How consumer reviews drive sales at JCWhitney.com
When consumer-generated product reviews show four or five stars out of a maximum of five, sales on J.C. Whitney & Co.’s auto parts and accessories site JCWhitney.com increase 8-16%, vice president of e-commerce Geoffrey Robertson says.
J.C. Whitney, No. 112 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide, is using a consumer reviews application from Bazaarvoice, which took about 30 days to deploy, Robertson said at last week’s Internet Retailer 2007 Conference & Exhibition in San Jose, CA.
“When you get four or five stars—watch out because sales will go way up,” he said. Robertson gave several reasons why customer reviews help to increase sales: they make it easier for shoppers to choose among what are often numerous product options; they increase customer loyalty and build a retailer’s brand through interaction among shoppers; and they help to create pertinent online product content that gets picked up by Internet search engines to improve a retailer’s rankings in natural search results.
But it also takes work to get a reviews program up and running, he added. J.C. Whitney has conducted sweepstakes to provide an incentive to get shoppers to generate reviews, and it routinely e-mails post-purchase messages to customers asking them to write a review of the purchased product.
Although it’s important to run negative as well as positive reviews to give a reviews program credibility with consumers, Robertson noted that reviews with only one or two stars have been shown to result in a drop in sales of about as much as 21% for two stars and 30% for a single star.
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