchase.

And they do this by reading negative reviews. 97% of Millennials specifically seek out negative reviews at least sometimes. And 60% say they specifically seek out one star reviews. In fact, Millennials are the generation most likely to seek out one star content.

Seeking Out One-Star Reviews

Negative reviews help Millennial shoppers make better purchase decisions. What’s more, when you display negative reviews, it helps you earn the trust of Millennial shoppers. After all, 47% say they’re suspicious of products with a perfect five star rating.

Millennials Use Reviews In-Store, Too

Up until this point, we’ve focused on how reviews impact online shopping behavior. But today, most Millennials continue to do at least some of their shopping in a brick-and-mortar store. Per Digital Commerce 360, Millennials do 60% of their shopping online. The remaining 40% happens in a physical store location.

Millennials use reviews when shopping in-person, too. In fact, Millennials are the generation most likely to consult reviews when shopping in brick-and-mortar stores. 63% of Millennials read reviews when shopping in physical store locations, compared to 56% of Gen X shoppers and 39% of Boomers.

How to Generate More Reviews from Millennial Shoppers

Millennials are shopping online more than any other generation. And they place a tremendous value on reviews when they do so.

So it’s easy to assume that Millennials also write a lot of reviews. But that’s not exactly the case. Our research found that just over half (53%) of Millennials say they write reviews multiple times per month.

Once you determine what motivates Millennial shoppers to write reviews, there’s potential to significantly increase your review volume. But what exactly do you need to do to encourage more reviews from this demographic?

Recently, we surveyed more than 10,000 consumers to understand what motivates them to write reviews. For the purposes of this blog, we’re zeroing in on the behaviors of Millennial shoppers to provide five recommendations for generating more content from this group.

1. Deliver Great Experiences

You may think Millennials are more likely to write reviews if they’ve had a bad experience. But our research tells us this actually isn’t the case.

Rather, a great experience is the top motivator for Millennials to write reviews. 92% of Millennials say that a great experience motivates them to write a review, compared to 76% that indicate a negative review motivates them to write a review.

Factors that Motivate Consumers to Leave a Rating/Review

A positive experience

92%

Receiving free product samples

87%

A negative experience

76%

Incentives (reward points, discounts, etc)

73%

Helping and guiding others

68%

Desire to help brand improve product

64%

Being part of a reviewer community

50%

Reading ratings and reviews from others

45%

Validation from other shoppers

26%

So make it a priority to consistently deliver great products and experiences to your customers.

Of course, developing great products is essential. But so too is managing expectations. Be sure to provide plenty of information — including comprehensive product descriptions, customer reviews, and professional and shopper-submitted photos and videos — to ensure shoppers have realistic expectations of your products.

That way, when the product arrives, it’ll meet customer expectations — and their great experience with your product will make them more likely to leave a review.

But remember: a great product is just one factor that contributes to a customer’s experience.

It’s also important to focus on ways to improve the experiences your shoppers have with your brand throughout the purchase journey — from browsing on your website, mobile app or brick-and-mortar store to reaching out to your customer service team when something goes wrong.

After all, Salesforce research found that 80% of consumers indicate that the experience a company provides is as important as its product or service.

Great experiences lead to happy customers. And happy customers are more likely to purchase from you again…and write positive reviews about your products.

2. Ask for Reviews -- But do it More Than Once

Of course, there are shoppers out there who will write reviews of their own volition. But more often than not, customers need to be prompted to submit a review.

One of the most effective ways to prompt shoppers is by sending a post purchase email, asking them to provide reviews for recently purchased products. Research tells us that up to 80% of reviews are the result of post sale emails.

But as it turns out, a single email often isn’t enough — especially among Millennials. A third of Millennials say they need to be asked twice before leaving a review, and 6% need to be asked three times!

Number of Times Millennials Need to be Asked Before Leaving a Product Rating or Review

If shoppers don’t write a review after receiving your post purchase email, consider sending a second — or even a third.

It’s a low effort tactic that can help you generate a lot more review content from those Millennials who need an extra nudge.

3. Make Your Request at the Right Time

We know that it can take up to three post purchase emails to get a review from a Millennial shopper. Now, the next question is: “When’s the best time to ask for reviews?”

There’s not exactly an easy answer. Our survey also reveals that 41% of Millennials say they write reviews within four days of receiving a product — including 7% who do so the day the product arrives.

But the remaining 59% indicate they submit reviews five or more days after a product’s arrival. A quarter need to spend at least eight days with a product before they’ll consider writing a review.

Average Length of Time Taken After First Using/Receiving a Product to Submit Review

What’s more, while 32% of Millennials say they’ll write a review after using a product just once, the remaining 68% need to test drive the product at least twice before submitting feedback.

Number of Times Product Used Before Review Submission

These data points support the need for multiple post purchase emails, spaced out over a few days or weeks, depending on the product category. At a minimum, send one shortly after a product has arrived to capture content from those shoppers willing to submit reviews after a single use. And send a second (and possibly, a third) email later on, once your Millennial shoppers have had a chance to try out the product in question multiple times.

4. Try an Incentive

Of course, the best way to get more reviews from Millennial shoppers is to provide them with great products and services. But if you want to quickly generate more reviews from this demographic, the right incentive can go a long way.

After all, 73% of Millennials indicate that an incentive would motivate them to write a review.

When you’re asking for reviews from Millennial shoppers, consider sweetening the deal by offering an incentive. The most enticing incentive for Millennials is receiving a free product sample, which probably isn’t a big surprise.

In fact, a product sampling campaign is a proven way to generate a high volume of content quickly (on average, brands and retailers that leverage PowerReviews’ sampling capabilities find that 86% of those who receive a free sample will go on to write a review).

However, there are other incentives that intrigue Millennial shoppers, including early access to a product (84%), discounts (74%) and loyalty points (65%).

Here at PowerReviews, we also have many clients that significantly boost their review volumes by offering an entry into a sweepstakes in exchange for a review.

Incentives Leading to Review Submission

Loyalty points

65%

Discounts with store/brand

74%

Receiving a product before the general public

84%

Receiving the product free of charge

91%

Whatever incentive you choose, make sure it’s prominently showcased in your post purchase emails.

For example, this post purchase email invites the consumer to enter a sweepstakes by mentioning a hashtag in their review.

It’s also a good idea to call out the incentive on the review submission page. For example, when a shopper clicks on the post purchase email above, they’re taken to a page that reminds them that they’re eligible for a sweepstakes entry for writing a review.

Finally, be sure to disclose when a review was written as the result of an incentive. For example, shoppers can clearly see that the customer who wrote this (syndicated) review did so on the brand’s website and received an entry into a sweepstakes.

It’s an important way to be transparent — and preserve your customers’ trust.

5. Focus on Higher Priced Items

Our latest research found that reviews are particularly impactful for higher cost items. This is especially true for younger shoppers — including Millennials.

86% of Millennials say they read more reviews for expensive products, compared to 70% of Boomers and 78% of Gen X shoppers.

The most logical explanation is that there’s risk associated with purchasing expensive items, and reviews provide social proof that can help shoppers overcome that risk.

Interestingly, over a quarter of Millennials (28%) also say they’re more likely to write reviews for expensive products.

Reviews can give Millennials the confidence they need to purchase an expensive product. But a good number of Millennials are also more likely to write reviews for higher priced products.

So, put a bit of extra effort into collecting reviews for the more expensive items in your product catalog. One way to do that is to send an extra post purchase email to customers who purchase these higher priced items.

