In this article, we’ll explore the ins and outs of gathering product reviews for your eCommerce business. It’s essential to understand not only the techniques for collecting eCommerce product reviews but also the profound impact they have on your potential buyers.

We’ll delve into managing unfavorable feedback and maximizing the benefits of positive reviews. By the end, you’ll get acquainted with an exceptional review aggregation tool and learn how to seamlessly incorporate it into your eCommerce website.

Ecommerce Product Reviews: All You Need to Know to Gather Customers Reviews and Boost Sales

What are Product Reviews in eCommerce?

Product reviews in eCommerce refer to customer feedback and opinions about a specific item they’ve purchased online. Reviews offer insights into product quality and performance, helping potential shoppers make informed decisions and building trust between the online seller and the buyer.

Why are eCommerce Product Reviews More Important than ever?

Here are nine reasons why eCommerce product reviews are indispensable in your race against competitors:

1. Build Trust and Influence Decisions: Genuine feedback from real customers strengthens trust in your brand. When potential buyers encounter positive reviews, their confidence in making a purchase increases. Moreover, shoppers unsure about buying might be convinced by reading insightful comments on your products.
2. Gain Valuable Insights: Reviews offer direct insights into what customers appreciate and what they believe can be improved. Both positive and negative feedback serve as actionable data, helping you refine your offerings and overall shopping experience.
3. SEO and Online Visibility: Regularly added reviews can enhance your search engine rankings, making your products more discoverable to potential customers. Higher visibility online often translates to increased traffic and sales.
4. Leverage Word-of-Mouth Marketing: When customers share positive experiences, it creates a ripple effect. Positive reviews amplify the reach and reputation of your brand in the digital world.
5. Cultivate Customer Loyalty: Engaging with and responding to reviews shows customers you value their input. Such interactions can foster loyalty, ensuring that customers return for more purchases.
6. Stay Competitive and Enhance Offerings: Monitoring reviews on your platform and competitors helps you gauge your market position. Moreover, details highlighted in reviews will enrich your product descriptions, offering potential buyers a comprehensive view of the product’s real-world application.
7. Data for Product Development: Through reviews, you can identify recurring patterns about what features users wish your products had or didn’t have. This data can be invaluable for the Research and development team when considering modifications or launching new products.
8. Affiliate Marketing Opportunities: High-rated reviews can catch the attention of affiliate marketers or influencers. If they see a well-received product, they will be more inclined to promote it, opening up a new marketing channel for you.
9. Enhanced Supplier Relations: If you’re not manufacturing your products, reviews can be shared with suppliers to negotiate better deals, discuss quality improvements, or secure exclusive products. Positive reviews can reinforce the profitability of the business relationship, while negative ones can serve as leverage to negotiate improvements.

Top 5 Online Product Review Must-Know Statistics (2023)

1. Influencing Purchases: 95% of customers turn to online reviews before making a product purchase. When purchasing locally, 97% check online product reviews first.
2. Spending Impact: Positive feedback boosts customer spending by 31%.
3. Trust Factor: 49% of consumers value online reviews as much as personal recommendations from friends or family.
4. Avoidance Due to Feedback: 94% of buyers stated that certain reviews prevented them from choosing a business.
5. Skepticism about Perfect Scores: 68% are wary of a perfect 5-star rating if there aren’t multiple reviews supporting that score.

Ecommerce product review statistics underscore how important other buyers’ opinions are in shaping decisions and perceptions about an online store and brand.

Importance Of Product Reviews For Ecommerce Websites and Its Conversions

Based on big data analysis for 2023, here is a spreadsheet (click to enlarge) showing the increase in website conversions due to product reviews, by product category.

What is User-generated Content and Why it Matters?

