Wehkamp, founded in 1952, has grown into the largest and most respected merchant in the Netherlands. They serve approximately 1.3 million regular customers, send 4.6 million shipments a year, and offer 25,000 unique products.

More than 80% of their sales take place via their wekhamp.nl web site, which receives an average of 1.2 million sessions each week, so it is very important that they enhance the shopping experience and consistently drive sales through their site.

They added Bazaarvoice Ratings & Reviews to their site in January 2008. Based on our analysis six months later, this functionality is driving favorable results for Wehkamp.

Those who "read all reviews" buy more

Lead conversion for visits including customer reviews is on average 16% higher compared to non-consumer reviews visits. In this case, we used the number of page views for lead-related Thank You pages to calculate Lead Conversion. We looked at those who clicked on "read all reviews" while they were visiting a product page, versus those who only looked at the product page.

We found:

• 116% more visitors became buyers, a direct correlation to reviews influencing sales conversion
• 20% increase in average order value (AOV)

Readers engage longer

In addition, those who "read all reviews" viewed 157% more pages per session, indicating that this content engages them and keeps them on the site longer than those who are only looking at product pages.

Bounce rates (defined as someone coming to one page and then leaving) were reduced by 88%.

The bottom line

Enabling customers to share opinions and information about themselves has helped wehkamp.nl engage visitors longer and transact even more business online.