Archive for the ‘Ratings & Reviews’ Category

Ratings & Reviews, User-Generated Content

Rachel Eng Client trends from the travel, entertainment, and finserv industries

March 9th, 2010 by Rachel Eng Social Analyst

By now it’s widely accepted that many of us write reviews on products. With clients across more than 17 industries, we’re able to see trends and set benchmarks to compare these industries to one another. We see how UGC is impacting many industries, including the travel, entertainment, and financial services industries. I’ve looked at trends in each of these industries and compared them against tried-and-true online retailers, who have long seen the value in customer reviews.

In the travel industry, we’ve witnessed a higher average number of reviews a day – understandable, since so many travelers book online, and want to share their travel experience with others. Edreams sees an average of 323 reviews a day, compared to the typical 65 reviews a day for retailers. The higher price point of travel creates more critical decision-makers and contributors, leading to more critical feedback. The travel industry stands to gain from these reviews in the same way restaurants benefit from negative customer feedback, as Derrek J. Hull, voice of the National Restaurant Association, writes in his blog post. Hull emphasizes that every business can expect a negative review at some point; smart business owners will take that review as an opportunity to start a conversation with the customer. The ball is now in their court.

Entertainment reviewsLike travel, the entertainment industry has a higher price point than most online products. But there’s also larger price range – tickets to Taylor Swift’s upcoming Austin concert range from $91 to $682 on Razorgator. This leads to highly inquisitive and engaged shoppers viewing user-generated content. I know from personal experience; I check out what people say about the act, whether it’s worth the price, and any recommendations on seats. Who wouldn’t want to research a bit, especially with the choice between paying a few bucks, a few hundred, or not even going at all?

Another interesting and fairly new industry in the UGC game is the financial services industry. Our financial services clients like Geico are quickly gathering review volume from customers wanting to share their opinions, and are actually seeing many more of their reviews being served up on their websites than on typical retail sites. In other words, visitors to financial services sites click to “Read Reviews” more often, curious to see what customers are saying. This is expected, as much more research goes into choosing a financial services provider than the typical product; UGC helps meet the higher shopper demand for information.

Charlene Li (author of Groundswell) and Jeremiah Owyang, both leading experts in emerging social technologies, explained in their socialgraphics webinar that most consumers just “watch” social media – meaning, they read reviews, consume Q&A, etc., and fewer actually contribute. If travel, entertainment and financial services trend the same way that retail has, there will be a gradual but definite build in customers contributing content as user-generated content becomes more prevalent in all of these industries.

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MobileVoice, Multichannel, Ratings & Reviews

Deborah de Freitas Sephora exec talks mobile, Facebook, and the “next generation” of UGC

March 4th, 2010 by Deborah de Freitas Director, Marketing Communications

SephoraLast week, NRF’s retail blog recognized Sephora as a brand that’s truly “getting” social media marketing. Sephora has long been a highly active Bazaarvoice client, and we were excited to see the brand recognized for their innovative efforts at engaging their customers in the social sphere.

NRF interviewed Julie Bornstein, Sephora Direct SVP, for the post. Some of Julie’s comments really struck a chord with us, and we’d like to share them here.

Julie discussed the brand’s use of MobileVoice, allowing shoppers to access Sephora’s thousands of customer reviews on their mobile devices. “Have you ever tried to decide which moisturizer to use while standing in front of a wall of options?” Julie asked. “Our customers love to talk about beauty and they love to hear what others have to say.” Mobile access to authentic customer opinions helps shoppers in offline channels – in your stores, browsing your catalogue – find the right product for them.

Julie Bornstein, Sephora Direct SVP

Julie Bornstein, Sephora Direct SVP

On Facebook, Sephora strives to make sure there is value in being a fan. “We make changes as a result of [fan feedback],” says Julie. “Given that the people who tend to interact with us are our more serious beauty mavens, they really know what’s going on. It makes us realize how in touch our consumer is!” Customer feedback offers brands a chance to interact with their most engaged customers, learning from their feedback to improve products and services and generate effective marketing campaigns. “Use this audience as a focus group to help drive business decisions,” Julie suggests.