Start Leveraging Reviews to Connect with Your Millennial Shoppers

Millennials depend on reviews whether they’re shopping online or in-store. Brands and retailers must provide plenty of this content, or risk losing shoppers to a business that does.

Millennials also have the potential to be a rich source of reviews for brands and retailers. But it can be challenging to generate reviews from this busy group of shoppers, especially because their behaviors and motivations are different from other generations.

The first step is to understand what motivates Millennials to write reviews. Then, you can use those insights to evolve your approach to review collection — and start generating a higher volume of reviews from this important demographic.

To put it simply, more millennial reviews = more millennial conversions and sales = more millennial reviews = more millennial conversions and sales…and so on and so on.

Andrew Smith

Andrew is an experienced ecommerce technology marketer. When he's not thinking about his day job, he's running around after two small children in Chicago's Lakeview neighborhood.

Power Points

99.9% of consumers read reviews, and 98% consider them an essential step on the consumer path to purchase.
The more reviews a brand has, the better. Shoppers who visit a product page with 1-10 reviews are 52.2% more likely to convert than those who visit pages without any reviews.
At the risk of stating the obvious, more reviews equals more conversions and sales, regardless of product type. However, review volume has the highest impact on conversion rate for shoppers in the electronics, CPG, furniture, and luxury goods categories.

There are a few truisms we can rely on in this life.

Cat videos will never get old, taking vacation is always a good idea, and people will always consult reviews when making a purchase.

Our latest analysis of consumer activity during more than 4.5B visits, across more than 1.5MM online product pages from more than 1,200 retail and brand sites has revealed new insights. Some aren’t so surprising, like the fact that people trust reviews more than ever. Others are a bit more surprising, like the impact of review volume on customer conversion rates.

Below we recap our latest findings on the impact of review volume on conversion, broken down by industry, with tips for boosting your own review count and quality.

The Power of Reviews

First, let’s review the impact of reviews in general (see what we did there?).

Back in 2018, we asked consumers what role reviews played in their purchase journey. At the time, 97% reported consulting reviews, and 89% considered reviews an essential part of the purchase journey.

Those numbers were impressive enough. But they’ve only grown bigger since. Nearly all (99.9%) of today’s consumers read reviews, and nearly as many (98%) consider them essential. In a world where it’s hard to know what to trust, shoppers know they can rely on reviews to be authentic and unbiased, empowering them to make an informed purchase decision.

In fact, consumer trust in reviews is so high that 86% of online shoppers say they won’t even buy products without reading reviews first.

And indeed, reviews are driving shoppers to purchase. Our 2021 UGC Conversion Impact Analysis found that when a shopper interacts with ratings and reviews on a product page, it lifts their conversion rate by 120.3%.

The Impact of Reviews on Conversion

Ecommerce UGC Page Visitor Overall

3.4%

Conversion for Those Who Interact with Reviews

7.6%

120.3% conversion lift when visitors interact with reviews

Ratings and reviews are now so critical to making purchasing decisions that they’ve edged out price as the most important factor for shoppers. 94% of shoppers say ratings and reviews are the most important factor in their decision, compared with 91% who said price (Source: Ever-Growing Power of Reviews).

Top Factors Impacting Purchase Decisions

Ratings & Reviews

94%

Price of the product

91%

Free shipping

78%

Brand of the product

65%

Recommendation from friends/family

60%

Imagery provided by people who have previously purchased the product

52%

Imagery provided by the brand or retailer

46%

The Power of Review Volume

Reviews are table stakes for business today. If reviews are so essential, does it follow that more reviews are even better?

We recently commissioned some new analysis exploring this question. To accurately assess the impact of review volume on the shopper journey, we calculate the visitor conversion rate based on the product page visited with the most reviews during a site visit (counted as all interactions with a specific site in a 24 hour period). The benefit of this consumer-centric evaluation method is that it focuses on the shopper and the impact that exposure to reviews has on likelihood to convert.

Our data from the past twelve months (5/12/2020-5/14/2021) reveals the incredible impact of review volume on conversion.

When a shopper is exposed to a product page with 1 or more reviews, conversion lifts by 52.2%.
Shoppers visiting product pages that have 11 to 30 reviews have conversion rates that are over 2x higher than those who visit product pages with 0 reviews.
When products reach the holy grail of 101 reviews or more, we see shopper conversion rate increase of over 250%!

The takeaway is clear: the more reviews you have, the better.

There’s a direct, linear relationship between the number of reviews a shopper is exposed to on a product page and the lift in conversion rate.

The influence of review volume on a customer’s decision to purchase makes a lot of sense, when you take a step back to think about it. As University of South Carolina marketing professor Dr. Sungsik Park recently told the Wall Street Journal, “It’s all about sample size. The more reviews, the more likely the comments will reflect the product’s true quality.”

As important as review volume is, the consumer appetite for reviews still isn’t being met by brands and retailers. Over half (53%) of shoppers consult up to 10 reviews when buying a product, but 68% say that in an ideal world, a product would have at least 26 reviews for them to consider. Given the insatiable consumer demand for reviews, there’s a clear opportunity for brands to increase their review volume.

The impact of review volume extends beyond individual products. Nearly six in ten shoppers say they’re more likely to buy a product that has no reviews if other products from the same brand have high overall ratings. So, good reviews for one product generate a halo effect that extends to other products. This just goes to show the power of social proof and how reviews help establish trust and credibility for a brand overall.

What About Your Industry?

Reviews are impactful irrespective of industry, but the extent of this impact does vary across verticals. Which product categories see the highest impact from reviews?

Percentage of shoppers who indicate reviews are helpful, by category

Electronics

95%

Health & Beauty

83%

Clothing

75%

Shoes

68%

Home & Garden

67%

Toys

54%

Groceries

42%

Baby

40%

Electronics & Computers

95% of consumers state reviews are helpful when shopping for electronics. In the consumer appliances & electronics category:

When a shopper visits a product page with between 1 and 10 reviews, there is a conversion lift of 70.5% (compared to visitors to product pages with 0 reviews).
If a shopper visits a product page with between 31-50 reviews, their conversion lift increases to 224.7%.

81% of consumers state reviews are helpful when shopping for computers.

When a shopper visits a product page in the computer & software category with between 1-10 reviews, there is a conversion lift of 115.2% vs. a product page with 0 reviews.
When a shopper visits a page with between 11 to 30 reviews, the conversion lift is 255.4% (vs a product page with 0 reviews).
At 31 to 50 reviews, the shopper conversion lift is 314.6%.

Reach 51 to 100 reviews, and shopper conversions lift by a giant 378.0%.

Health and Beauty

83% of consumers stated that reviews are helpful when shopping for Health and Beauty products. In this category in particular, volume is king.

When a shopper visits a Health and Beauty product page with 1-10 reviews, the conversion lift is 22.1%.
But when a shopper visits a product page with 101+ reviews, their conversion lift reaches 275.7%.

Clothing & Accessories

75% of consumers find reviews helpful when shopping for clothing and 68% when shopping for shoes.

When a shopper is exposed to an item in the Clothing & Accessories category with 1-10 reviews, the conversion lift is 33.6%.
For a shopper who visits a product page with 11-30 reviews, their conversion lift is 67.6%.
For a shopper who visits a product page with 31-50 reviews, their conversion lift is 98.6%.
For a shopper who visits a product page with 51 to 100 reviews, their conversion lift is 107.5%.
For a shopper who visits a product page with 101 or more reviews, their conversion lift is 162.8%.

