Industry Statistics

1. Customer Reviews Drive Sales

Shoppers who navigate to pages with top-rated products convert at a 50% higher rate than others ¹
171% increase in conversion rates on merchandizing pages featuring reviews ²
27% of the respondents who read customer reviews reported average spending between 5% and 10% higher than those who did not read them ³
Nearly 7% of respondents who said they read customer reviews reported average spending of 20% higher than other online shoppers ⁴
Consumers were willing to pay between 20% and 99% more for a 5-star rated product than for a 4-star rated product, depending on the product category ⁵
26% increase in product sales from tag-based customer reviews ⁶
Customers who clicked through on e-mail containing review content viewed 7.48% more pages on the site, and the average sale per visitor was 11.46% higher ⁷
Marketing emails that featured products that received top rating on its web site produced 42.44% more revenue than did e-nail without ratings content⁸

2. Shoppers Demand Customer Reviews

Nearly 9 of 10 US online buyers read customer reviews at least "Some of the Time" before making a purchase⁹
Reviews were the most-desired web functions for US Internet users questions in the third quarter of 2007¹⁰
More than one-half of those US online shoppers surveyed, read user reviews as part of their product research¹¹
Customer satisfaction was 11% higher among visitors who said they had seen customer reviews on a site¹²
70% of online shoppers actively seek out customer reviews before they buy¹³

3. Marketers Value Customer Reviews

Customer ratings and reviews continue to be the number one advanced technology priorities for today’s retailers¹⁴
43% of retailers have reviews - double in one year¹⁵
Reviews provide a profitable and customer-centric entry into social navigation, networking and web 2.0¹⁶
While only 26% of the 137 top retailers surveyed offered customer ratings and reviews, 96% of them ranked customer ratings and reviews as an "effective" or "very effective" tactic at driving conversion¹⁷

4. Consumers Trust Customer Reviews

68% of consumers trust "people like me" first for product advice¹⁸
8 out of 10 holiday shoppers used web reviews this Holiday season. 71% agreed that consumer reviews made them more comfortable buying ¹⁹
User reviews were cited second only to personal advice as the largest influencer of online purchases²⁰
90% write reviews in order to help others make better buying decisions²¹
83% of shoppers said online product evaluations and reviews influenced their purchasing decisions²²
92% of shoppers find customer reviews "extremely helpful" or "very helpful" in making informed purchase decisions²³

5. Consumers Want Answers: AnswerBox

42% of 1,179 online consumers surveyed have left a site without purchasing multiple products because they couldn't get a question answered about one of the products in their shopping cart; 41% decided not to make a planned purchase because they couldn't readily find a piece of information about the product or service²⁴
Yahoo Answers had 25.3 million visits in February 2008²⁵
The share of traffic to question-and-answer Web sites has more than doubled from 2007 to 2008²⁶
42% of consumers said they prefer being able to find the answers they need online on their own if they had a question or wanted help while shopping online²⁷
76% of online shoppers surveyed report that content is insufficient to complete research or purchase online "always", "most often" or "some of the time"²⁸

6. Customer Reviews Drive SEO Traffic and Sales

81% of internet users find the websites they’re looking for through search engines. And 54% of experienced online shoppers primarily rely on a search engine when trying to find a product to purchase online²⁹
Reviews bring in fresh content, triggering search engine spiders to reindex the page. New content says to search engines that they need to crawl this page again. And that benefits [the site] through higher search engine rankings³⁰
User-added reviews create long-tail keywords for SEO purposes; long-tail keywords can constitute 20% to 30% or possibly more of your sales volume...these searches are more likely to convert into sales thatn the more generic keywords that may be more popular³¹