How important is the role of reviews in online shopping?

Reading reviews when shopping online is an important part of consumers’ purchasing decisions. At the same time, reviews will also have a reverse effect on merchants. Let’s read this article together to see what role reviews, which are everywhere in life, play in online shopping behavior!

Everyone should have come across product reviews. Whether you are engaged in e-commerce or not, as long as you shop online, reviews are always an inevitable part. As a buyer, reviews are used to identify the quality of products, and as a seller, reviews are also used to identify the quality of products.

Unlike buyers, if buyers find out that the product is not good through reviews, they will not buy it. However, if sellers find out that the product is not good through reviews, they will most likely not make it .

The above is an ideal situation. What is the actual situation? Our product reviews are not good? How is that possible? I absolutely do not allow buyers to say that our products are not good, and I will not allow buyers to remove the bad reviews by calling or sending private messages.

If you really can't remove it, report it. If the platform doesn't accept it, then use the last resort, make more good reviews to cover up the bad reviews. This is the basic operation of our e-commerce operations. Have you ever done this? As for whether it is right to do so, in order not to occupy more public resources, I will not express my opinion.

As experienced e-commerce developers, we have all experienced the power of reviews . A negative review affecting the number of orders is a small matter, but if the link is broken, it will be a big deal . When communicating with new e-commerce developers, I found that they do not pay much attention to reviews. Some links are promoted without any reviews or sales, so it is normal that they cannot be promoted.

How important are comments? This article will briefly explain the role of comments, and you will probably understand it. I hope that when you make links, you can pay attention to comments. Some things are not difficult to do, but they are very important, and comments are one of them.

1. Determine the user's purchasing decision

The original title was about influencing the user's purchasing decision, but I thought that people would not pay attention to it, so I just changed it to "decision". Reviews are crucial to determine whether users buy this product . As sellers and buyers, we think differently.

When sellers analyze competing products, they only look at how others make their main pictures, but never look at their comments. As for buyers, what about you? Think about it, do you read the buyer comments of the product one by one, look at the actual pictures, and the real user experience before deciding whether to place an order?

When I buy things, I like to filter reviews by time. Such reviews are often more authentic, and those who understand will understand. The purpose of reading real reviews is to learn from the buyer's comments about the real experience of the product, whether the quality is good, and whether it is different from the promotion.

If it is fruit, I have to look at the actual pictures sent by the buyer. This is what the product will look like when I receive it. I will definitely look at it before placing an order. If the buyer's comments show that the goods are not what I pictured, I'm sorry, I won't place an order .

If the buyer doesn’t see the product reviews and doesn’t know what the product is like after purchasing it, guess what the buyer will do next? Most likely, they will swipe away and go to the next link.

Of course, we do not rule out the possibility that there are buyers with a very short decision-making cycle, who place an order as soon as they see the main picture and details and like it, but there are too few such buyers. We are targeting the majority, not a small probability event, so don’t ever say: I have a link but no reviews, but someone still placed an order, right?

This kind of thinking that treats low-probability events as normal is not acceptable in e-commerce. For example, if you make an order without driving, you will think that you can make an order without driving; if you make an order and encounter a refund, you will think that the refund rate is high. These ideas are generalizations and are not advisable.

2. Impact on the platform's rating of products

When you do e-commerce, you are playing a game with two roles: buyers and platforms. Needless to say, buyers are the best choice for providing quality products and services. As for platforms, you need to understand their rules and temperament. We should do what the platforms value .

Take reviews for example. The platform wants not only the lowest price on the Internet, but also excellent quality. I applied for a link to Baiyi, but it was removed after a few days because of some bad reviews. The navigator divided it up, and the platform determined that the product quality was not good and stopped promoting it. I want to say, it is obviously the buyer who does not know the goods, okay!

The platform is Party A, so we still have to follow Party A and study the platform's rules. So what are the platform's rules? Think about it, if we opened this platform ourselves, we would be so happy . Hahaha, I'm overthinking.

Back to the point, if we open this platform ourselves, and there are millions of links on the platform, do we need the platform operators to manually find good product links one by one? That would take forever.

Of course, the platform will not let people find it, but through data, the feedback data of buyers, it will be known whether it is a mule or a horse after taking it out for a walk. Whether the product is good or not, the buyer will know it after receiving it and experiencing it. What will happen after knowing it? Of course, there will be grievances and revenges, and those who are unhappy will complain in the comment area .

The platform uses the rate of complaints to judge whether your product is good or not. If 5 out of 10 reviews are 1 star, do you think your link can be successful? It is estimated that it will be castrated by the platform before it is promoted.

As the saying goes, everything depends on human effort. We cannot control the five one-star bad reviews, but we can still control the ten good reviews. For example, if we increase the number of good reviews to 100, the rate of complaints will be much lower. How to reduce the rate of complaints? There is an activity on the platform, just open it.

3. Easy to optimize products

When it comes to e-commerce, I feel that many companies don’t have long-term ideas. Whenever they encounter negative reviews from buyers, the first thing they think of is not how to optimize the product, but how to get rid of the negative reviews.

Let me tell you that when I was doing Internet operations, we had dedicated customer service staff to collect user opinions and hold a product problem feedback meeting every week. The meeting was like a sword contest on Mount Huashan, with all kinds of bickering and complaints, but in the end we would output a product improvement plan.

It is through such iterative improvements every week and every month that the product can go further and gain a larger market share. Companies that do not pay attention to the buyer experience are only making quick money and will not go far .

Those who truly make making good products their original intention for starting a business will actively listen to buyers’ feedback. Currently, e-commerce buyers and merchants are separated, and information cannot be smoothly exchanged.

The most direct way for merchants to get feedback from buyers is through buyer comments. (Why can’t the information be exchanged? Try adding the buyer’s contact information. A deposit of 100,000 is enough.) Find the issues that buyers give the most feedback on through the comment area and then optimize them .

For example, the lid of a facial cleanser I made was a new style, different from the ones people usually use. Many buyers gave negative reviews because the lid couldn’t be closed. So I changed the lid to a traditional style, and the DSR of the product slowly started to rise.

When you are doing e-commerce business, don't think that the product is just like this, and you have to push it no matter how bad it is. This is irresponsible to the buyers and yourself . From the perspective of personal interests, if you are not the direct beneficiary, why push such a product? It is difficult to link, the risk is high, and you don't get much money.

It is better to find a reliable brand with guaranteed quality. I make a hair mask from a certain brand. I get a gift if I don’t write a review, and I don’t support returns after unpacking. The rating is always 4.8. Why? The product is good. It is easy for me to make it.

4. Final Thoughts

Others have thousands or tens of thousands of reviews, but you only have three or four. How do you fight against them?

Whether through activities or other means, the quantity and quality of evaluations must be done before the link is promoted. This way, you will be more stable after the link is established, and you will not be worried every day, fearing that the link will be gone when you wake up in the morning.

Author: Tiger Talks Operations

WeChat public account: Laohu Jiangyy (ID: laohujiangyy)