Integrating social networks like Facebook into UGC efforts offers brands the opportunity to make this content especially relevant for shoppers. “If the first generation of ‘user-generated content’ was Ratings & Reviews, I think the next will be around filtering that input by your own network and friends,” Julie suggests. TurboTax is doing this with its “Friends Like You” feature, which not only allows shoppers to filter reviews by personal aspects like “bought a home” or “had a baby,” but also allows them to find reviews submitted by their connections on Facebook, Twitter, and Myspace.

You can read NRF’s full interview with Julie here. To learn more about integrating your brand’s UGC with mobile and social networks, request a demo here.

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Ratings & Reviews

Maria Stansberry Mighty Leaf Tea connects tea fanatics to others like them

February 25th, 2010 by Maria Stansberry Senior Product Marketing Manager

Mighty Leaf TeaTea time for Mighty Leaf Tea shoppers just got social.

The specialty artisan tea manufacturer is using Ratings & Reviews to connect the authentic opinions of customers with tea lovers everywhere. Reviews on product pages create an engaged community of tea-philes centered around the products, rather than a “cul-de-sac community” disconnected from the ecommerce experience at MightyLeaf.com, says Bliss Dake, VP eCommerce and Operations. You can read more from Bliss in our accompanying press release.

In combination with reviews, Mighty Leaf uses profiles to help shoppers find the most relevant reviews for them. Reviewer profiles contain information on the contributor like “health/activity level,” “favorite flavor of tea,” and “favorite time of day for tea.” Reviews also include pro/con tags for products, like “unique flavor profile” or “high quality.” In combination, shoppers can use tags and profiles to find products with the most desirable attributes and read reviews from the most relevant contributors.

mightyleaf2

Say, for example, a shopper is looking for a relaxing tea to end her work day. She can select the provided tags like “great aroma” or user-generated tags like “relaxing.” Through these tags she may find Mighty Leaf’s Calming Moon herbal tea, and choose to read reviews.

mightyleaf3

When one review suggests it’s the perfect tea after a stressful day, she may click to read the reviewer’s profile. There she’d find that the reviewer has written four other reviews, and that his favorite time of day for tea is just before bed.

Reviewer ProfileTrusting the reviewer’s expertise, and noting that his needs match hers, the shopper can be confident in her decision to purchase Calming Moon.

Connecting shoppers with the most relevant reviews for them, especially for products they are passionate about, gives them the confidence they need to make informed purchase decisions. Profiles help Mighty Leaf Tea connect their tea-loving customers to the best teas for their needs.

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Customer Centricity, Ratings & Reviews, User-Generated Content

Meghan Meehan Social Commerce transforms Nationwide’s company culture

February 22nd, 2010 by Meghan Meehan Client Success Director

Nationwide InsuranceIn the last post from our recent webinar with Nationwide, we talked about how the insurance provider was able to overcome organizational concerns about adopting social media in a highly-regulated industry. Once they achieved internal buy-in, Sue McManus, Nationwide’s VP of Direct and Customer Solutions Marketing, and Shawn Morton, Director of Mobile, Social & Emerging Media, faced a new challenge: driving real business results through UGC.

Setting measurable business goals for UGC

Once Nationwide decided to move forward with a social strategy, their first step was to identify goals for their UGC. At a high level, Shawn and Sue wanted to build trust and confidence in the Nationwide brand among current and potential policy holders. Consumers want to hear from their peers before making a purchase decision. Recognizing this, Nationwide wanted to give customers the opportunity to share their experiences, helping prospects find the information they need at the point of purchase.

At a more specific level, Nationwide needed to show real, direct business benefits from UGC. To do this, the brand aligned its social commerce efforts with three key business goals: increasing policy conversion rate, driving SEO traffic, and improving marketing effectiveness.

Meeting these goals with social commerce

Nationwide has leveraged Ratings & Reviews in a number of ways to meet their corporate goals and grow their business.

Nationwide reviews

Enabling customer reviews on auto insurance. Customer reviews on insurance policies provide relevant content that consumers trust, helping them determine the right policy for their needs and take the next step towards a purchase decision.

Pushing content to customers’ social networks. Using Social Network Accelerators, Nationwide customers are invited to share reviews with their Facebook network, helping Nationwide reach new audiences and bringing traffic back to the brand site.

Nationwide reviews on FacebookDriving SEO with fresh content. Enabling UGC provides the site with rich, relevant content that is continually updated, driving organic search traffic to Nationwide.com.

Improving paid search ads. Keywords pulled from customer reviews make for compelling paid search ads, bringing new traffic to the brand site by reaching customers in their own words.

