Published 19 Dec 2024

Are Product Reviews Important for Online Stores?

The role of product reviews for customer experience and building brand trust

You need to buy something and the first instinct is to grab your phone and search for the product online. You find an interesting offer and look at the reviews. You might even start by filtering only highly-rated products. If everything looks good, you decide to make the purchase. That’s very familiar, right? It’s because this is how we typically shop. As much as 79% of Americans shop online, and 98% of digital customers read reviews before they shop. As we can see, reviews are crucial for most customers in making purchase decisions.

How well do retailers know and use this? We conducted a survey of nearly 300 independent store websites in the U.S. The survey covered retailers from the following sectors:

Personal care and lifestyle (including fashion items, beauty supplies, and baby accessories)
Electronics
Home and garden improvement
Food stores
Hobby and entertainment stores
Sporting goods
Pet stores
Automotive and vehicle supply stores
Raw materials
Specialized stores

Here’s what we found out:

How common are product reviews on store websites?

First – what do we mean by product reviews? Reviews are customer opinions displayed on a product page regarding the product. Only 33.6% of the stores we surveyed had this option for reviewing products. About 1% of stores chose to include testimonials about the store itself instead of product reviews. In the bookstore industry, reviews from media outlets about books appeared. As much as 63.3% of stores did not include any form of opinion to encourage customers to make a purchase.

Store websites and product reviews

Stores selling luggage (88.9%), tires (85.7%), tools (70%), art supplies (60%), and beauty supplies (60%) most often allowed customers to review products. In all these industries, product quality is important, and for beauty supplies or art supplies, users’ observations on product usage may also be crucial.

Store websites with the highest availability of product review options

We presented data on the availability of customer reviews. But how often is this option actually used? It turns out that in 40.4% of stores, reviews are not used by customers.

Review activity on store websites that offer adding a review option

“Be the first one to rate this product" doesn’t inspire confidence, right? This vicious cycle of low popularity and lack of reviews sometimes leads stores to resort to posting fake reviews. It’s estimated that 30-40% of online reviews are fake. However, this practice is illegal in the United States, as it violates the Federal Trade Commission Act. The EU and many other countries also ban fake reviews.

Are online product reviews credible?

Despite this, most reviews are not fabricated, and practices like deleting negative reviews carry the risk of losing trust and customers. What makes reviews trustworthy? Besides the number of reviews, their content and quality are also important. For reviews to be seen as credible, they must be at least somewhat varied. A product rating of 4.7/5 looks more realistic than a perfect 5/5. Similarly, written reviews that include varied language, even with occasional typos, appear more authentic than uniformly glowing praise.

Mixed and positive only product reviews

Most stores (79.2%) with customer review activity received both positive and negative feedback on their products. The items on offer received both 5/5 ratings from satisfied customers and occasional 1/5 ratings or critical opinions. Occasionally, we saw reviews from users who misunderstood the rating system, leaving a low rating but a positive comment. Some stores responded to user reviews to thank them or invite them to contact customer service if the product didn’t meet their expectations – a nice touch that helped build trust. The remaining 20.8% of stores with product reviews were considered suspicious. Products always received the highest ratings and only positive reviews.

Is filtering or sorting by review important?

The short answer is yes. The ability to sort or filter products by reviews improves the user experience, which can lead to finding the right product faster and making a purchase decision. Furthermore, allowing users to filter both positive and negative reviews builds trust in the seller. Among the stores we studied that allowed customers to add reviews, 62.1% did not offer any filtering or sorting options by review. Sorting or filtering was present in 37.9% of stores, broken down as follows:

27.4% sorting by highest or lowest rating
9.5% filtering by star ratings
1% sorting by most reviewed

Filtering and sorting by review on store websites

Including the option to filter or sort by product reviews depends on the industry. It was most common in tire stores (100%) and tool stores (87.5%). These are industries with specialized products and a wide range of offerings, where functionality and quality are particularly important. Sorting/filtering by reviews was rare in industries like art supply stores or hobby stores, where purchases are often based on niche needs or personal taste.

What portion of stores fully leverage product reviews to build trust?

To summarize the results of our study, we decided to check how many stores meet all the criteria related to product reviews that can help improve trust and customer experience. Stores where reviews were used by users, the reviews were trustworthy, and sorting or filtering by reviews was available made up 9.4%. These criteria were most often met by stores selling tires (70%), tools (60%), and luggage stores (40%).

Reviews on store websites statistics

Summary

There is no doubt that product reviews are a usefull element on online store pages. However, to be useful for customers in making purchasing decisions and for sellers in building customer trust, it is important that:

Reviews are actively used by customers
They are realistic and not just filled with positive ratings
Stores offer the ability to filter or sort reviews

While there is no one-size-fits-all formula for success in e-commerce, and many elements of a UX strategy depend on the industry, it is worth considering the use of customer reviews in your online store, as they can prove to be a valuablel tool.

Sources:

Joanna