User-generated Content (UGC) (videos, photos, reviews, blog posts, social media updates) is created by unpaid contributors, often fans or users of a brand or product. UGC is a highly powerful marketing tool, and here’s why:

1. Builds Trust and Authenticity: UGC provides real-life testimonies and experiences from genuine users. Potential customers often find this more relatable and trustworthy than polished advertisements.
2. Enhances Engagement: By sharing or highlighting user content, brands cultivate community and engagement among followers. The feeling of belonging boosts online interaction and increases brand loyalty and advocacy.
3. Boosts SEO: UGC, especially reviews and comments, can provide fresh content for websites and social media platforms, enhancing search engine performance.
4. Cost-Effective Marketing: Utilizing content created by users reduces the costs associated with content creation. It also yields more impactful results than traditional advertising due to its genuine nature.
5. Encourages More UGC: Sharing user-generated content can motivate other customers to share their experiences and content in hopes of being featured or recognized by the brand.

Given the listed benefits, it’s evident that UGC is not just a passing trend but an essential element in modern marketing strategies. Embracing it will promote the organic growth of your brand.

7 Reasons You Must Gather Product Reviews

Here’s why reviews, as a form of user-generated content, are critical and how they elevate your sales and profit:

1. Builds Trust and Credibility: Customers trust other buyers’ reviews more than brand messages. When shoppers see real feedback from other buyers, it fosters a sense of trust in the product and your brand, increasing conversions and purchase probability.
2. Influences Buying Decisions: A product with numerous positive reviews stands out and convinces uncertain buyers. Reading firsthand experiences helps potential customers understand the product better and pushes them toward clicking the magic buy button.
3. Provides Valuable Feedback: While positive reviews boost sales, negative reviews offer insights into areas of improvement. Addressing criticized areas refines your products and brand, increasing shopper satisfaction and sales.
4. Enhances SEO and Organic Visibility: Reviews positively impact search engine rankings. Search engines favor fresh content, and regular reviews update your product pages, ranking them higher.
5. Raises Average Order Value: Positive reviews encourage customers to spend more.
6. Reduces Return Rates: Accurate reviews give customers a clearer understanding of what they’re purchasing. When customers know what to expect, they’re less likely to return products, which protects your profit margins.
7. Encourages Word-of-mouth Marketing: Exceptional product reviews turn customers into brand advocates. Sharing positive experiences attracts more customers to your site without additional advertising costs.

Reviews act as a bridge between your brand and online buyers. Emphasizing and encouraging reviews directly impacts your eCommerce business’s sales and profitability. Simply put, more great reviews – more sales.

Buyer Review: Your SEO Secret Weapon

Buyer review is a golden nugget and a website’s SEO ranking currency, elevating its visibility amidst a sea of competitors. Without integrating genuine customer feedback, your eCommerce website risks languishing in the shadows, buried in internet limbo, and being obscured from shoppers.

Here is the March 2022, citation directly copied from Google:

“Today, we’re launching another update that builds on that work to enhance our ability to identify high-quality product reviews. This will make it easier for us to get sound purchasing advice in front of users, and to reward creators who are earnest in being helpful.

The update will roll out over the next few weeks and may impact the rankings of English-language product reviews across many sites.

We’ve seen positive effects of our initial changes on the English-language ecosystem and online shoppers, and we plan to open up product review support for more languages. If you create product reviews in any language, we recommend that you follow our best practices for product reviews to help your content have the most impact.“

Additionally, with the rise of AI and its integration into search engines, eCommerce buyer reviews have become one of the major ranking factors.

Knowing that 95% of all internet traffic happens on the first page of the SERP (Search Engine Result Page), it’s obvious how important it is to fight your way to the first page of ranking results. To do so, you must include buyer reviews on every product page on your online store website.

Quick Overview on How to Gather eCommerce Product Reviews

Below is a short overview of all the methods you should consider to gather product reviews. The review aggregation tactics are sorted by the conversion rates they lead to.