Measuring the results

Nationwide segments site visitors who interact with UGC from those who don’t, and compares their behavior against the goals above.  Specifically, they look at the quote start rate, quote completion rate, and policy bind rate for both audiences, and measure the difference in performance. They also track “intent to buy” metrics, like finding an Agent’s office or contacting Nationwide directly. Additionally, they look at click-through and conversion rates for homepage ads and paid search landing pages with UGC, benchmarking the performance of both segments over time.

Spreading these results to the entire organization

The impact of UGC doesn’t end on Nationwide’s website. Since launching Ratings & Reviews, they have embraced customer oxygen across the organization, transforming the brand’s culture and the way they talk to customers.  “As much as we can bring the voice of the customer to every employee in this company,” says Sue, “the more effective we’re going to be.”

Any Nationwide employee can read customer reviews online, giving everyone from claims representatives to executives tremendous insight into how the brand is doing and what their customers value. This translates into recommendations and improvements, helping pinpoint what the brand is doing well and where they can invest more to better serve customers.

There’s also a strong motivational effect, Sue says. Many reviews praise claims reps that went out of their way to help customers. “We are in the business of putting people back to normal after something bad happens,” says Sue. “When you see that we’re doing that every day, over and over again, and you see the emotions that our customers share in a very positive light, it really helps drive and prioritize our behavior as an organization. It’s very inspirational content internally.”

Want to hear more about Nationwide’s use of social commerce?  The full webinar, “Overcoming Your Fear of User-Generated Content: A Webinar for Highly-Regulated Industries,” is available to download for free, here:

Download the webinar

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Ratings & Reviews

Ashley Moreno Unexpected revenue: driving incremental sales from transactional emails

February 16th, 2010 by Ashley Moreno Business Analyst

In a recent blog post, Jim Sterne, founder and chairman of the Web Analytics Association, responds to a post in the Harvard Business Review that claims measurement-driven culture kills innovation. In his article, Sterne makes the simple rebuttal: “data is not the enemy.” He’s right.

Theo Jansen's "walking sculptures"Why do we so badly want to separate science from art? Why can’t observation spark innovation? Consider Dutch artist and scientist Theo Jansen’s beautiful kinetic sculptures — his walking creatures that “live” on the beaches in Europe. He “evolves” his new creatures by carefully observing the success of existing ones —how long they “live,” whether they “survive” the wind, and if they strand themselves in the surf. He then constructs new creatures based on those observations. Does the fact that he measures imply his work lacks vision?

We always encourage our clients to measure the effects of our solution for a return on their investment. But the most interesting client success stories we collect present data around unexpected findings that sparked further investigation. For example, in a recent blog we outlined how eSpares found that the traffic to the site from persons clicking to “Read Reviews” link on an e-mail’s featured product out-weighted that of the “Buy Now” button in the e-mail by 2.5 times. And eSpares is not the only client who reported unexpected, incremental sales this quarter…

  • An apparel/accessories manufacturing client sent an e-mail requesting reviews. The incremental revenue from the traffic returning to the site was $13,123.
  • Orvis launched a post-purchase e-mail requesting review volume. In just 10 days, this lead $2,057.00 in additional sales from persons returning to the site.
  • A consumer electronics manufacturing client sent an e-mail announcing the launch of Ratings & Reviews and soliciting content. The traffic returning to the site to leave reviews had a 3.48% sales conversion rate, which generated $8,396 of revenue.
  • An apparel/accessories retail client launched a post-purchase e-mail requesting reviews. As a result of incremental sales from that traffic, each e-mail is generating an average of $0.25.

What assumptions about e-mail does this potentially challenge? For one, this shows that transactional e-mails can generate sales. Look at the structure of your transactional e-mails. Could a subtle change to your primary call-to-action help generate incremental sales? And is your proposed “subtle” change appropriate so as not to lose the transactional flavor of the e-mail?

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Customer Centricity, Marketing Strategy, Ratings & Reviews, User-Generated Content

Meghan Meehan Nationwide’s strategy for facing the fear of UGC & overcoming internal objections to Social Commerce

February 15th, 2010 by Meghan Meehan Client Success Director
Sue McManus, VP of Direct and Customer Solutions Marketing at Nationwide

Sue McManus, VP of Direct and Customer Solutions Marketing at Nationwide

As a Client Success Director for Bazaarvoice’s Financial Services team, I’ve worked with several financial services brands to build social commerce strategies that increase online conversion and search, as well as improve customer service and client retention. But sometimes it’s daunting to make headway with new media in such highly-regulated industries.

