Managing Customer Reviews to Grow Your Conversion Rates

Managing Customer Reviews to Grow your Conversion Rates Customer reviews are one of the best ways to build trust and loyalty about a product.

A review section of any marketplace or online store, not only acts as a tool of product awareness but also helps a customer in decision making. It is the customer’s decision that influences the conversion rates of any store who is selling online products or services. Major marketplaces like Amazon depends quietly on the customer reviews to rate the products on their marketplace. It is the reviews which decide the ratings of the products and it is the ratings which decide the conversion of a particular product on the store.

Effective management of customer reviews help to build trust and loyalty among the customers that later emerge as an improvement in conversion rates. Getting an effective management of reviews is not an easy task, but it is a necessary job which every store owner should emphasize on. Knowband, an eCommerce plugin development company has come up with a wonderful OpenCart Review Incentive module that can transform every small, micro, medium to eCommerce giants like Amazon by providing them engaging customer reviews. With these reviews, you can build trust and loyalty among your customers.

A point to remember here is that a highly rated product not only sell more in quantity but also sell more on price. So, it is better if we can manage these priceless assets so that it can be utilized as a tool to boost our conversion rates.

Let us see how we can manage a pool of customer product reviews on our store/marketplace.

1. Do not make the reviews a tough task for the customersReviews must be easy, we do not want our customers to crack an MIT entrance for reviewing our products. Make it open for all the customers, it's better if we do not ask too much details that could frustrate the reviewers. Asking just an email id could be a better option. From email ids itself, you can automatically retrieve the basic details of the customers like name, age, sex, etc. We should try to design the reviews section as much simpler as it could be.

Here is an example of a concised customer review panel from Knowband that does not ask too much of the details for reviewing a product.

2. Be a moderator so that customers don’t feel their feedback didn’t reach youAny customer who writes some reviews does not do it in vain. They want the reviews to be utilized by other visitors for making purchasing decisions. The role of site admin is to maintain the integrity and originality of the reviews. He/she can do that by preventing illegitimate users and spammers on the site. For this, a proper mechanism for approval of reviews is necessary so that only the genuine reviews get live on the store. This involvement of admin can make the reviewers feel that their reviews are getting the required attention of the concerned authorities.

3. Show your honesty by letting bad reviews liveNo product is impeccable and almost every product has its downsides, that's why every product can get some bad reviews. Trying to hide those downsides may bring down the level of trust and loyalty among the customers about your product and store.

It is perfectly normal if these bad reviews bring down the overall rating of the product on the store, at least you are being honest to your customers and that's the one thing every customer seeks from your reviews panel. Showing honesty with one bad review can influence the decision making of customers for all the other products on your store. Thus, improving your overall conversion rates significantly.

4. Never alter the original reviews of the customers

Reviews are all about trust and credibility of your online buyer. If you get a bad review, as I mentioned earlier, let it be live if it's a genuine one, except for the obscene comments and spammers who should always be prevented. Do not rewrite the original reviews of the customers as it will surely affect the trust of the reviewer towards your online store. However, you can fix the typos and other grammatical mistakes or punctuation errors as it is acceptable.

From all the factors affecting your conversion rates, management of reviews is the best way to get an unbiased and organic level of trust and loyalty for your brand name.

I think, checking out these crucial factors would surely help your eCommerce business. Also, check out some brands like Amazon, Flipkart, eBay and more to get an idea about how effectively they manage the pool of customer reviews on their platforms.

Analyze the effectiveness of your current review panels using Mocking Fish heat map tool in order to get an idea if they are really serving your purpose properly or not. You can implement the changes as suggested by this heat map tool and acquire a perfect review management system on your store.