
It's no secret that customers now invest more time in offline and online research about the products they want to buy before making a purchase decision. This is the age of the omni-channel customer, and omni-channel customers devote more time in research and expect that they experience the same level of shopping experience from any sales channel they traverse into. Omnichannel.me says that brands and companies need to be more involved and open to the idea of making the customers' buying experiences "continuous and universal". The buying journey is fragmented, and to close these customers, you need to engage all customers in all fronts. 
Product reviews provide a great opportunity for your eCommerce website to engage these customers and guide them into purchasing your products. According to econsultancy.com, user reviews are "sales drivers, and something the majority of customers will want to see before deciding to make a purchase."
Product reviews are becoming essential to the customers' buying decision. PowerReviews CEO Matt Moog says that product reviews have become a necessity for consumers when they are making purchase decisions. Retail Touch Points report that in a recent study, 86% consider product reviews to be an essential part of the decision-making process, and nearly 94% consult reviews during online item browsing. Moreover, customers nowadays even seek out websites that provide product reviews, with 57% of all surveyed online shoppers admit to actively looking for product reviews for the items they want to purchase.
86% consider product reviews to be an essential part of the decision-making process, and nearly 94% consult reviews during online item browsing.
User Reviews Increase Online Awareness for your Products
When customers online review your products and post them online, these reviews are potentially boosting your SEO, especially organic search traffic. According to forum.web.com, customer reviews increase your search traffic by an average of 15-20 percent. This boost can become pivotal to your online sales success as these visitors can be instantly qualified as prospective buyers who are searching for your products.
Also, search engines reward sites with new and updated content, and according to forum.web.com, encouraging customer reviews is a great way to develop a constant flow of "new, user-generated" content. When you're publishing new and always-updated content on your site, or customers publish their reviews on your site or on others', you can be sure that search engines will constantly reward your SEO as well.
With the rise of rich snippets and structured data, and with the continuous innovation of search engines to present data better to consumers, search results for online items are displayed more attractively to customers, providing more information presented in an organized manner, and according to econsultancy.com, increases click-through rates 10-20% of the time.
Increasing Conversion Rates and Sales with Product Reviews
Of course, online retail success can ultimately be decided only by top-line growth from online efforts, and product reviews have been found to increase sales and order volumes by significant amounts. forum.web.com reports that adding even one product review to a product page "increases order volume by 10 percent." Moreover, adding 30 customer reviews to a product page increases order volume by 25%, and customers who visit product pages and read reviews are more likely to buy 58% of the time compared to those who do not.
According to econsultancy.com, product reviews remove any doubts for potential buyers about a product they want to purchase,
or when they are selecting products they want to buy. They report that 63% of customers are more likely to buy items from a website that has user reviews.
Product reviews remove any doubts for potential buyers about a product they want to purchase, or when they are selecting products they want to buy.
Indeed, the positive effect and value of product reviews for your online customers' decision-making has been emphasized over time. Connected Business eCommerce provides you a web store that caters product reviews from your customers, complete with 5-star ratings and comments where customers can post reviews, and is SEO-friendly, so you can be sure that all your online content are properly indexed by search engines and easily searchable.
So, do you use product reviews for your website? How has product reviews benefited your online sales? Share with us on the comments section below.