Grocery & Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG)

When a CPG shopper visits a product page with 1-10 reviews, their conversion rate nearly doubles – with a conversion lift of 194.5% (in comparison to visitors to pages from the same product category without any reviews)

For a shopper who visits a product page with 11 to 30 reviews, their conversion lift is 286.2%.
For a shopper who visits a product page with 31 to 50 reviews, their conversion lift is 474.4%.
For a shopper who visits a product page with 51 to 100 reviews, their conversion lift is 579.5%.

For a shopper who visits a product page with 101 or more reviews, their conversion lift is 686.2%.

Despite a slower ramp up, we see a similar pattern in Food and Beverage. Put simply, the more reviews a shopper is exposed to, the higher the lift in conversion rate in this category.

With 11 to 30 reviews, the shopper conversion lift is 74.4%.
With 31 to 50 reviews, the shopper conversion lift is 160.3%.
With 51 to 100 reviews, the shopper conversion lift is 211.0%.
With 101 or more reviews, the shopper conversion lift is 270.3%.

Home and Garden

67% of consumers state reviews are helpful when shopping for home and garden products. When a shopper visits a product page in this vertical with between 1 and 10 reviews, there is a conversion lift of 44.7% (in comparison to a visitor to product pages in this category without any reviews).

In this category, more than 30 reviews appears to be the sweet spot as we don’t see a material lift as review volumes rise beyond this level.

With 11 to 30 reviews, the shopper conversion lift is 142.8%.
With 31 to 50 reviews, the shopper conversion lift is 211.6%.
With 51 to 100 reviews, the shopper conversion lift is 213.3%.

In the furniture category, there is a 56% lift when a shopper visits product pages with 1-10 reviews vs. those with zero. After that, the lift is exponential.

With 11 to 30 reviews, the shopper conversion lift is 346%.
With 31 to 50 reviews, the shopper conversion lift is 564%.
With 51 to 100 reviews, the shopper conversion lift is 838%.

With 101+ reviews, the shopper conversion lift is 1,326% !

Jewelry and Watches

80% of consumers say that the more expensive a product is, the more they read reviews. It’s no surprise then, that conversion lifts for shoppers visiting luxury goods product pages (such as jewelry and watches) reach 147% if they have 1-10 reviews on them (in comparison to product pages in this category without any reviews):

Conclusion

The key takeaway from all this? Reviews matter. Like really matter.

Companies of all shapes and sizes scrutinize the ROI of each and every investment – which is standard practice and simple common sense. When it comes to product ratings and reviews, the ROI is very clear and is not even remotely difficult to justify.

Across all of the key categories we studied: the more reviews a product has, the higher the likelihood it has of converting a shopper to purchase. This is just a simple universal truth of ecommerce.

What does this mean for you? 1. You need to make collecting high volumes of ratings and reviews a priority and 2. When you do, you need to make sure you display this content in a way that it will have maximum impact.

This may sound simple but the honest truth is ratings and reviews are often an afterthought for brands and retailers.

So if you adequately prioritize both these strategies, you will stand out from your competition. And who wouldn’t get excited about that?

Alyson Fischer

Alyson Fischer is our Product Marketing Manager, obsessed with using data-driven storytelling to deliver a best-in-class customer experience and inspire dynamic engagement across channels. When she’s not agonizing over writing this bio, you can find her exploring Chicago with her furry sidekick or watching a true crime documentary on Netflix.

Audrey Zuckerman

Audrey is a Business Intelligence Analyst at PowerReviews – passionate about empowering users with data. When she isn’t building reports or writing SQL, you can probably find her hiking the greenbelt in Austin, TX or playing with her dog at Zilker Park.

This is the PowerReviews trends snapshot for June 2021, an analysis of consumer activity across more than 1.5MM online product pages from more than 1,200 retail/brand sites over the past six months.

The headline for this edition is broadly more of the same, with ecommerce purchase volumes and Ratings and Reviews trends remaining consistent over the past couple of months.

However, the biggest trend worthy of note is that review impact on purchase journey is up on what we saw pre-Covid.

Key ecommerce market trends

01

Ecommerce purchase volumes continue to remain stable

02

Review submission levels and product sentiment also remains stable

03

Review impact on online purchase consistently 18% higher than pre-Covid

eCommerce purchase volumes continue to remain stable

After continued stability over the past few months, April and May were a case of more of the same.

Because we measure changes over short periods, it’s worth reiterating that this increase is off a baseline of significantly higher volumes than pre-Covid.

So at the risk of going old ground, we saw a huge initial surge led to an overall 3x increase in online purchase volumes between February (pre-pandemic) to May 2020 before a steady decline and then stabilization, with purchase volumes consistently between 40% and 70% higher than they were pre-pandemic.

The Holidays resulted in the typical marked seasonal increase, before a return to post-Covid normality despite the continuing vaccine rollout where online purchase volumes were consistently in the range of 40-70% above where they were pre-pandemic.

Review submissions, length, and product sentiment remain stable

In our Post-Holiday snapshot, we highlighted a giant surge in review volumes – largely to be expected given seasonal purchase increases (hence the increase in December and January).

Since then, review submission has been unsurprisingly consistent given online purchase volumes mirrored this trend.

Review length and sentiment continues to be stable

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, review length and sentiment (in the form of average rating) also remains flat. This has been the case since we started our analysis over a year ago.

So although Covid’s impact on ecommerce generally has been transformational, it has not affected the content of reviews submitted by consumers.

Reviews continue to drive purchase more than pre-Covid

Over the last few monthly snapshots, we have included a deep dive into the impact of review content on the buyer journey – paying particularly close attention to year-on-year comparisons.

The headline from this update: Reviews are continuing to have more of an impact on the purchase than pre-Covid.

To recap, the charts in this section highlight the percentage of online shoppers who go onto purchase after they’ve interacted with review content (i.e. searched, filtered, clicked to extend the review from preview to view entire content etc.)

Although down from a pre-Holiday 2020 high of 5.25%, this figure for April and May 2021 was consistently at around 4.7% (note the 2020 line highlighted below shows the beginning of Covid, when all bets were off).

This represents an 18% increase on the roughly 4% figure that was the norm pre-Covid (as evidenced in early March 2020 below).

For more data and insight on how reviews and other forms of user-generated content impact online behavior, checkout our 2021 Conversion Impact of User-Generated Content report.

Summary

In summary, we noted the following clear trends:

Online purchases stable
Review submission levels and sentiment trends flat
Review impact on purchase journey up 18% pre-Covid.

As the extreme ecommerce trends evident at the start of the pandemic fade into the rear view mirror, we will be publishing a market trends update every other month – meaning our next report will be published in August.

Regardless of what they’re shopping for, modern consumers depend on reviews to make informed decisions. Our most recent survey found that 99.9% of online shoppers read reviews, and 57% of in-store shoppers do so.

Brands and retailers that generate and display plenty of this content experience a healthy boost to the bottom line. At PowerReviews, we’ve found that when a product page goes from having no reviews to one review, there’s a 108% increase in organic traffic — which means more eyes on your product pages. And our recent analysis of activity on 1.5MM online product pages from more than 1,200 brand and retailer sites found that there’s a 120.3% lift in conversion when a visitor interacts with ratings and reviews on a product page!

With results like these, it’s no wonder why many brands and retailers make it a priority to collect more reviews. In fact, one of the most common questions we get from our customers is, “How can we generate more reviews?”

Of course, there are a number of tactics commonly used to generate reviews, including post purchase emails and SMS messages, among others. But in order to boost your number of reviews, it’s essential to understand why consumers choose to write reviews in the first place.