1. Incentive Programs: Reward customers with exclusive offers or points for their feedback to boost review submission rates.
2. Automated Follow-Up Emails: Use automation tools to send out emails post-purchase, nudging buyers to share their thoughts.
3. Streamlined Review Submission: Ensure a hassle-free review process on your website, making it intuitive for customers to submit feedback.
4. Active Social Media Engagement: Prompt reviews through your social channels and celebrate the ones that stand out.
5. Interactive Review Responses: Show appreciation by responding to reviews, creating a feedback-friendly environment.
6. Integration with Review Platforms: Partner with platforms like Trustpilot or Yotpo to make collecting and displaying reviews seamless.
7. Spotlight on Stellar Reviews: Feature standout reviews prominently, motivating others to share their experiences.
8. Encourage Visual Testimonials: Request photos or videos to give prospective buyers a tangible feel of the product.
9. Feedback Surveys: Use post-purchase surveys to glean insights, which can later be presented as reviews.
10. Host a Review Challenge: Organize competitions where the most insightful reviews win enticing rewards.

There are more tactics to gather product reviews. Check out all the tips to collect buyers’ feedback in our article How to Encourage Customers to Leave Reviews: 38 Easy Tactics.

Ecommerce Review Software: Automation is a Key

Automation tools empower you to seamlessly schedule and send tailored follow-up emails after each sale. Timed perfectly to match when a customer uses the product, your emails express appreciation for the purchase and gently encourage product reviews.

With automation, you maintain smooth and regular communication, enhancing your connection with customers and amplifying the likelihood of receiving valuable insights. Embracing this method saves you time and heightens your chances of obtaining genuine testimonials from happy customers.

Why are automated emails the second most effective review aggregator?

Automated emails rank as the second most effective review aggregator due to a blend of technological efficiency and human psychology:

1. Immediate Satisfaction and Recency Effect: Customers feel immediate gratification right after purchase. Psychologically, they’re more inclined to engage with post-purchase marketing messages, especially if the buying experience is positive. The recency effect, a cognitive bias that prioritizes the most recent events, plays a significant role here, making them more responsive to emails immediately after their purchase.
2. Trust from Initial Interaction: The first order confirmation email from your business boasting an opening rate of over 99% sets the stage for trust. Once the trust corridor is established, subsequent emails (like those regarding shipping or immediate post-receipt) are less likely to be disregarded or flagged as spam.
3. High Conversion through Continuity: Given the trust built with the initial email, your subsequent communications, especially during the shipping phase and immediately after package receipt, have shown a conversion rate exceeding 95%. This consistent engagement is attributed to the principles of commitment and consistency in psychology. Once customers engage in an action (like opening the first email), they will continue similar actions (like opening subsequent emails and leaving reviews).

In essence, the seamless blend of timely automation, prior positive engagement, and the psychological principles of recentness, trust, and consistency elevate automated emails to be a powerhouse in soliciting reviews.

Ecommerce Review Software: Automation is a Key

Automation is the key to successful product review aggregation in eCommerce for several reasons:

1. Convenience at Your Fingertips: As your eCommerce business flourishes and the number of customers multiplies, trying to personally connect with each one for reviews is overwhelming and time-consuming. Automation handles outreach for you, ensuring each customer gets a nudge to share their experience.
2. Cost-Effective Strategy: Think of the hours you’d spend manually chasing reviews or the expenses tied to hiring staff for the same purpose. Automation saves both time and money. Once set up, it gathers reviews continuously and on autopilot, without draining your resources.
3. The Golden Hour of Feedback: Timing matters immensely. There’s a brief yet powerful window after the purchase when the probability that a buyer will leave a review is over 80%. Automation ensures you never miss that moment, reaching out to your customers when they’re most receptive and happy to provide feedback.
4. Consistency in Outreach: With automation, you maintain a regular and consistent communication rhythm with your customers. Such regularity enhances trust and solidifies your brand’s presence in their inboxes.
5. Scalability on Demand: As your business grows, so does the volume of customers to engage with. Automation scales with your growth, ensuring you’re always ready to capture feedback, no matter how vast your customer base becomes.

In short, automation equips you with a tool that is timely, cheap, efficient, and perfectly aligned with the dynamics of today’s eCommerce landscape.

