CoreCommerce

You might be wondering if you should set up your store to allow reviews and ratings. Reviews can be a huge factor in purchase decisions and provides the store with free word-of-mouth advertising. Not only are happy buyers likely to leave a review on your own site, they’ll often also leave a review of your product on other consumer sites. This can lead to higher search rankings, as the reviews link back to your storefront and it also gives you free exposure on the web.

Customers are more apt to buy a product after reading good reviews that real people who’ve left use it. The last time you bought a product you’ve never used before, didn’t you do some research on the web to see what people said about it?

Let’s look at some stats dealing with stores who use product reviews:

• 77% of online shoppers use reviews and ratings when deciding what to buy. – JupiterResearch
• 59% of users believe that real consumer reviews are more valuable than expert reviews. -BizRate
• 63% of consumers are more likely to purchase a product if it contains reviews. -CompUSA

Now, you might think this would work wonders for you and your store if all your reviews are good ones, but what about the negative reviews? Should you allow those to remain on your site? Absolutely.

Bad reviews aren’t as damaging as you might think. The weight of bad to good reviews allows a consumer to really see how great the product is. If there are 4 negative reviews, but 100 good ones, then the consumer can assume the product really works. If the consumer sees there are 300 great reviews and zero negative ones, the consumer will most likely think the reviews are moderated and may not trust the product enough to buy it. You lose credibility as a merchant when you hide what your consumers really have to say about your product.

Reviews also help the consumer gauge the product’s strengths and weaknesses and reduces the return and complaint rate. If I’m looking to purchase a pair of shoes that’s reviewed as super comfy but lasts only 3 months,  I can gauge if I want to spend the money for comfort and trade in durability. When they fall apart in 3 months it’s expected instead of surprising because I knew what I was getting when I bought the product. Had there been no reviews about durability, I’d be on the phone demanding some kind of refund.

In order to make your reviews as helpful as possible make sure they’re displayed in a clear and very visible way on the site. You should also use some kind of rating system, like stars, so consumers who are in a hurry and don’t have time to read the reviews can quickly skim over the ratings to see how well the product has done.

You should also encourage your consumers to leave a review by mentioning it in their purchase confirmations and in your newsletter. Let them know that if they’ve enjoyed your product, you’d love to have them rate it on your site to help others.

CoreCommerce has both a review and rating system built right into the software, so if you’re not using it, it’s to your benefit to start!

Many retailers ponder this question. In my research for hard statistics I came across this study done in 2008 by F. Curtis Barry & Company.

* Around 80% of all major businesses offer free shipping during the Fall and Holiday season.

* Most free shipping offers are tied to a minimum order.

* Success with free shipping varies widely from one company to another.

* Free shipping seems to work better with products that can be shipped at a low cost.

* Shipping costs have been going up, making it harder to justify a free shipping offer.

* Conditioning customers to expect free shipping may be a counterproductive strategy.

* 50% to 70% of customers are one-time buyers, which raises further doubts about the benefits of free shipping.

* Free Shipping can work with items which aren’t moving and you want to try to liquidate the inventory without marking it down

According to reports, 50% to 70% of most businesses’ customers are one-time buyers; they don’t shop a second time. If this is the case it is tough to cost justify losing money on your first sale to try to gain a customer.

Based on these statistics free shipping offers are quite the gamble. You really need to know if your online store attracts repeat buyers frequently. If not, it is tough to justify free shipping.

You also have to be wary of “conditioning” the customer into expecting free shipping for your site. If your customers start expecting it, you can turn them off when you don’t offer it.

Most of the free shipping offers which work the best is the buy $x amount and receive free shipping (limited typically to the continental US). This has been made popular by Amazon.com. This drives people to add a few more dollars to their cart to cross the free shipping threshold.

With CoreCommerce you can already do this using our free shipping feature. You can choose which countries and states you want to offer free shipping, then either discount the shipping or make it completely free. You can even specify the minimum amount required to spend to qualify for free shipping. This way when the customer adds an item to their cart, they will be notified if they need to spend a few dollars more to qualify for free shipping.

CoreCommerce continues to be the fastest growing hosted ecommerce solution. To accommodate for this growth, we continue to add additional staff to our team. We have just added 3 additional support technicians and 1 web content writer.

We are still looking for additional support technicians, sales representatives, web designers, web content writer and documentation writer. To be part of our team:

*You have to be a superstar.
*Be passionate in helping customers sell online.
*We must be able to learn from you.
*You want to work for the fastest growing hosted ecommerce solution