We recently surveyed more than 10,000 U.S. shoppers specifically to understand the factors that motivate shoppers to write reviews. Here’s a snapshot of the results:

In this post, we’ll zero in further to explore the top five reasons shoppers write reviews — and how your brand can leverage these motivations to start generating a higher volume of this conversion-boosting content.

Motivation #1: A Positive Experience

The most successful businesses are those that are laser-focused on consistently delivering great products and experiences. In fact, a study from Forrester Consulting on behalf of Adobe found that 80% of businesses say that improving customer experiences is a top priority.

Efforts to improve customer experience, when done right, pay off. Great products and experiences lead to happy customers who are likely to spend more with your brand — and tell others about their positive experiences. Research from American Express found that Americans tell an average of 11 people about a great experience with a brand.

What’s more, great experiences motivate shoppers to leave reviews. 91% of those we surveyed indicate that a positive experience is a factor that motivates them to submit a review.

These positive reviews give future shoppers the confidence they need to convert. So make it a priority to deliver great experiences to shoppers across all stages of the customer journey. Of course, offering great products is important. But so too is ensuring each experience a shopper has with you — whether it’s browsing on your website or mobile app, shopping in one of your stores, or interacting with a customer service representative to resolve an issue — is a positive one.

Motivation #2: Receiving Free Product Samples

Product sampling is a tactic that’s been used by consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies for years. And for good reason. People are more willing to take the risk of trying a new (or new to them) product if they don’t have to pay for it. And the hope is that those consumers will love the product so much, they’ll start buying it.

In our latest survey, we also found that 86% of consumers said that free samples motivate them to write reviews. This aligns with the fact that at PowerReviews, we find that an average of 86% of consumers who receive a sample as part of a sampling campaign go on to write a review.

Sampling campaigns not only yield a high volume of content quickly, they also yield great quality content. At PowerReviews, we find that reviews from sampling campaigns are 83% longer on average than reviews captured via non-sampling tactics. This is good news, as detailed reviews are typically more helpful than short, vague ones.

So if you’re releasing new products (or just have products in need of additional reviews), consider a product sampling campaign. This involves sending out free samples to current customers (or an engaged community of consumers), and then asking for reviews in return.

When it comes time to display these reviews, remember that transparency is key. Add a badge to these reviews to make it clear that they were submitted as a part of a sampling campaign.

Motivation #3: A Negative Experience

The same American Express research we cited earlier found that on average, Americans tell 15 people about bad experiences they have with a brand. These unhappy customers aren’t just telling their friends and family though. They’re also sharing their feedback with complete strangers by writing reviews. In fact, a negative experience motivates 76% of shoppers to leave a review.

Of course, we’d never encourage you to purposely deliver negative experiences and subpar products in order to generate more reviews. After all, a customer who has a bad experience probably isn’t going to leave a very flattering review. And negative reviews should never be something to aim for!

But the reality is, the occasional negative review isn’t the end of the world. In fact, it can actually be a good thing.

For starters, our latest survey found that 96% of consumers specifically look for negative reviews, up from 85% in 2018. Reading negative reviews helps shoppers understand the worst case scenario — and decide whether it’s something they can live with. For example, a consumer shopping for a couch might see this one-star review for one product, mentioning that it’s “very, very stiff.” But she prefers firm couches, so this isn’t a concern to her.

A perfect average star rating can also be a red flag for shoppers because they know a product can’t be all things to all people. Nearly half of shoppers indicate they’re suspicious of products with an average star rating of five out of five. So by displaying negative reviews alongside positive ones, you’re showing shoppers that you have nothing to hide — and that you’re a brand they can trust.

Finally, negative reviews can be a great way to identify ways to improve your products and experiences. For example, if an athletic apparel brand notices that a particular shirt has a lot of negative reviews that mention the product falling apart soon after purchase, there may be an opportunity to work with the manufacturer to improve the quality of the item.

The bottom line? Don’t aim for negative reviews. But when you get a negative review, resist the temptation to delete it. And be sure to respond to it. According to Salesforce’s State of the Connected Customer, 78% of shoppers will forgive a company for a mistake after receiving excellent service. Your response will also show future shoppers that you value feedback and stand behind your products.

If you want to find out more about how to use negative reviews to your benefit, check out our blog on this very topic.

Motivation #4: Incentives

There are plenty of customers who submit reviews without receiving anything in return. However, nearly three-quarters (73%) of consumers we surveyed said that an incentive would entice them to write a review.

A small incentive can go a long way. So consider offering one to shoppers in exchange for a review. Of course, it’s important to choose an incentive that’ll work well for your brand. However, some options that are particularly appealing to consumers include:

Discounts
Loyalty points
Receiving a product before it’s sold to the general public
Receiving the product free of charge

Be sure to make the offer clear in your post purchase emails. For example, this post purchase email is offering an entry into a sweepstakes for a $200 gift card in exchange for a review.

Again, transparency is key. Be sure to make it clear when a review was submitted as the result of an incentive. For example, this review includes a “sweepstakes entry” badge, which indicates the customer received an entry into a sweepstakes in exchange for submitting her review.

Motivation #5: Helping and Guiding Others

Sure, free samples and incentives can boost review submission rates. But there are plenty of consumers — 67% in fact — who say that the opportunity to help and guide other shoppers is a great motivator to write a review.

Consider tweaking the language in your post purchase emails and write-a-review form to position reviews as a great way to help fellow shoppers. For example, this post purchase email highlights that the customer’s feedback is a “big help to other guests.”

Leverage Top Shopper Motivations to Start Generating More Reviews

Today’s shoppers depend on reviews to make informed purchase decisions. And generating a steady stream of this content can enable you to get more visitors to your product pages — and convert them once they’re there.

Now’s the time to hone your review generation strategy. Once you understand why shoppers write reviews in the first place, you can then focus your efforts on tapping into these motivators to start generating a higher volume of reviews.

Sarah Cougill

Sarah is a marketing specialist at PowerReviews – a software company obsessed with driving growth with UGC. When she isn't rambling about the power of customer feedback, she's walking around Chicago and cooking vegan food for friends and family.

Power Points

The Google product reviews update does not impact the kind of reviews you have on your website, i.e. individual product reviews written by verified customers.
The update targets affiliate-style blogs that review products, or lists of products, in a long-form article format. For example, articles with titles like “Best Drip Coffee Makers of 2021” or “2021’s Best Top Load Washing Machines, Reviewed.”
At PowerReviews, we are focused on ensuring that the user-generated content we help you collect is authentic and helpful.
Learn how our review displays are already engineered to satisfy Google’s requirements for useful, thoughtful, and detailed review content.

We know you’ve probably heard about a recent Google update concerning product reviews. It’s totally normal to get nervous whenever Google makes a big announcement.

But, if you’re a PowerReviews customer, there is no need to panic with this update.

Google’s product reviews update is targeting the kind of generic, unhelpful information you find in affiliate blogs and listicles, so that true product reviews — like what you have on your website — can come to the spotlight.

Read on as we break down what you need to know about Google’s product reviews update, how it impacts search and page rank, and how PowerReviews products are already set up to help you take advantage of this change.

What Is the Google Product Reviews Update?

The Google product reviews update targets affiliate-style blogs that review products, or lists of products, in a long-form article format. It is not targeting individual product reviews written by verified customers, like the kind you have on your website. That’s the key takeaway you need to know.

What is an affiliate blog, you may be wondering? Let us explain.

