As the e-commerce landscape continues to change and evolve, one of the biggest changes in recent year has been the explosion of online reviews. In fact, reviews have spread throughout the internet and they come into play regardless of whether you're actively encouraging them or not. However, reviews can be used strategically to persuade customers to buy.

The fact is, reviews will directly impact a user’s purchasing decision: According to a 2013 survey conducted by Dimensional Research, 90 percent of respondents claimed that positive online reviews influenced buying decisions, while 86 percent said buying decisions were influenced by negative online reviews.

With that being said, it’s time to look at WHY your online store should embrace online reviews.

Let’s dive in.

1) Changes the Customer's Perception of your Brand

As every E-Commerce store owner knows, the biggest obstacle for your business is building the trust between your brand and your customer. There’s not one business owner out there that strives for a bad reputation. Delivering high quality products, reliability, and helpfulness will all funnel into how your customer perceives you and your business.

Authentic, genuine, and positive reviews will lay the foundation for the relationship between you and your customer. Therefore, encouraging customers to look at you as someone that cares about the customer, someone who is willing to go the distance for an exceptional customer experience, and someone they can trust.

2) Unbiased Insight from Customers

When shopping online, whose opinion are you going to trust: the merchant or someone who has sit in your position and actually used the product? Exactly, you’re going to trust the consumer’s opinion.

Consumer reviews help potential customers imagine themselves using your product in their own lives. Additionally, this will help reduce common questions that would otherwise clutter your customer service inquires.

3) Enhanced Trust & Credibility

When it comes to building trust an credibility, smaller and newer e-commerce brands face a larger challenge then their well-established peers.

With the increasing prevalence of phishing scams, malware, and just plain shoddy customer service consumers are more reluctant with their clicks than ever before. So, online stores need to establish the peace of mind that is commonly associated with purchasing from well-established online merchants.

Conclusion

Hopefully after reading this post, you have some ideas about how you can begin implementing product reviews using your Hotcakes Commerce store. Reviews are powerful and it’s up to you to make them work. In my next post, 3 Methods that will Encourage Customer Reviews, I explain three different methods that will encourage customer reviews.

Question of the Day: do you currently use reviews on your Hotcakes site?  Let us know in the comments.