This blog was guest-written by Matt Hawkins, Senior Marketing Analyst.

As our many case studies (as well as the mass of third-party studies) have demonstrated, reviews increase conversion and help customers make better purchasing decisions. Not only have we seen Ratings & Reviews increase on-site conversion, but as highlighted in previous posts (example 1, example 2) and in case studies, the more ways clients leverage their customer content, the greater the positive impact on their P&L.

(You can see some effective examples of how customers have leveraged customer content with the goal of increasing sales here: Bath and Body Works utilize reviews in email promotions.)

A long time customer of Bazaarvoice, Office Depot recently under took a split-serve, creative test to see how searchers would respond if the search terms they put up on Google were modified to include messaging around product reviews. They then compared that to the performance of similar verbiage with the reviews messaging remove.

The ads often focused on highlighting top-rated products — aligning with one of the following strategic best practices known to increase sales: top-rated categories, customer favorite email promotions, and ‘sort by rating.’ (See case studies). The effectiveness of this initiative by Office Depot was outstanding, the results motivating.

Ad creative featuring messaging around product reviews significantly outperformed the control ad creative:

• Increased Click-Through Rate by 78.5%
• Increased Conversion by 23.8%
• Increased Revenue by 196.6%
• Increased New Buyers by 183.3%

Office Depot highlights yet another effective, customer-centric and revenue-generative way to bring more shoppers to Officedepot.com using their customers’ voice.

Read the full case study here.