Of course, if you aren't leveraging the power of customer contributiosn right now, this news comes a little too late for this holiday season. However, it's never too late. The impact of user generated content is the gift that keeps on giving throughout the entire year! Get started just after the holidays.

Letting customers rate products on e-commerce sites is the top Web 2.0 spending priority, according to online retailers in the US surveyed in August 2008 by Vovici for Internet Retailer. Well over one-half (57%) of online pure plays said customer ratings and reviews were a priority for them.

Internet Retailer said online merchants wanted these features because they drove sales. It also noted that PetsUnited, which operates 10 e-commerce sites, reported a 50% jump in average sales when shoppers ordered right after viewing a video, compared with after viewing just text and pictures.

"Shoppers that view videos and read customer ratings and reviews spend more," said Corbin de Rubertis, president of retail widget developer Qponix, in the Internet Retailer article. "Even in a weaker economy, retailers are going to spend money on better technology if it drives traffic and converts sales."

Emarketer also recites a study we launched with Vizu highlighting the importance of reviews to retailers:

Last year I wrote this article highlighting why ratings and reviews are the highest NPV marketing investment, and why they should get launched before the holidays. Coincidentally I wrote it one year ago yesterday, and it's still as relevant. You've got a few months left. Now is the time to move!

In their own words, "A whopping eighty-three percent of respondents polled indicated that online product evaluations and reviews had at least some level of influence on purchasing decisions."

They also found…

• 70% of respondents seek out information for a particular brand of goods and services.
• 32% reported posting their own online feedback on product or service experiences.

See more of the study here.

Now I say this study "again" supports the demand for reviews because we have been tracking and fielding studies for three years on this topic. See our comprehensive overview of over 100 statistics and case study results here.

• Recommendations from family and friends trump all other consumer touchpoints when it comes to influencing purchases, according to new data from Publicis media network ZenithOptimedia. The data comes from ZenithOptimedia's Touchpoints ROI Tracker, a comprehensive project comprising over 300,000 interviews across 34 countries and covering more than 4,000 brands in 126 product and service categories.
• Consumer touchpoints were each given a "contact clout factor," a number on a scale of 1 to 100 that indicates the relative influence of the touchpoint on purchasing.
• Recommendations from family and friends led the pack with an average score of 84. TV ads and Internet search were next, with an average score of 69 and 67, followed by magazine ads at 60, newspaper ads at 55, outdoor ads at 45, radio ads at 42, and Internet banner ads at 41.

Here's an interesting quote:

• Though word-of-mouth may be one of the greatest influences on brand choice, marketers still face a great challenge is making it scalable, said Bruce Goerlich, ZenithOptimedia's president of strategic resources, North America. "Word of mouth is incredibly powerful, but we as an industry are not doing as good a job as we could do in generating it," he said.

Maybe he hasn't heard of Bazaarvoice

Let's do the math: .62 X .82 = 50% of all consumers will make a purchase based on reviews!

That means, for a retailer or manufacturer not to have re reviews on their product means that they are turning away 50% of the prospects looking at their products!

This matches the study by eVoc insights done a couple years ago that found 50% of consumers needed reviews when purchasing consumer electronics before purchasing.  

In addition, 69% of the respondents said they have shared online reviews with friends, family or colleagues, the report said. So, there’s a viral, word of mouth effect on the word of mouth itself! 

See other stats and studies related to reviews and social commerce here. 

The key finding is that US and UK shoppers have more trust and respect for Brands that enable product reviews. In fact, 8 out of 10 shoppers trust and respect brands more if they have authentic, user generated reviews on their site. So, not only do reviews help improve conversion, average order value, returns, satisfaction, natural search traffic, RSS feed click through, email revenue, and offline impact (ask us for any of these case studies)…they also improve brand perception! 

Another finding: US shoppers consider ratings and reviews to be the most useful eCommerce site feature (44 percent). Product comparison (15 percent), product navigation (12 percent), and privacy information (11 percent) followed in the distance. We knew this already from site surveys with PETCO and CompUSA, but it's always helpful to get another data point! We're sort of maniacal about data

Last year Edelman told us that "trust in someone like me" tripled in two years, from 20% to 68%. Jupiter found that 77% of customers seek product reviews. And eMarketer found that 91% seek word of mouth.

Today, MarketingSherpa reports 84% of online customer trust reviews from another customer over a critic. So…I guess Time Magazine got it right. The Person of the Year is "You".

Some other interesting findings…

• 44% of large ecommerce sites use reviews.
• And 58% of buyers prefer sites with reviews.
• When asked what sources of information they are “very likely” to consult before making a decision about their entertainment options, 62% named Web sites with user reviews as their top choice, even beating out a knowledgeable friend (59%)
• MarketingSherpa data confirms that even among older consumers, online reviews are one of the most widely adopted features for online purchasing behavior. While 50% of consumers ages 18-34 said they had posted an online comment or review of a product or company, 45% of consumers ages 35-54 said they had as well, and 34% of consumer over age 55 weighed in with an online opinion.
• And this paragraph:

One positive review might not carry the same influence as a recommendation from someone a user knows and trusts. However, seeing positive reviews from a range of happy customers changes the equation. Web users tend to study online reviews for someone just like themselves, whose opinion, experience and needs are similar. And even if they don’t find a response from someone who appears to have the same taste and needs, the weight of 10, 20 or 30 positive reviews can give them confidence that a product or service delivers on its promises.

• But the best part is the summary at the top

If you are thinking about adding user reviews to your Web site, do it now. Otherwise, you're losing out. We have exclusive new data on just how important it is to include user reviews. They are as persuasive as close friends and way more effective than so-called expert critics.

This week ForeSee Results, a firm that specializes in online satisfaction measurement, released findings from its Online Retail Satisfaction Index study.

Key findings of the study show that consumers desire and remember product reviews, and appreciate having them handy;

• Nearly half (49 percent) of online holiday gift purchasers recall seeing online customer product reviews.
• 39 percent of those who bought from sites with reviews cite the reviews as the primary factor influencing the purchase decision.
• Among first-time buyers on review-equipped sites, 42 percent said they were the primary factor.
• Overall, the 49-percent group's satisfaction score was 21 percent above the average score of all survey respondents (91 versus 75).
• Furthermore, purchasers who cited reviews as the primary purchase influencer are 18 percent more likely to buy from that retailer the next time they buy similar merchandise (92 versus 74). Customer product reviews benefit the retailer all the way to the bottom line.

CEO Larry Freed says multichannel retailers will have to play catch-up, because customer product reviews are rapidly becoming a must-have component.

This is especially prevalent among manufacturer direct channels (see my post on reviews for manufacturers). "Manufacturer direct companies face a unique risk in offering–or not offering–product reviews," Freed says. While they may be hesitant to give customers a place where negative reviews could be more visible, Freed says the greater risk is lost sales from not providing reviews. "Shoppers that want reviews will go to a site that has them, and may very likely buy the product from that site, rather than returning to the manufacturer's site."