Product reviews increase conversion for Argos
- Reviewed products convert 10% higher
- Consumers happy to write reviews, rate products highly
Argos sells general merchandise and products for the home from over 700 stores throughout the UK and Republic of Ireland, online, and over the telephone. Argos serves over 130 million customers a year through its stores and takes four million customer orders either online or over the phone. Argos is part of Home Retail Group, the UK’s leading home and general merchandise retailer.
In September 2008, Argos implemented Bazaarvoice Ratings & Reviews at www.argos.co.uk, and then ran a successful email-based reviews promotion that added 90,000 reviews to their site within two weeks.
Reviewed products convert 10% higher
Upon analysing conversion for products that have been reviewed versus those that have not, Argos found that reviewed products have a 10% higher conversion rate than those without reviews.
Argos came to this conclusion by comparing conversion rates for products with reviews to the overall site average. At the time of the analysis, there were 22,200 products reviewed at www.argos.co.uk.
Consumers happy to write reviews, rate products highly
In mid-January 2009, Argos sent a post-purchase email to those customers who had purchased online before Christmas. In a single day, customers submitted 70,000 reviews, and the company amassed more than 203,000 reviews from this tactic within four months.
Furthermore, Argos found that the majority of their customers were happy to be brand advocates, with 53% of reviewers giving a top product rating of five stars. This supports Bazaarvoice’s “J-Curve,” which has found that, across all UK clients, 88% of all reviews are positive (four or five-star ratings).
Argos features reviews in catalogues
Argos quickly leveraged these reviews in the pages of its widely popular print catalogue. On average, 17 million UK households, or around two thirds of the population, have an Argos catalogue at home at any time. Customer reviews now help catalogue browsers make purchasing decisions offline as well.
*Source Hitwise, based on share of UK visits, May 2009
More Case Studies
- Venca’s online customer engagement rockets by 1900% with Bazaarvoice
- A major Spanish retailer, Venca is taking a lead in distance selling and e-commerce.
- Social Alerts show 29% higher conversion rate than general marketing emails
- Social Alerts deliver nearly 5x higher click-through rates and 29% higher conversion rate, and 96% of contributors opt in.
- Entire organization rallies to improve product ratings, sales
- Oriental Trading Company sees a direct correlation between ratings and sales. Its highest-rated products convert at double the rate of average- or low-rated products.