When we started collaborating with Nationwide Insurance, they faced questions from Legal, Compliance, PR and Customer Service about the risks of participating in social. Nationwide created a strategy for overcoming objections to UGC and now embrace “customer oxygen” across all aspects of the organization, and have seen measurable business results from doing so.

Shawn Morton, Director of Mobile, Social & Emerging Media at Nationwide

Shawn Morton, Director of Mobile, Social & Emerging Media at Nationwide

In our recent webinar with Nationwide, Sue McManus, VP of Direct and Customer Solutions Marketing, and Shawn Morton, Director of Mobile, Social & Emerging Media, shared how they were able to overcome organizational concerns about adopting Social Media.

Facing the fear of UGC

One of Nationwide’s brand tenets is “we listen,” and they saw social commerce as a new opportunity to listen to the needs of their customers. Before moving forward, Sue and Shawn faced the fear that many companies face in embracing UGC: the fear of the unknown. What would happen, and how would they deal with it? What teams needed to be involved? Who would run it, and who would make sure it complied with industry regulations? Even with evidence like the J-curve indicating reviews would likely be positive, Nationwide wanted to see the results for themselves.

Strategy for overcoming objections

The key to Sue and Shawn’s success in gaining company-wide buy-in was to garner executive support across the organization. Gaining this support required a four part strategy.

  1. Reinforce importance of participating in the conversation. Nationwide looked for best practices outside the insurance industry, taking inspiration from Dell’s IdeaStorm and Best Buy’s Blue Shirt Nation. They realized that participating – and being transparent in doing so – was important. “Our executives realized the time had come to stop watching and start doing,” Sue said.
  2. Ensure brand protection through content moderation. Moderation was Nationwide’s golden ticket to social commerce. It allowed the brand to limit their risk while staying authentic.
  3. Demonstrate the business value of investing in Social. Sue and Shawn showed execs the business impact of the investment, examining how UGC would impact Nationwide’s advertising, reputation management, PR, and SEO to provide better, more relevant content on the brand site. Tying social to real business objectives created a compelling case for moving forward.
  4. Create a process for testing and measuring results. Nationwide tested the strategy first, sending review solicitation emails to a subset of customers to see what type of content they would get. As expected, customer feedback was extremely positive.

Using this strategy, Sue and Shawn were able to gain the executive level buy-in they needed to bring the customer voice to the center of the Nationwide brand.

Their biggest piece of advice to help position social commerce to senior management? Tie it to clear business objectives, says Shawn. It isn’t enough to say something is a “fun, new trend.” Make the business case the old-fashioned way, just as you would for any other investment. Demonstrate the value behind social in numbers; show how reviews impact decisions. From there it’s easy to gain the executive advocates you need to make a case for social across your organization.

Want more? The full webinar is available to download for free, here:

Download the free webinarThis is the first of two posts from our webcast for highly regulated industries. Stay tuned to our blog to see how Nationwide is using social commerce today, and how it’s transforming their corporate culture. You can also read more about Nationwide’s use of social on Shawn Morton’s blog, here.

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Ratings & Reviews

Meghan Meehan Overcoming Your Fear of User-Generated Content: A Webcast for Highly-Regulated Industries

February 4th, 2010 by Meghan Meehan Client Success Director

Webinar RegisterIt’s a fact: consumers want to hear from others like them when they shop for insurance, banking, healthcare – just as when they shop for everything else. How do you conquer corporate fear, consumer privacy, and liability concerns to give potential customers what they really want?

This webcast gets to the heart of these concerns, explaining how Nationwide Insurance tackled these issues – and won big with consumers.

