Commerce Content: Getting Your Review Program Right
Regardless of where you sell online, directing traffic to your brand’s products is a challenge. Every time somebody lands on one of your Product Pages, it’s an opportunity to make a sale.
It’s vital for brands seeking commerce success to capitalize on this hard-won digital footfall, and that’s where commerce content comes in. Every bit of space on a Product Page should be optimized to provide all the information a consumer needs to inform and inspire them to purchase.
That’s why we wrote our whitepaper, Identifying Product Page Blind Spots: The Power of Conversions, dedicated to helping brands deliver great commerce content to consumers.
The Importance of Reviews
In lieu of the touch and feel experience of a brick-and-mortar store, reviews have become an essential part of the online purchase journey.
This is particularly true on Amazon – the gold standard for Product Page content. Reviews form a key part of the retail giant’s value proposition and are therefore an important element for brands looking to boost sales.
More than 90% of online shoppers consult at least one review before making a purchase, and a large proportion of shoppers read more than 10.
Whilst managing your brand’s review program can be daunting, investing time into a structured approach and fostering cross-team coordination can yield remarkable results.
Good reviews can convince a consumer to make a purchase, while any criticism can be used to tighten up content elsewhere on your Product Pages.
1. Collate and Measure Your Reviews
Managing hundreds of ASINs (Amazon Standard Identification Numbers) across various brands is challenging, especially for matrix organizations with separate marketing, sales, and product teams. Monitoring reviews and identifying themes and sentiments manually is tough.
Automated solutions simplify this by tracking average review ratings and progress over time, saving hours of manual work. A single dashboard for review monitoring helps internal teams track changes, identify common themes, and integrate Amazon into the business strategy.
2. Listen to Your Reviews and Moderate Your Content
Monitoring reviews helps brands identify common issues and praise from shoppers. For negative reviews, update product descriptions to clarify potential misunderstandings, such as pack size or quantity. Regularly ensure your descriptions match the actual products customers receive. Update your A+ content with positive points from reviews and use A/B testing for product pages.
Successful brands use feedback from reviews for future product development and add positive points to product descriptions.
3. Actively Manage Questions and Answers
Though brands in Vendor Central (Amazon’s first-party seller program) can’t reply directly to reviews, they can manage Q&A to address concerns from reviews. Showing responsiveness and valuing customers can offset negative reviews, encourage positive thinking, and improve conversion rates at checkout.
These Q&A points can be addressed in your product description, A+ content, imagery, and product title.
4. Utilize Amazon’s Vine Voices
Amazon Vine, an invitation-only program, allows top reviewers to receive free items in exchange for honest reviews. Brands send samples to these reviewers who provide unbiased opinions labeled as Vine Voices. Brands pay for each parent ASIN in the program and supply the products for free.
Although reviews aren’t guaranteed in volume or positivity, Vine is beneficial for slow-moving or high-value inventory.
5. Quality Over Quantity
You can’t have too many reviews, but fewer high-quality reviews are often sufficient. Amazon suggests 15 reviews and a 3.5-star rating make a product retail-ready. However, 91% of shoppers won’t consider products with less than 3 stars.
Prioritize collecting high-rated reviews over large volumes, and avoid speeding up this process artificially, as 52% of consumers lose trust in brands with fake reviews. Monitor new products closely and ensure early reviews are positive.
In Summary
While you can’t control everything customers have to say about your brand, having the right processes and tools in place for reviews can turn them into an asset, helping to perfect and optimize your Product Page content and even your product development.
Download the full whitepaper, Identifying Product Page Blind Spots: The Power of Conversions, below.
If you’d like to know more about how KINESSO COMMERCE can help with your Product Page content, please get in touch.
