Reviews support conversions of your products. Find out why

Reviews support conversions - find out more in the following overview, based on a study covering 1.5 million online products from 1,200 brands.

Reviews are an essential purchasing factor for customers

Almost 100% of them research the product carefully online before buying, 77% of them target review sites. The trend is growing due to the current economic situation, most notably among younger generations, starting with Gen X. The search doesn't just involve flicking through pictures and counting stars - 68% need to read the full text, 97% research the date, and 99% intend to find at least a few dozen texts. 

Buyers are interested in online reviews - but how does this reflect in conversions? Is review marketing really as effective as claimed? And what exactly works best? A new review study that analyzed 1.5 million products, from 1,200 brands, helps answer the questions. Data collection took place between January 1, 2022 and December 31, 2022.

We've summarised the best of it in the following chapters. Find out more!

Conversions are boosted just by the presence of reviews on a product page

The effect is around 4%. Reviews subconsciously complete the image of a trusted brand, reassure social proof and encourage further exploration...

Miracles start to happen when reviews get customers to interact

If review content causes a reaction from a buyer, you get up to 102% conversion lift, according to current data, which is a few percent more than in 2022. So the effect is steadily growing.

There can be several types of interactions with reviews, each of which works in a specific way and also has a unique conversion impact. Research shows that the strongest lift is delivered by elements such as voting on the value of a review, search, a scrolling gallery, or displaying a duel of positive vs. negative feedback.

Get to know them all!

At first sight, Nike only gives you information about the number of ratings and the average number of stars. The arrow on the bottom right then encourages interaction, which sells...

Source: www.nike.com

After interacting with the tab, you will see several reviews, the number of stars and two other interactive links - one is a CTA encouraging you to write a review, the other takes the client to a page dedicated to reviews only.

Source: www.nike.com

Voting on reviews increases conversions by several hundred percent

Even though every opinion counts in review marketing, some texts will be better for customers than others. They will find more interesting information, better written, with nicer images and messages. How to find them? Simple - let people vote.

You can find the classic thumbs up and thumbs down on almost every review page nowadays. And in terms of conversions, they are literally priceless - if a customer rates the text positively after reading it, you can expect a conversion lift of almost 400%. A relatively high 270% lift will occur even if they rate negatively. If you're wondering why, it's important to remember that the customer isn't rating you, they're rating the opinion of others - if they're annoyed by one, it doesn't mean they won't buy the product.

Voting for reviews can look like this. The "Flag" button allows clients to easily report texts that look fake or contain offensive content.

Source: www.nike.com

Review search engine is a must have

While people need to see at least 100 texts when they make a purchase, they won't read them all, and it's a struggle for them to manually search for a post that tells them exactly what they need to know.

Is the product really effective for this type of stain? Is the vacuum cleaner too noisy? How does the paint look in normal light? If you add a search engine to the reviews, people will pull up the answer in seconds. So it's not surprising that this feature also delivers roughly 270% conversion lift.

Additionally, search data is a valuable source of information for brands about the customer mindset. What are they most interested in about the product? And what words do they use in their searches? It is worth monitoring the situation and regularly enriching your content with the most searched phrases and information.

CTA in the footer

Even a persistent reader of reviews will reach the bottom of the page at some point. What next? There are several options:

• Most conversions come from the lift up option (178% lift)
• If you have multiple pages, be sure to add a "back" button (162% lift)
• Of course, the "next" button brings almost 100% lift.

Even small interaction elements like this can sell. Thanks to them, the reader quickly finds his way around the texts, checks the quantity in a moment and then nothing prevents him from buying.

Best vs Worst review duel

This element will satisfy customers on two fronts - they'll find out what you are great at, and what you're not good at yet. Don't show the whole review, just a snippet. This is because your goal is to get the customer to interact with the "view more" button. If he clicks this way on a positive review, it will be reflected in about 130% conversion lift.

The effect is very high (118%) even when reading the negative review. This is because with negative reviews, customers are exploring whether they can live with a possible deficiency, and since the answer will often be positive, the criticism may ironically lead them to buy.

Reviews filter and product tags

As we wrote above, although buyers need a large volume of texts, it is not in human power to read them all. Manual searches will unnecessarily exhaust them and discourage them from buying. Therefore, other interactive elements that are worth implementing on a review page are word/star filters and product tags.

• Thanks to the filter, the customer can find the kind of texts that interest him with two clicks. The highest conversion lift comes from the top-rated (181%), newest (171%) and oldest (134%) categories, which accurately reflects shoppers' concern to read recent texts. Conversion lift in the tens of percentages is then also offered by interactions with the most helpful, worst rated and image categories.
• A simple filter based on the number of stars can also bring about a quick change, resulting in almost 90% more conversions.
• Complementing the filters are product tags. These are product-relevant labels such as "convenient", "for work" or "durable". When a shopper clicks on the tag, they'll see all the reviews that have something to say about that attribute, increasing the brand's chances of getting a nearly 100% conversion lift.

If you put all of the above elements together, you get a clear review page. The client can see the main advantages of the product, the quantity of reviews or filter out the essentials within a minute. The rest can be found in the search engine.

Source: www.nike.com

Even in 2023, visuals play a major role in review marketing

One picture or video often says more than a thousand words. Branded content is great, but it's usually shot in artificial light, in a stylized environment, and not always at an angle that the customer is interested in. The photos and videos in reviews elegantly solve this problem.

People take photos or videos of the purchased items authentically, in the warmth of their homes and in normal use, so it's immediately clear to everyone that they're not buying a pig in a poke. Therefore, it's no wonder that this type of content is targeted by 77% of people and, for top brands, accounts for up to 25% of all the links a search engine offers you. In short, your brand is living a parallel life, but fortunately it's a profitable one - reviews with photos and videos can double conversions.

Branded content is great, but in real life, the best selling content is the one created by the customers themselves. It's as authentic as possible and everyone can identify with it.

But again it depends on the interaction

There are several ways to display photos and videos, and each has a unique impact on how well they will sell.

• Create a customer gallery. While it's nice to have a photo next to each piece of text, it's also worth offering customers a separate album where they can find all of the visual content in one place. Interacting with any of its items increased conversions by 102% in a study.
• Simple arrows that can easily be used to click through to the next image when enlarged also have potential. This proves a 103% lift in conversions.

What can we learn from all this?

Even when online shopping is the norm, there will always be a small element of suspicion caused by not being able to try a product first. Quality reviews can overcome this shortcoming of e-commerce. People trust them like the advice of a friend, so it's no wonder that quality social proof influences conversions.

The main conclusion of the study is that your review marketing must encourage interaction. This is what an ideal review site should have:

• Review previews that can be clicked to view full size.
• A review filter where everyone can find their own.
• A search engine to quickly find specific information.
• Tags to easily identify text that addresses aspects of the product most relevant to the shopper.
• A comparison of the best and worst reviews.
• Large amounts of UGC in the form of photos and videos.
• A gallery of customer-generated content.