Join us and see how Nationwide partnered with Bazaarvoice and Rosetta to:

  • Overcome organizational concerns about posting user-generated content on their website
  • Assess the issues and find the right solutions
  • Measure the results of user-generated content across the entire business

Thursday, February 11, 2010
11:30 to 12:30 EST

Speakers

Sue McManus
Leader of Nationwide Direct and Customer Solutions
Nationwide Insurance

Shawn Morton
Director of Social Media
Nationwide Insurance

Adam Cohen
Partner, Social Media Lead
Rosetta

Marc Ostryniec
Vice President of Financial Services Division
Bazaarvoice

Webinar Register

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Ratings & Reviews

Tung Huynh Consumers engaging with Burt’s Bees through user-generated stories

January 29th, 2010 by Tung Huynh Client Success Director

Burt's BeesOne of my favorite things about being a Community Manager is partnering with brands that I love and support. Many people recognize and love Burt’s Bees for their Beeswax Lip Balm, and to date, Burt’s Bees has collected over 500 customer reviews for that single product alone. I’m a big fan myself of this lip balm, but what truly connects me with the Burt’s Bees brand is their commitment to the greater good. This commitment is a core part of their company culture, and I see it not only in the products they create, but also in the people they hire. I also find it remarkable that the Burt’s Bees Greater Good Foundation is funded by 10% of the company’s overall retail sales.

Over the winter holidays, Bazaarvoice partnered with Burt’s Bees to help them launch their “Who’s Your Reason for Giving?” Stories campaign. Over 200 heartwarming stories started pouring in from their community shortly after launch. I had the opportunity today to catch up with Molly Fisher from the Burt’s Bees team:

What is your role with Burt’s Bees and what role does social marketing play for your organization?

I am Burt’s Bees’ Interactive and eCommerce Manager. Social Marketing has quickly become a leading way for consumers to engage and interact with our Brand. Burt’s Bees has had a loyal following from very early on, but social marketing avenues have empowered us to have a transparent conversation with our consumers, engage them on a personal level, and more deeply reinforce the values and mission of this company. This depth of engagement has been valuable in helping us shape our ideas and gain a robust picture of our consumers.

What inspired the Burt’s Bees team to come up with its Who’s Your Reason for Giving campaign?

With any campaign we launch at Burt’s Bees, we try to add elements of doing good and paying that goodness forward. In the midst of a second Holiday season made difficult for many by the economic downturn, our team felt that a return to simple values was meaningful and appropriate. We started asking the questions “Who inspires you to be more giving? Who makes you happy just by being them?” Let’s honor people who make a difference and inspire others no matter their situation.

How has the Burt’s Bees community responded to this campaign?

The response was amazing – We saw a higher than expected participation rate largely driven by media, PR, and messaging to our existing email base. We (and our consumers) were overwhelmed by the heartfelt, beautiful, inspiring stories we read.

Were there any customer stories or types of story that particularly stood out to you or that you weren’t expecting?

We quickly noticed a powerful theme of “everyday heroes”…strong mothers, good friends battling breast cancer, co-workers going above and beyond with courage and enthusiasm. This was more than just a fun campaign, it served as an invitation to stop for a moment and thank someone.

Living the Greater Good is a large part of your company culture. What are some of the ways that Burt’s Bees gives back to its community?

Living the greater good is the “how” and “why” we do what we do. It’s about operating our company with the highest level of social responsibility – focusing on three key areas: natural well-being, environmental sustainability and social responsibility. Working at Burt’s Bees requires a steadfast commitment to these core values.

What advice would you give others on how to engage their communities through customer stories?

Media messaging used to be about telling consumers what to do and touting all the bells and whistles of your product or service. Social media allows for a more natural decision making process and ideally a longer-term loyalty. Invite consumers to engage with your brand in a personal way (reviews, stories, opinions, etc.) and you will be surprised how they will not only share, but also become advocates of your brand. Also increasingly important, give them the tools and technology to make it easy to participate and invite others in their networks as well.

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Ratings & Reviews

Meghan Meehan Reviews drive social commerce success for LendingTree

January 28th, 2010 by Meghan Meehan Client Success Director

LendingTreeChoosing a mortgage can be difficult, so LendingTree empowers consumers to make informed decisions and take control of their financial destinies – it’s the cornerstone of their popular “You to the Rescue” campaign.  The site offers free tools and personalized advice to give consumers  confidence in their choices. Ratings & Reviews is an integral part of this strategy.

LendingTree recently measured the success of Ratings & Reviews, tracking visitor behavior for their primary site performance metric – completion rate of new loan requests. They found that site visitors who first read customer reviews went on to fill out loan requests 83% more often than those who did not read lender reviews. You can read the full case study here.

Tom O’Neill, Director of Site Innovation at LendingTree, sat down to chat about the results and the company’s vision of social commerce in 2010.