Affiliate blogs include links to all the products they review, with unique identifiers that help the retailer identify which clicks and purchases came from that blog. If a reader clicks on a link and buys the product, the company rewards the affiliate with cash. That’s why these blogs almost always have something vaguely positive to say about all of the products featured; it’s the best way for them to make money!

Think back to the last time you researched online to buy an important purchase, like a new TV or coffee maker. You may have been looking for an expert’s opinion on the top options out there. You may have found yourself reading an affiliate blog. The blog may have talked vaguely about what to look for when you compared products, and all the products kind of sounded the same.

We’ve all found ourselves reading one of these affiliate review blogs. They’re typically only somewhat helpful. In fact, many of them share the same information you’d find on a retailer’s website, which you could have found yourself!

This is exactly the kind of the content Google’s looking to catch with this product reviews update. Instead of promoting “thin content that simply summarizes a bunch of products,” Google is changing up their ranking algorithms to ensure that the affiliate blogs they feature were written by people who have actually used the products and can speak to them knowledgeably.

Google always aims to share the most up-to-date, helpful information with its users, which is why it rewards sites that have richer, more freshly updated content with higher rankings in the search results. (This is why reviews are so good for SEO!)

INCREASE RANKINGS

0 %

More than 35% of customers begin the purchase journey on a search engine.

BOOST ORGANIC TRAFFIC

0 %

Organic product page traffic increases on average by 108% when going from zero to at least one review.

GENERATE MORE CONTENT

0 %

Product pages going from zero to at least one answer see an average traffic increase by 88%.

The bottom line: Google’s goal with this update is to ensure that when people look up blogs and review articles online, the content they find is written by experts who have deep knowledge of the industry, and have actually held the products they’re reviewing in their hands and used them. Google is not targeting user reviews of individual products like those found on your product landing pages.

How We Ensure Authenticity and Helpfulness at PowerReviews

Even though Google’s product reviews update has no impact on the types of review content we support here at PowerReviews, we’re vigilant about ensuring that the user-generated content we help you collect is authentic and helpful. We’re always brainstorming new ways to ensure your reviews convey a level of thoughtfulness and detail that give people actionable information. In other words — the kind of content that Google’s working to protect and promote.

It all starts with our Review Displays. We’ve designed them to be flexible, so we can easily adapt them to precisely fit the needs of your customer base. You can add different filters and review fields, from the pros and cons for a product to identifying information about the reviewer. This level of detail allows your brand to provide what we call contextual reviews.

What Are Contextual Reviews?

Contextual reviews enable shoppers to hone in on the reviews from people just like them. They can find a review and say to themselves, “Hey, this person sounds just like me! That gives me more confidence that the product will work for me!”

Here’s what that looks like in action, using Estee Lauder’s Repair Serum as an example. This product has over 15,000 reviews. That’s certainly impressive, but it’s also way too many for shoppers to read. Fortunately, with just a few clicks, they can use the filters to narrow down to just a handful of reviews that are hyper-relevant to them:

Google’s Product Reviews Update vs. PowerReviews:
Do We Pass the Test?

Google’s product reviews update targets affiliate-style blogs that review products or lists of products, not the customer reviews found on a retailer’s website. But, just for the heck of it, let’s see how our PowerReviews review display stacks up against Google’s guidelines, shall we?

In their announcement, Google challenged affiliate blogs to question whether their reviews satisfied the following guidelines. Here’s what they asked, and how PowerReviews passed (spoiler alert: we passed with flying colors!)

Do your reviews express expert knowledge about products where appropriate?

You know it! We ask reviewers to describe themselves (in terms of their preferences, demographics and so on), so customers can determine how much weight they should put behind a person’s reviews. For example, Sonos reviewers can identify as audiophiles (someone who’s clearly an expert in sound) or simply a casual listener.

Do your reviews show what the product is like physically, or how it is used, with unique content beyond what’s provided by the manufacturer?

Check! Our Review Displays allow customers to upload multiple images and add captions. In the example below from REI, shoppers can clearly see the reviewer is an avid hiker, thanks to the caption she added about the mountain she hiked.

Power Pro Tip We strongly recommend adding image and video content to your reviews. 88% of shoppers specifically look for user-generated photos and videos before they decide to make a purchase, and those who interact with user-generated image galleries are nearly twice as likely to convert.

Do your reviews provide quantitative measurements about how a product measures up in various categories of performance?

Yes again! You can invite customers to list the best use cases for a product. Then, at a glance, customers can view tallies of how many reviewers ranked a product for a particular use case. Sonos shoppers can see that this speaker shines at multi-room audio:

Do your reviews explain what sets a product apart from its competitors?

You betcha. Customers can use the open-ended review field to rave about what makes your product stand out. Canyon Bakehouse has won over gluten-free fans for making their bread taste like bread. Unlike other GF breads, it can be prepared various ways and always tastes great:

Do your reviews cover comparable products to consider, or explain which products might be best for certain uses or circumstances?

Check! Reviewers can discuss their favorite product, and compare and contrast it with your other products to help others find the best one for their needs. For a health shake like Vega, shoppers can also identify whether they prefer having theirs as a daily smoothie, on the go, or pre- or post-workout:

Do your reviews discuss the benefits and drawbacks of a particular product, based on research into it?

Yes, yet again. Reviewers can select from a list of pros and cons, so shoppers can see at a glance how well a product stacks up on everything that matters to them:

Do your reviews describe how a product has evolved from previous models or releases to provide improvements, address issues, or otherwise help users in making a purchase decision?

Absolutely. This is what Q&A was made for! Use your Q&A to respond to people’s questions and help them understand the best product for their needs, like Duraflame does:

Power Pro Tip Q&A is the most impactful type of user-generated content, even more so than reviews. When people interact with Q&A, they are 157.1% more likely to convert. Add Q&A to your site, and watch your conversion rates skyrocket.

Do your reviews identify key decision-making factors for the product's category and how the product performs in those areas?

100%. Not all review displays need to show the same information. For example, the review display for an apparel brand will look quite different than that for a food & beverage brand. We will work with you to create a review display that fits your needs.

Bonobos apparel shoppers can not only filter the reviews by the exact variation they’re considering, but they can also filter them by their size, height, and weight — allowing them to narrow in on reviews from people who look just like them.

Do your reviews describe key choices in how a product has been designed and their effect on the users beyond what the manufacturer says?

Yes! This is the power of contextual reviews. Reviewers can quickly provide information that allows other shoppers to determine how much weight they should give their review: Are the pros listed the same features that are most important to me? Do the use cases line up with how I intend to use the product? Does this person sound like me?

Then, shoppers can read the review to glean even more information, like how this Sonos reviewer describes exactly where he uses his Sonos speaker:

Don’t Worry, Be Happy

If we haven’t drummed it into you yet, there’s no need to worry about the Google product reviews update. And even if you were worried (which you don’t need to be), our review displays are already engineered to satisfy Google’s requirements for useful, thoughtful, and detailed review content.

We’re always on top of Google updates here at PowerReviews. You can rely on us to be working behind the scenes to make sure we’re always setting you up for success in the search results.

Riley Jenkyn

Riley Jenkyn is the Director of Business Operations & Strategy at PowerReviews, where he collaborates with clients and internal teams to harness the power of user-generated content (UGC) for eCommerce growth. When he's not chatting about Ratings & Reviews, you can likely find him on a country walk with his dog or bouldering at the local climbing gym.

