Press Release
Scentiments.com likes the look and feel of customer reviews
A redesigned web site and new features such as product reviews are helping Scentiments.com hold its own in a tough retailing segment.
Scentiments.com, No. 376 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide, is marking its 10th anniversary as an online retailer. But the company, which carries an inventory of 6,500 SKUs, is dealing with a weaker economy and consolidation among fragrance manufacturers, and paying higher prices to import certain fragrances from higher-end international manufacturers and distributors
"We are extremely pleased with meeting our sales targets for this year," says Scentiments.com CEO Howard Wyner. "With the weaker dollar and having to pay some overseas manufacturers and retailers more, some available products have increased in cost by as much as 30%."
Scentiments.com bills itself as selling the most affordable fragrances online. Any big spike in wholesale prices affects an already tight gross profit margin, Wyner says.
To keep new shoppers coming and existing ones coming back, Scentiments.com has been adding more features and functions, including customer reviews. Scentiments.com began adding customer reviews from PowerReviews Inc. last fall. Today the online retailer has posted about 27,000 reviews.
With rising wholesale prices, customer reviews help Scentiments confirm with customers that the site is stocking the right product mix and at the right price. "The average rating out of five stars is about 4.65 and that’s across about 93% of all the customer reviews," Wyner says. "We feel pretty good about that."
Within the next month, Scentiments.com will adjust its site search engine from Nextopia to include customer reviews in the search results. The addition of customer reviews along with a redesigned web site that features improved navigation and more detailed keyword search helped Scentiments increase its overall conversion about one-tenth of a percent to 5.85% and keep its average ticket steady at about $69, Wyner says.