A couple weeks ago I blogged about a finding from an eVoc Insights study, where 63% of online shoppers are more likely to buy from sites with ratings and reviews.
There is another interesting finding in this study…
25% of online shoppers ACTIVELY (over 76% of the time they shop) seek out product reviews before they make a purchase.
73% of shoppers seek out ratings and reviews 25% or more. And so on. See the graph below.
I did some math with the numbers shown in the graph above. If you take the % of people from each piece of the pie X the average % of the time they seek out reviews, it concludes that online shoppers will seek out reviews for 48% of their purchases.
What does this mean?
First, and most alarming, it means that if you don't have reviews, 48% of your visitors have to leave your site before making a purchase because they are seeking reviews before purchase.
One of the places they're going to get reviews is your competitor, Amazon. Notice on the graph that 25% of those who seek out reviews go to Amazon to check them. If you are a retailer (relevant to Amazon's categories who does not have reviews, you are giving up 12% of your highly considered shoppers to Amazon (25% X 48% = 12%).
According to a shop.org study, 56% of consumers still start their shopping on a retailer site. So it's not too late to keep them there!