Power Points

Product reviews drive conversions and revenue. They also provide unique benefits for category managers.
Category managers interact with customer review data to drill into specific products, categories, and custom product groupings to understand customer sentiment and trends.
With these insights on hand, category managers can optimize their product mix, spot trends early, and develop more effective relationships with suppliers.

From understanding market trends and consumer purchase drivers to managing product portfolio and supplier relationships, category managers have a lot on their plate. But at its core, category management is about driving revenue and margin by putting the right products, in the right place, at the right time and right price.

There are a lot of tools that can help category managers achieve these goals, but one that often goes underlooked is user-generated content (UGC) like product reviews.

Product reviews can give you unique insights that make your product mix more attractive, spot trends faster than your competitors, and help your vendors and private label brands better meet consumer demand.

The Power of Reviews for Category Management

Consider this: After price, reviews are the second-most important factor to customers making a purchase decision.

When you add ratings and reviews to a product page, conversions lift by 115% on average. Customers who engage with any form of UGC, whether it’s reviews, Q&A, or an image gallery, are twice as likely to convert than customers who don’t.

The takeaway? If you’re not prioritizing reviews as a category manager, you’re missing out on conversions.

The good news for category managers is that while more reviews are always better, you don’t need a ton to start seeing the benefits in your conversion rates. Just going from 0 to 1 reviews can increase conversion rates.

Clearly, reviews are good for revenue, but they also provide unique benefits for category managers. Here’s how you can use reviews to build out your category according to consumer demand, maximize revenue, and respond to trends before the competition.

1. Fix Your Mix

The Pareto Principle, or the 80/20 rule, has been a cornerstone of retail strategy for decades, and while it is certainly effective, it also has its limits. Just because products aren’t in the top 20%, doesn’t mean they don’t have value. The bottom 80% of your products likely fall into a niche category, which is very important to a certain customer.

At the same time, some of those bottom 80-percenters may not even be worth offering. So, how do you know whether a lower-volume product satisfies its niche, or is sitting stagnant on your shelves? You guessed it — reviews.

When you analyze your product reviews for customer sentiment, you may discover that the reason a product isn’t selling is because consumers dislike several things about it. Moreover, there could be another product you’re not currently offering that they much prefer. That’s the kind of information you’d never find in a product rank report.

SuperPower Success Story

“We stopped selling products we realized were disappointing customers. We didn’t have this information before, and now I can’t imagine operating without it. It’s key to the long-term customer relationship.”

Henry ColemanVP of Marketing, Hammacher Schlemmer

When Hammacher Schlemmer started using review analytics to inform their product mix, their conversion rates increased nearly 400%

Learn More

With the information you’ll find in reviews, you can make changes to your product mix that lift your category as a whole. You can optimize your product assortment by exiting unsuccessful products, elevating “hero” products, and adjusting your messaging and space allocation.

2. Identify Product Opportunities

Mining the reviews can reveal what products your portfolio is currently missing. It’s common for shoppers to compare and contrast a product they just purchased with a similar one they’ve used before.

From this analysis, you may expand your partnerships with new vendors. Or, you might see an opportunity for a private label product. You can see the features your customers are looking for, and the words they use to describe them, and then use that to inform your own private label product development — filling gaps in your current assortment, without cannibalizing your current suppliers

3. Supercharge Your Display

Reviews offer you direct access to the voice of your customer, and what matters to them. Beyond optimizing your product mix, you can use their feedback to adjust the way you display those products in-store and on your website to grab their attention when they’re ready to purchase.

Here’s a hypothetical example from Advance Auto Parts. Multiple customers rave about the usefulness of Scott Shop Towels in extreme weather and against coastal elements. Based on this information, the Category Manager in charge of Car Accessories may decide to feature the towels more prominently in-store during the winter season, or include them in a dedicated landing page that targets people living in beach cities.

Power Pro Tip Use the insights you glean from customer reviews to optimize your review display, and gain even more insights. Add a few basic prompts to your review display so you can help the next customer find what’s most relevant to them. For example, a beauty brand may ask customers for their eye color and skin type, while an apparel brand may allow people to select their size and age. Adding just a few filters can provide immense value for your customers — and for you when you analyze the reviews later on.

The North Face asks reviewers to select the pros of a product (e.g. lightweight, stylish), identify conditions it’s best for (e.g. hiking, casual wear), and describe themselves. Filters like these can give shoppers a ton of information quickly, even if the review itself isn’t very detailed.

4. Spot Trends Early

As a category manager, it’s up to you to keep a pulse on both market conditions and consumer behavior. Review analytics allows you to accomplish both simultaneously by distilling insights on consumer and industry trends from the source — the consumers themselves.

You can hone in on what features matter most to shoppers. Do certain attributes keep coming up again and again? Perhaps customers love that a product is organic, or that it keeps their child entertained. When you know what matters to customers, you can optimize your marketing accordingly.

For example, Ulta’s Hair category page features all the typical sections you’d expect to see on a category page, like best sellers. It also features sections for curly hair and ethical hair brands, likely as a response to customer trends.

Power Pro Tip Help new products launch successfully with a product sampling campaign. These can drum up a lot of quality reviews quickly.

5. Power Up Your Partnerships

Don’t keep all the review goodness to yourself. That information can help your vendors, too! Use what you learn to nurture your vendor relationships and help them help you, by identifying opportunities for innovation early on.

Sentiment analysis of your review content can help you understand how customers feel about your category overall. What are the common words customers use to describe products? What makes them satisfied, or unsatisfied? What are they looking for that your partners aren’t offering?

Having this type of analysis in hand makes you a better partner to your vendors. It gives you the tools to be proactive about negotiating changes in their products, to better align with their customer needs. When they perform better, you perform better.

For example, a brand might be unaware that their products are shipping with a defect, and all they can see from a top line sales report that it’s just underperforming. Your review analytics may explain why those products keep getting returned, so you can come to them with something actionable.

SuperPower Success Story

“Analyzing our UGC enables me to aggregate our customers’ opinion. I can go to our merchant and say ‘look at what our customers are saying, you need to fix this’. This insight is such a time saver for us.”

Amanda EverseSEO Manager, Gardener’s Supply Company

Learn More

Better for Your Category, Better for You

Analyzing your reviews can help you build a stronger category. They can also help you build a stronger career.

Owning insights on your category positions you as a thought leader. It increases your clout internally with cross-functional teams. Present your insights as evidence to back up your recommendations, and you may win more shelf space as a result.

Get started with UGC Analytics from PowerReviews, the #1 UGC-dedicated analytics platform on the planet.

Alyson Fischer

97% of consumers consult reviews before making a purchase. Simply adding one review to a product page that previously had none lifts sales for that product by 65%. Consumers who interact with reviews are 115% more likely to convert, and the more reviews you have, the higher your conversion rates.

Clearly, reviews have a huge impact on conversions. The data tells us this.

The problem is, too many brands — however unintentionally — delay adding reviews to their site. Conversations become hyper-focused on making the review display “on brand,” forcing developers through endless rounds of deployment to simply adjust a font size here, or change the shade of a star color there.

Worse, in an effort to be a thought leader, some brands try and reinvent the wheel. They start asking questions like, “Should we use our brand icon instead of stars? That could help us stand out.” (The answer, by the way, is absolutely not. You’ll only confuse your customers, which leaves you with less reviews, and less conversions.)

We’re writing this article to stop this fearsome scenario from happening to you. The research shows that the presence of high quality reviews in large volumes — not some vanity feature — is the largest determining factor in driving page traffic and conversions.

