Adobe launches Ratings and Reviews for flagship products
Thu, 2011-11-03
Adobe knew that it had strong brand advocates, and wanted to encourage this audience to share its love of Adobe products and provide real-time feedback on new versions of the software. To that end, Adobe implemented a customer reviews program in April 2010. Prior to releasing new versions of its flagship products, Photoshop® and Photoshop® Extended, Adobe reached out to its prerelease community, offering early trials of the software. Once the community engaged with and tested the products, Adobe invited community members to provide their feedback by writing a review on the website, which could also be shared with friends via Facebook.
What Adobe measured
Adobe leveraged its own analytics solutions, Adobe®Test and Target™ and Adobe® SiteCatalyst®, to run A/B tests to measure the impact of reviews on conversion. Over a onemonth period, Adobe displayed reviews to half of all visitors to the Photoshop® and Photoshop® Extended product pages, while the other half saw pages without reviews. The goal was to understand the impact of review content on visitors’ propensity to download a trial or to purchase the product. It was also important to Adobe to listen and engage with the community in its social channels, so Adobe monitored the number of reviews collected and shared on Facebook.
Reviews influence up to 54% page conversion lift
For the test group that saw reviews, Adobe experienced a 21% lift in conversion on the Photoshop® product description page, and a 54% lift in conversion on the Photoshop® Extended product description page, compared to the page without reviews. Adobe also realized increases in trials of both products when visitors saw reviews – 13% and 35%, respectively.
Adobe also tested quotes and star ratings from customers’ reviews in online banner advertisements, search landing pages, and email landing pages. For all A/B tests, the test group with reviews experienced an increase in click-through rate, compared to the control group who did not contain user generated content.
Photoshop® advocates share reviews 7x more often than average
Simultaneous to the introduction of Ratings and Reviews, Adobe launched a Facebook counterpart to allow the 1.85 million Photoshop® fans on Facebook to read and write reviews directly within the social network. Photoshop® advocates rated both products extremely high, with an average rating of 4.9 stars out of five. Approximately 25% of reviewers shared their review via Facebook during the first week of the campaign – 700% higher than the industry average.
Positive data from Ratings and Reviews tests propels expansion
After A/B test results confirmed the ROI of reviews on flagship product pages, Adobe rolled out customer review programs to the majority of their North America product catalog in early 2011. Adobe measured positive impact to average visits, visitor time on site, plus revenue and trial metrics for visitors who interacted with review content vs. those who did not. Based on the great results from the North America program, Adobe recently expanded the program internationally to markets in Japan, Australia, New Zealand, UK, Germany and France.
