When building an online store for a client, Innovative Global Vision always encourages the inclusion of the ability for customers to leave reviews on products.  It is surprising how often online retailers balk initially at the idea of allowing the general public to comment on their products or services.  Their concerns most often center around 2 concepts: “What if no one rates it?” and “What if they rate it poorly?”

What Customer Reviews Do For You

In general, the availability to provide and read reviews on what a business is offering creates a “bandwagon” effect; good reviews from satisfied customers make prospective purchasers feel that they may be missing out if they aren’t part of this happy group.  Having reviews on a product also encourage future purchasers to leave their own reviews.  The occasional not-so-good review (especially if the store owner takes the time to post a professional response) usually serves to enforce the reality of the good reviews, and shows a prospective customer that if by some strange twist of fate they too have an issue with the product or service, they can count on a professional resolution of the situation by the business.  If no one has yet left a review on a product, it is a neutral effect.  If a customer does purchase it, that option to “Be the First to Review This Item!” is often inducement enough to return to the site after the purchase to let their voice be heard.

Some other benefits of customer reviews on a site are:

• Reviews are highly linkable and provide “updated content”, encouraging search engines to improve your site rankings
• The way your customers talk about your products can provide you with new or more searchable keywords to apply to your product

Customer Reviews Using Facebook Integration

With the recent launch of OneLuckyDogBakery.com’s new store website, IGV has added another layer of benefit to the standard customer review.  Products can only be rated by customers logged into their store account, greatly reducing the possibility of random malicious low rankings.  Also (and this is huge, folks), instead of the review feature being confined to display only on the store website, we have improved the feature to integrate with Facebook.  Now, to leave a review, the customer must simply sign in to their Facebook account and leave their review in the widget.  When they post their review of a product, it will visible on One Lucky Dog’s FB page, the customer’s page, and the pages of the members of both the customer’s and the store’s social network.

No longer will product reviews be visible to only those searching for that particular product or those who actually make it to the store!  This new feature will allow the word to be spread about great products across the Facebook universe, inspiring folks who might not have been interested before to visit One Lucky Dog’s online store and perhaps make purchases of their own.  What could be better than free advertising?