Why? It’s the information contained within the reviews that is the key, not how that information is presented. As a brand, your goal is to provide attention-short shoppers with the confidence to buy from you. So focus on what’s important.

Over the years, we’ve collected data from hundreds of brands, and thousands of end-customers, to analyze what really drives conversions. From the data, we can clearly see what works, what doesn’t, and what really matters when it comes to displaying reviews.

It’s not worth obsessing over the branding of your review display to the extent that you lose sight of what you’re doing. Your goal is to generate conversions. Focus on the best practices we share below — all proven by our data to actually drive more conversions — and you’ll be way ahead of the game.

Review Display Best Practices: The Official Checklist

What makes a top-performing review display? There are some elements that are more important for certain industries over others. For example, an apparel retailer needs to add size and fit to their review display, but that wouldn’t be applicable for a food and beverage brand.

It all comes back to focusing on providing the information shoppers look for and building credibility fast.

In general, however, we’ve honed in on a set of best practices that work well for nearly everybody. When adding reviews to your site, these are the 7 elements we typically recommend to include in your review display.

Other options tend to be unnecessary luxuries that won’t move the needle when it comes to converting shoppers.

Review Snippet

This is a simple visualization of a product’s review rating and volume that sits at the top of the product page, above the fold.

Review Snapshot

Further down the page, the complete review display includes a visual overview of the review content for a given product, including average star rating and rating distribution.

Search and Filter

This functionality helps shoppers find content relevant to their needs. They may click on pre-set filters or search for a specific phrase to find reviews or Q&A content that is most relevant to them.

Demographic Information

These help shoppers find relatable content from someone with similar characteristics and use cases to themselves.

Verified Buyer Badge

These badges build trust, by communicating to shoppers that a review was written by someone who actually purchased the product.

Visual Content Display

These photos and videos from your shoppers can be collected both natively and through social media.

Q&A Display

Customer questions displayed alongside the appropriate (and accurate) answers.

Now, the specific order in which these appear, or even the content (in the case of demographic information, for example) may vary from brand to brand. Here are a few review snapshots that show how brands from different verticals implement their review display:

Make it on-brand, but don’t overthink it

We know, we know: we said don’t obsess over your review display. And we still stand by that.. You don’t want to eat up all of your developers’ time on customizing every bit of your review display. The more stylistic changes you make, the longer it takes them to launch reviews — and the longer you go without reviews on your site, the longer you’re missing out on sales.

We’re not saying that brand isn’t important. It is. But, a few, very minor changes can take your review display from generic to on-brand. At PowerReviews, our out-of-the-box solution is designed to be flexible enough to meet 99% of a client’s requirements for review display. When integrating our solution, we recommend making CSS changes to the font style, star color, and background color. These are all pretty simple and quick, and go a long way toward making it feel on-brand.

Still not convinced that a generic review display can really work? Look up your favorite product on Amazon and check out the reviews. You’ll see Amazon uses the regular orange stars with their brand font, and there’s some drop shadowing here and there.

Amazon has tons of money and engineers, but they’re not spending those resources on CSS and branding their review display. They’re focused on review volume and getting the most pertinent information to their customers. Be like Amazon.

Display Q&A first

This is another thing that Amazon gets right — and many brands don’t. Amazon shows Q&A content above their reviews.

The data favors Amazon. Q&A Content has a higher conversion rate than reviews and images. Customers who interact with user-generated Q&A content are 153% more likely to convert, and products enjoy a 600% sales lift when a customer’s question is answered via Q&A.

Think about it: People are not going to ask a question about a product they’re not interested in. If they’re interested and there’s just one outstanding question keeping them from buying, a quick informed answer from your brand can really help them convert.

Still, many marketers have been conditioned to focus on reviews and reviews alone. Don’t be like those marketers. Position Q&A content above your reviews, and you’re likely to enjoy more conversions as a result.

Power Pro Tip Make your Q&A searchable to prevent duplicate questions.

Help customers find reviewers like them

Reviews are not one size fits all. Your shoppers care most about the reviews that come from shoppers like them, who share their style, use case, and unique situation. That’s why it’s important to give shoppers the ability to filter for reviews from people like themselves. When demographic filters are available, 47% of consumers will use them to seek out information most directly relevant to them.

Even better, we’ve found adding demographic filters translates to more sales. Our clients see an average 52% increase in conversion when consumers interact with filter tags (e.g. sort reviews from users with a particular hair color).

More importantly, this demographic information increases buyer confidence and makes your brand feel relatable — because shoppers recognize people like them among your customer base.

The demographic questions you choose can vary based on your industry. For example, Wander Beauty asks age, location, and skin type, while Bonobos asks about size, height, and weight.

Power Pro Tip 60% of customers return due to size and fit issues, so add a Size/Fit slider to reduce return rate.

Add an image carousel

People no longer trust the image carousels shown at the top of a product page, full of perfect stock images carefully chosen by the brand. Instead, they want to see real products in real life, from a person like them.

Some brands shy away from user-generated images, but again, we encourage you to look at the data. User-generated images build trust, traffic, and most importantly, sales.

88% of consumers specifically look for photos and videos submitted by other consumers prior to moving forward with a purchase decision.
72% of shoppers say they’re more likely to buy a product that has reviews with photos and videos in addition to written text, and 40% of Centennials won’t even consider purchasing a product if it has no photos.
Adding user-generated images to a product page results in an 18% uplift in daily traffic.
Adding just one customer-generated image to a product page boosts conversions by 69%.

It’s important to display user-generated images in very prominent places. You can collect this content natively. We also recommend pulling in content from Instagram because the content quality is usually higher than what people add to a native review form where no one else sees it. People view their Instagram accounts like a personal brand, so the images they upload are carefully curated — and more likely to align with your brand standards.

Images are almost always a good idea, but again, there are exceptions to every rule. Images are essential for makeup and apparel, but for credit cards, they’re not necessary.

Don’t shy away from negative reviews

When implementing a review display for our clients, the #1 question we get is about one-star reviews. Understandably, brands worry about bad reviews scaring customers away.The thing is, negative reviews actually help your brand. 82% of consumers specifically seek out negative reviews. Our data shows the top three things people interact with in a review display are all related to negative reviews (i.e. sorting by 1-star reviews, filtering the most helpful negative review, and searching for the most negative reviews).

Of the shoppers who click on star ratings, 63% click on the 1-star option. Moreover, those shoppers are more than twice as likely to convert than shoppers that don’t click on anything (7.8% conversion for 1-star filter clickers vs 3.7% conversion for non-clickers).

Shoppers want to confirm use cases and biases they might have about a product, and one way to do that quickly is to see what the unhappy people said about it. They use that negative content to inform their purchasing decisions, and remove barriers and hesitations they might have had previously.

The takeaway: Don’t be afraid of negative reviews. Trust that most customers can connect the dots. If the negative review is from someone with a completely different use case than themselves — such as a grandma buying a tricycle as a gift vs. an experienced dad who’s bought several tricycles before — it’s not going to affect their behavior. Rather, it can be an opportunity for you to win customers over and validate your brand. Show them that you are listening and responding to customers.

Power Tip Display your most helpful positive and negative reviews front and center. We call this our “review face-off” feature. Those who interacted with the face-off, positive or negative, have a 183% higher conversion rate than general visitors to the site.

Get Started Now

We saved the easiest, and perhaps the most obvious, tip for last. The best thing you can do for your review display is to launch it as quickly as you can (assuming everything’s been QAed, of course). Consider the brand experience, and use the best practices as your guide, but don’t lose sight of what’s important: conversions conversions conversions.

