Is Your Ratings and Reviews Provider Working For You?
By now, we’ve all heard the stats about the role of reviews in the path to purchase. 95% of consumers consult reviews, and 86% consider them an essential resource when making purchase decisions. Clearly, you understand the value of reviews, since you’re actively collecting and displaying this content on your website.
But lately, you’ve noticed you’re not seeing the business impact you expected from the reviews you’ve generated. Or maybe you feel like you’ve outgrown your current solution because the features or support are no longer meeting your needs.
If this is the case, it may be time to consider switching to a new ratings and reviews partner that better suits your business goals and objectives. While it may seem like an overwhelming task to evaluate and implement a new provider, if you choose the right partner, the reward will definitely outweigh the risks.
When it’s Time to Switch
How do you know when it’s time to consider a new ratings and reviews provider? Here are five signs it might be time to make the switch.
1. Your review coverage and depth are less than stellar.
Review coverage is the number of products on your website that have reviews, while review depth is the number of reviews per product. Both of these factors play a significant role in how much traffic you get to your product detail pages — and how high your conversion rate is once shoppers land on these pages. If your review coverage and depth leave a lot to be desired, it may be time to switch providers.
2. Adding reviews to your site isn’t having a positive impact on the growth of your business.
OK, so you’ve started collecting and displaying reviews on your ecommerce site. But adding this content isn’t impacting your traffic and sales like you anticipated. Something’s not right, here. It may be time to switch.
3. Your provider isn’t innovating with new features and functionality.
Consumer shopping preferences are constantly changing thanks, in large part, to technology. Your ratings and reviews provider should be continuously evolving its offerings in order to help you meet your shoppers’ changing expectations.
For example, more and more shoppers want to find visual content — such as photos and videos — in addition to text reviews. In fact, a recent report found that 88% of consumers specifically look for visual content submitted by other consumers before making a purchase, and 65% are more likely to trust products that have user-submitted photos or videos in their reviews. Your ratings and reviews provider should offer features and functionality that allow you to provide your shoppers with this type of content.
4. New enhancements are hard to implement.
Maybe your ratings and reviews provider is consistently releasing new features and functionality. But these enhancements take a lot of your tech team’s time to implement…and you’re not even confident these features will move the needle in growing your business. I get it — we’re all crunched for time. You should easily be able to add product updates and innovations to your site with little effort on your part and understand the impact of making that update. If this isn’t the case, it might be time to make a switch.
5. Your partner isn’t helping you succeed.
Your ratings and reviews provider should pair you with a member of their client success team that will help ensure you’re getting the most from your investment. In addition to being available to answer any questions that may arise, she should schedule regular check-ins with you to discuss your results, as well as best practices that can help you improve review coverage and depth, traffic, conversion, and sales. If you don’t think of your ratings and reviews provider as a true partner that understands the ins and outs of your business, it may be time to look for a new provider.
Want to know what questions to ask and things to consider when choosing a new ratings and reviews provider? Download the Ultimate Ratings and Reviews Buyer’s Guide today!
