A new study by e-commerce analytics company Profitero has concluded that it is the number of online reviews a product has that directly correlates to sales performance, not whether the reviews are positive or negative.
Titled Assessing the Impact of Ratings and Reviews on E-commerce Performance, the study looked at Amazon UK data to determine their findings. Ultimately, the report found that in the skin care category, best selling products in the Top 10 had on average 1,370 product reviews, a 165% increase on the average number of reviews for best-selling products in the Top 100 at 517.
Profitero SVP of strategy and insight Keith Anderson said of the findings: “The best selling products in a category – those in the Top 10 – each tend to have more reviews than products among the top 100 in the category as a whole - many with double or triple the number of reviews.”
Other interesting insights from the study were that even just having one review was found to raise traffic by 108%, with conversation rates being boosted by 65%. It was also pointed out that the optimal number of reviews was around 35-50. One study participant, Darcy Reifenberger, noted that, “We see diminishing returns after generating the initial critical mass of around 50 reviews. Once you have 50, it’s better to move support to the next product in the portfolio.
“The value of reviews also tends to come from not building them in one fell swoop. If brands need to encourage reviews, they should do so on an ongoing basis through ‘refresh’ campaigns using well-managed sampling.”