When implementing your review display, use common sense and be thoughtful. Think about what’s going to have the biggest impact on shopper behavior, and prioritize that. Everything else can wait. You can always make improvements later, once you have more data to inform your decisions. Get more tips for success in our Complete Guide to Ratings & Reviews for 2021.

Josh Weisman

Josh Weisman is Vice President, Global Revenue and has been at PowerReviews since 2014 advising brands and retailers on their user-generated content. When he’s not talking or thinking about UGC, he’s watching Peaky Blinders or being the worst active golfer in the Chicagoland area.

This is the PowerReviews monthly snapshot trends report for April 2021, an analysis of consumer activity across more than 1.5MM online product pages from more than 1,200 retail/brand sites.

We started measuring at the start of Covid. To recap, a huge initial surge led to an overall 3x increase in online purchase volumes between February (pre-pandemic) to May 2020. However, the subsequent four months through to October led to a steady decline and then stabilization, with purchase volumes consistently between 40% and 70% higher than they were pre-pandemic (we actually re-aligned our reports to three month periods due to this stabilization).

We then saw a slight uptick in preparation for the Holidays (remember: shopping was expected to start early this year).

Then onto the Holidays, when the typical marked seasonal increase materialized, before a return to Covid-era normality despite the continuing vaccine rollout.

Key ecommerce market trends

01

More of the same as online purchase volumes and site traffic continue at Covid norm levels

02

Review Submission Volumes Consistently Up on Pre-Holiday Levels

03

Reviews driving purchases more than they were pre-Covid

More of the same as online purchase volumes and site traffic continue at “Covid-norm” levels

Prior to the Holidays, consumer behavior had clearly become more predictable, with purchase volumes consistently around 1.4x to 1.7x where they were before the pandemic (this was after a giant surge in April, May and June). So remember that is the baseline we’re dealing with in the chart below.

After the Holiday surge, ecommerce purchase volumes settled to similar levels to where they were pre-Holiday in January, February and this continued into March (i.e. in the range of 1.4x to 1.7x where they were pre-Covid).

Review Submission Volumes Consistently Up on Pre-Holiday Levels

In our Post-Holiday snapshot, we highlighted a giant surge in review volumes – largely to be expected given the seasonal purchase increases that occur at this time of year.

However, overall review volumes are up slightly on where they were before the Holidays – and this has consistently been the case over the past three months (i.e. after the end of the Holiday period).

Review length and sentiment continues to be stable

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, review length and sentiment (in the form of average rating) remains flat. This has been the case since we started our analysis a year ago.

So although Covid’s impact on ecommerce generally has been transformational, it has not affected the content of reviews submitted by consumers.

Reviews driving purchases more than they were pre-Covid

Over the last few monthly snapshots, we have included a deep dive into the impact of review content on the buyer journey – paying particularly close attention to year-on-year comparisons during the Holidays.

We found that review interactors consistently converted at around a 25% higher rate than they were a year previously (the conversion figure is typically around 5.25% in the three months prior to Black Friday 2020 compared to around 4.25% in the same period in 2019).

For context, this figure had come down from its Covid peak (as also demonstrated below) of 6.85% in April 2020. This is in line with when we saw the highest ecommerce purchase volumes (when they hit a peak of 210% above where they were pre-COVID at this time).

Through March, the influence of reviews on the buyer journey climbed steadily, peaking at 4.86% of review interactors going on to make a purchase. As a reminder, the figure for March 2020 – highlighted for year-on-year comparisons – was the start of Covid when we saw unprecedented growth across all our ecommerce metrics.

For context, this is between the pre and mid-Covid norms (4.25% and 5.32% respectively, as illustrated above).

Summary

In summary, we noted the following clear trends:

Purchase volumes and product page traffic stabilized at similar levels to pre-Holidays (at around between 1.4x and 1.7x where they were pre-Covid)
Review impact on purchase behavior crept back up after a temporary post-Holiday lull.
Steady overall increase in review submission levels since early November

As we mentioned in last month’s report, 2020 is likely to have accelerated the transition online like no other event in the Internet age. More sustainable growth is likely post-Covid – as the below projected chart from eMarketer outlines.

In fact, eMarketer predicts that ecommerce growth in 2021 will be significantly less than half of where it was in 2019. However, coming off the back of the biggest year of ecommerce growth in history (32.4% year-on-year according to eMarketer), the overall trend of an increasing share of dollars being spent online (compared to instore) is a continuing and unpreventable process.

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Power Points:

Email marketing

1. Use reviews to hype holiday promotions

2. Support your latest product launch

3. Make reviews the main event

4. Add to cart abandonment emails

5. Augment broader campaigns and messaging

Your website

6. Add reviews to your homepage

7. Turn reviews into headlines

8. Include review snippets in sliders

9. Transform reviews into images

Social media

10. Include reviews in your Instagram Stories

11. Add them to your Instagram Story Highlights

12. Feature reviews in your social media posts

13. Give your ads a boost

14. Highlight reviews on LinkedIn

Other marketing communication

15. Go from online to offline

16. Add reviews to product packaging

17. Augment with more specific directional detail

In-store

18. Stand out in the product aisle

19. Display reviews on the shelf

20. Use a QR code

21. The product itself

Power Points

Reviews are Essential for Online Millennial Shoppers

Millennials Use Reviews In-Store, Too

How to Generate More Reviews from Millennial Shoppers

1. Deliver Great Experiences

2. Ask for Reviews -- But do it More Than Once

3. Make Your Request at the Right Time

4. Try an Incentive

5. Focus on Higher Priced Items

Start Leveraging Reviews to Connect with Your Millennial Shoppers

Power Points

The Power of Reviews

The Power of Review Volume

What About Your Industry?

Electronics & Computers

Health and Beauty

Clothing & Accessories

Grocery & Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG)

Home and Garden

Jewelry and Watches

Conclusion

Key ecommerce market trends

01

02

03

eCommerce purchase volumes continue to remain stable

Review submissions, length, and product sentiment remain stable

Review length and sentiment continues to be stable

Reviews continue to drive purchase more than pre-Covid

Summary

Motivation #1: A Positive Experience

Motivation #2: Receiving Free Product Samples

Motivation #3: A Negative Experience

Motivation #4: Incentives

Motivation #5: Helping and Guiding Others

Leverage Top Shopper Motivations to Start Generating More Reviews

Power Points

What Is the Google Product Reviews Update?

How We Ensure Authenticity and Helpfulness at PowerReviews

What Are Contextual Reviews?

Google’s Product Reviews Update vs. PowerReviews: Do We Pass the Test?

Do your reviews express expert knowledge about products where appropriate?

Do your reviews show what the product is like physically, or how it is used, with unique content beyond what’s provided by the manufacturer?

Do your reviews provide quantitative measurements about how a product measures up in various categories of performance?

Do your reviews explain what sets a product apart from its competitors?

Do your reviews cover comparable products to consider, or explain which products might be best for certain uses or circumstances?

Do your reviews discuss the benefits and drawbacks of a particular product, based on research into it?

Do your reviews describe how a product has evolved from previous models or releases to provide improvements, address issues, or otherwise help users in making a purchase decision?

Do your reviews identify key decision-making factors for the product's category and how the product performs in those areas?

Do your reviews describe key choices in how a product has been designed and their effect on the users beyond what the manufacturer says?

Don’t Worry, Be Happy

Power Points

The Power of Reviews for Category Management

Google’s Product Reviews Update vs. PowerReviews:
Do We Pass the Test?