Product reviews are an integral component of an ecommerce business’s content strategy, providing critical product details that can improve conversions, customer satisfaction and brand awareness.
Writing product reviews requires time and energy; to maximize their value to readers it’s essential that we learn the best practices to get maximum benefit out of our efforts. In this article we share tried-and-tested tactics for making reviews more helpful and beneficial to their audience.
1. Always Focus on Benefits
When writing reviews, always start with the benefits. This will show your readers that you care about their well-being rather than trying to sell something to them; benefits could range from cost savings or productivity gains – just make sure the message is clear.
2. Add Social Proof
Social proof can help convince visitors of the quality and usefulness of your reviews, from star ratings and text reviews to images and videos. By offering multiple forms of social proof in each review, visitors will have more ways to provide feedback while strengthening your credibility as an author.
3. Establish Who the Product Is for Most review writers fail to clearly identify their target market when reviewing products. This often results in tire kickers reading their review but never making an actual purchase due to misfitting needs or interests. By clearly defining your audience and target market for each review you write, conversion rates will improve significantly and reviews become more useful to readers and your conversion rates increase accordingly.
4. Explain Tradeoffs
Most reviews shouldn’t simply focus on positive aspects of a product; they should also cover its downsides as well. Providing more detail can help your audience better understand both sides of a product, making their choice easier to determine if they’re purchasing it or not. In addition, Google has stressed the importance of including both pros and cons in search algorithm updates, making adding this type of information to reviews the key to rising higher in searches.
5. Finish Your Review with a Call to Action
A call-to-action (CTA) can be an effective way to close out a review and encourage readers to purchase the product. A simple CTA such as, “Try It for Yourself,” or, “Learn more About [Product Name].” should suffice; just ensure it stands out by being located near the middle or bottom of your review and being shown in a different color than all of its contents so as to grab attention and keep readers reading further down your review.
Growing numbers of individuals are turning to the creation of product review websites as a means of both earning money and becoming influential within their industries. If successful in building one such site and amassing enough loyal visitors, companies may even approach you directly to promote their products! If this works out successfully for you, your site could potentially make a full-time living from it and further grow over time.