Best Review Aggregator Tool: All the Reasons to Choose TrackMage

Here are 12 unique advantages to integrating TrackMage on your eCommerce website:

1. TrackMage is the best order-tracking software for eCommerce, with additional features proven to instantly boost sales by over 10%. When talking about product review aggregation, TrackMage “knows” when the order was delivered to your buyer. It starts the clock and, at the perfect moment, sends a customizable email asking for a review. How else will you know when the Golden review hour is?
2. You can customize your email message, adjusting it to your buyer persona, thus increasing open rates and conversions.
3. With TrackMage, you get one of our best free features: the Email Validator. It ensures all your emails reach the right address, regardless of buyers’ typos. In addition, the Email Validator will tell you if the particular email can receive images, so your transactional emails (such as the message for review aggregation) won’t end up in the Spam folder.
4. Immediate Satisfaction and Recency Effect: Due to the perfect timing, right after a purchase, your shopper will receive a product review request when they are most inclined to engage with you. The recency effect (explained above) plays a significant role here, and the TrackMage review aggregation feature depends on it.
5. Trust from Initial Interaction: With your business’s first order confirmation email having an opening rate of over 99%, your review-gathering messages won’t be disregarded or flagged as spam. Our extensive data shows that over 80% of TrackMage’s emails sent to your buyers are opened.
6. High Conversion through Continuity: Given the trust built with the initial email, subsequent communications during the shipping phase and immediately after package receipt will depend solely on the power of your message and email subject line. TrackMage’s effectiveness is attributed to the principles of commitment and consistency in psychology (mentioned above).
7. Convenience for the Customer: TrackMage’s automated emails provide direct links to the review submission page, making the process straightforward and user-friendly. The trackMage team is always happy to help you create a highly-converting and Google-friendly review submission page.
8. Scalability: As your eCommerce business grows, it becomes challenging to manually reach out to each customer. Our automated review system easily scales, ensuring every customer, whether they’re the 10th or 10,000th, gets a chance to provide feedback. TrackMage has a flexible pricing system based on the number of orders you handle monthly.
9. Trackable Results: TrackMage provides metrics that allow you to tweak marketing strategies, product offerings, and your entire customer experience ecosystem.
10. Easy Onboarding Process: With an easy–to-follow TrackMage onboarding process and a Knowledgebase made for non-programmers, you’ll effortlessly integrate all the necessary features.
11. Multilingual Software: Not in the English-speaking market? Not a problem. TrackMage provides multilingual email notifications. Customize all the emails you’ll send to your buyer, adjusting the language and tone of voice.
12. 14-day Free Trial: We left the best for the end; you can experience all of TrackMage’s sales-friendly features for free. We know our software’s benefits; please join us and see for yourself.

No credit card needed!

eCommerce Product Reviews: Examples of TrackMage Feature to Gather Reviews

TrackMage is the best order tracking app with eCommerce product review aggregation for several reasons, one of which is its remarkable customizability. Tailor every element to match your brand.

You can choose:

• the timing of email notifications,
• the perfect subject lines and text,
• which products you’ll recommend,
• colors, backgrounds and fonts,
• how to incorporate your logo into the design.

Utilize your knowledge of your customers to elevate your product reviews with TrackMage.

Here are examples of the customizable email templates our clients use to gather reviews.

7-sentence Conclusion About eCommerce Product Reviews

Backed by compelling data emphasizing the significance of eCommerce product reviews, you clearly need a swift and effective strategy to capture shopper feedback. Given Google’s preference for authentic reviews, including them in your post-purchase marketing strategy is imperative. Moreover, the pinnacle moment for conversions is the “Golden Hour,” that crucial window shortly after buying.
The optimal solution is integrating top-tier software into your eCommerce platform to sidestep hefty costs, evolve with your growing business, and ensure timely review requests.
Ultimately, we’ve highlighted 12 proven reasons to explore the TrackMage app.
Spend the next 14 days watching your sales soar, elevating customer satisfaction, and seamlessly gathering product reviews. Try TrackMage for free and start growing your eCommerce business.

No credit card needed!