PlusOne - Musings of a marketer

I was reading an article in eMarketer titled Customer Reviews Increase Web Sale and for a few moments I thought here is a great idea!

Takle a look at this graph for a moment:

Looking at the graph one could be excused for getting a bit excited. Drive repeat traffic, make your conversions soar on bigger sales.

But then I sopped to muse on how many sites have ranking and review facilities and in fact how few people use them. There are some sites where people are very engaged, but equally so others that do not have many rating or reviews at all.

On my hotel accommodation site, the booking provider has facilities for feedback and ratings on a number of aspects. Given the very high number of bookings that other users of the service generate for them, there are surprisingly few feedback entries or ratings as a percentage of total bookings.

So is there a way that increased participation in such a process can be improved?

I believe that one of the key elements is to engage the customer at a personal level. Merely providing a purchasing system (complete with product descriptions) is not enough. Why would someone wish to return to your site to make a review statement or click some ranking buttons?

Part of personalising is to include communications that address the human side of the customer. Here I mean emails that follow-up on the sale process, thanking for the order, letting people know when the order has been shipped and then after a week or so an invitation to make a comment or rate the performance of the product by way of a simple link that takes the consumer directly to the correct page.

But what about negative feedback? Don’t worry - research has shown that having a warts-and-all appraisal of a product or service shows honesty and helps to develop trust.

So if you are thinking of including a review/feedback section for your products the next job - if your content management system does not include it, is to find a plug-in.

 Suggestions anyone?