A while back I came across a really great post by Joshua Porter about “Why You Shouldn’t be Afraid of Customer Reviews.” A lot of what he discusses is key to our own understanding and strategy around product reviews, and we’ve come to discover ourselves through conversion metrics, case studies, and other findings.

He discusses the common fear that retailers have had about consumer reviews, with the assumption that negative reviews would have a bad impact on their business. He points out how negative reviews are actually very beneficial to a retailers business: “While it’s easy to imagine negative reviews leading to lost sales, they more often lead to increased sales of good products and increased customer happiness resulting from helping people make smart decisions.”

When making a purchase decision, the following are general validation points that a person takes into consideration:

1. Negative reviews

He points out that when a person is already interested in a product, they want to go straight to the negative reviews. The reason being is that a manufacturer site or description would never tell you what’s bad about the product, and people want to see what the worst possible negatives of the product are so that they can make an informed decision. It’s no surprise that our “cons” tags are one of our most popular features.

If a product has really bad reviews, a person will go and find a product that has really positive reviews, and feel all the more confidant that they’re making the right decision. Also, negative reviews help retailers save costs from fewer returns, and manufacturers get great feedback on how to improve their product.

2. Credibility of reviews

In a recent article featuring an interview with our CEO, the author stated “It is often difficult to tell whether a review is coming from a real consumer or if it was placed there inorganically as a marketing tactic.” This is a widespread question people wonder when reading reviews online, given review sites like Epinions who pays people to write reviews.

Our “Verified Buyer” feature was born on trying to solve this issue. We work with our retail partners to send out product review requests to people around 3 weeks after they purchased it. Since it’s sent to the same email address used to make the purchase, we can tag that review as a “Verified Buyer” review.

3. Validation that this product is “right for me.”

People put various levels of emphasis on different factors that shape their purchase decision.:

• The physical features/image
• Star rating/reviews - both positive and negative reviews, and the credibility of those reviews.
• Pros and cons - It’s reassuring to see cons because no product is perfect.
• Best uses - we ask people to tag what the ‘best use’ of the product is.
• Affinity - people always want to know, who is this review written by? Is it someone with the same needs and wants as me? Is it a person who is an expert and knows more about the product than I do? That’s why we ask people during the review writing process what type of user they are. Professional? Beginner? etc. That way, we can roll up the tags, and show people the recommended products by each affinity.
• Price - of course, when a person is weighing the positives vs. the negatives, features and specs and so forth, they take into consideration how much that product is worth spending on.

All of these factors are obviously weighed differently in different peoples’ minds, while some factors might not even matter to some at all. If one of these decision points is weighed really negatively in a persons mind, say for example the “cons” or the price are things the person isn’t satisfied with, that will come in the way of making the final purchase decision.