A new customer-generated product-review feature deployed a month ago is helping to boost conversion rates at CompactAppliance.com, which uses automated e-mail promotions to entice customers to participate in the review program, senior vice president Jason Roussos tells InternetRetailer.com.
“Our customers have definitely shown interest in the review program, and our overall conversion rate has improved,” Roussos says.
CompactAppliance.com, a unit of Richlund Ventures Inc., No. 281 in the Internet Retailer Top 400 Guide to Retail Web Sites, is using product-review software from Millbrae, CA-based PowerReviews. The software, which PowerReviews is providing free of charge as a hosted application, allows visitors to CompactAppliance.com to write reviews of products they’ve purchased, then makes aggregated review information for CompactAppliance to display on its product pages.
The reviews are becoming a key part of the retailer’s overall marketing and merchandising strategy, because many of its products—for example, portable air-conditioners that can be wheeled from room to room—are unfamiliar to many shoppers. “A lot of our products are not mainstream, and customers have asked where they could get reviews of them,” Roussos says.
But to make the review system work, CompactAppliance had to generate involvement by customers. Using e-mail technology from Manticore Technology, which includes a built-in web traffic analytics tool, the retailer automatically e-mails incentives to customers 30 days after a purchase to entice them to write a review of their new product. The incentives may include coupons for follow-up purchases.
The e-mail promotions are helping CompactAppliance to generate a critical mass of reviews, Roussos says, adding that the review program is one of the key ways he expects to continue supporting steady growth in traffic and sales.
CompactAppliance.com and its sister site, PortableAirShop.com, which specializes in portable air-conditioners, are on pace to do a total of about $20 million this year, reflecting an increase of about 40% over last year, Roussos says.
PowerReviews, whose development partners include site design firm Fry Inc., is providing its software for free as it builds up its own database of product reviews. Product reviews written by consumers will appear on its own site, PowerReviews.com, after its official launch later this year, as well as on the retailer`s site. Its business model is based on offering aggregated product review data from multiple retailers through PowerReviews.com, where it will earn revenue through sponsored ads that consumers can click to get to a retail web site to purchase the reviewed product.
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