What’s the thinking behind the redesigned LendingTree site, featuring “You to the Rescue”?

We redesigned our website to make it more accessible to consumers as they move through the various stages of the loan process. Those phases could include people who are just starting to research their options, people who are seeking advice on specific topics (how to save for a down payment, for example), and people who are ready to start the loan process. Ratings & Reviews is an essential part of the new LendingTree site, because in its very nature it adds a community aspect to the site. It allows borrowers to hear from consumers like them and get advice before making a purchase decision.

How did you measure the ROI of Ratings & Reviews?

We wanted to understand the impact of Ratings & Reviews on the main event that we measure success by on the website. For LendingTree, that event is completing a new loan request form. We integrated Bazaarvoice with our web analytics tool and tracked visitors’ behavior over three months. We segmented visitors who read reviews versus those who did not, and looked at the completion rate  of the loan request form. We compared the numbers, and discovered that people who read reviews are 83% more likely to complete a new loan request form than those who don’t read reviews!

The results are quite significant to LendingTree, as we saw a direct impact on our primary success metric from launching Ratings & Reviews. The results have told us that investing in social commerce is worthwhile. We have lots of initiatives lined up for 2010 to build out the community elements on our site and on partner sites, using several Bazaarvoice offerings.

How did you implement social commerce and how has it impacted the business?

The biggest thing we did was get buy-in upfront from our lenders for the program. We wanted to make Ratings & Reviews as easy for them to use as it is for consumers, so we put together a handbook on UGC for them. The handbook included everything from operational tasks to marketing advice. It explained how reviews work, who to email at LendingTree with questions, customer service best practices, and how to make sure you’re proactively asking customers to review your services.

Our lenders frequently share stories about the success they’ve seen from embracing the program and making it part of their business processes. We continually communicate those success stories to our network of Lenders, as well as internally at LendingTree.

The entire organization has visibility to the program! One new practice we’ve initiated is a weekly cross-functional status update on our UGC. Every Friday a member of our Customer ExcellenceGroup sends an email with the weekly performance stats, and two new reviews – one that’s very positive, and one that shows an opportunity for improvement. This email reaches our Marketing, Product and Management teams, so Ratings & Reviews is always top of mind across the organization.

Where do you see LendingTree taking social commerce in a year?

We really want to knock it out of the park with community on our site this year! Our goal is to foster conversations between consumers and loan officers or other experts who can help them meet their financial needs. We’re launching Ask & Answer and Social Alerts to facilitate those conversations. In the end it comes down to a belief that knowledge is power. LendingTree wants to provide consumers with the information they need to make the right decision for their specific situation, removing barriers to purchase along the way, and Bazaarvoice is a key part of that strategy.

Ratings & Reviews

Marc Ruesing Highly positive German consumers create a great opportunity for local merchants

January 27th, 2010 by Marc Ruesing Sales Director - Germany, Austria & Switzerland

Bazaarvoice has served German customer reviews for some of Germany’s top brands, including neckermann.de, Karstadt and QVC, and now we’ve opened an office in Duesseldorf – I’m excited to be heading up this new effort.

We’ve seen that 84% of product reviews from Germans are positive (4 or 5 Stars) with an overall average rating of 4.24 out of 5 stars. This is another great example of the classic review “J-Curve” we have consistently seen in the UK and US markets thus far.

Average German star rating

Reviews important to German shoppers, merchants falling behind

German research company Fittkau & Maass recently highlighted the importance of customer ratings and reviews in their most recent 2009 W3B study of German internet users and usage. The research shows that about 80% of German online shoppers frequently read reviews before making a purchase decision.

The results of the W3B study also showed that German online shoppers mostly read reviews on price comparison sites (64%), likely  due to the fact that only about one third of German online shops feature product reviews in their online shops, according to a recent Study by German eBusiness solutions provider novomind. The result that only 24% of the W3B study respondents said that they frequently read product reviews in online shops is most probably strongly influenced by the fact that most online shops don’t offer product review functionality.

Multiple Bazaarvoice case studies show that having product reviews  directly correlates with a significant uplift in conversions for products with reviews, as the following illustration shows:

Average conversion before ratings & reviews

German online retailers should take note, as shoppers who value reviews will leave the purchase funnel on the retailer’s website and will be exposed to alternative offers (e.g. on price comparison sites, search engines, etc.), which could mean lost sales for retailers.

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