Surveys, shopper approved and others

[dutch]

Does anyone have comments on using the shopper approved service to obtain more product and site surveys?
Any overall comments on the effectiveness of a store with more surveys vs fewer surveys
Debating whether or not the chase for more surveys is worth it...

[joshpappas]

We have used PowerReviews for several years to collect product reviews, and started using ShopperApproved a few months ago to collect reviews for our overall store. We were originally planning to switch to ShopperApproved for product reviews as well, but decided we preferred what PowerReviews was doing.

Overall, we know for sure that product reviews increase conversion rates, and see a lot of follow-up comments saying how great it was to see all the reviews. We also syndicate a reviews feed to Google to display with our shopping ads. This helps the performance of those ads tremendously, especially since our competitors don't show this same information.

For the site reviews, I'm not certain that it has a huge impact on conversions. We do use the ratings badges on our site's footer, and I think that does lend credibility and give some confidence for people shopping. However, Google isn't displaying the rating on our SERP results like we had hoped, so we haven't seen any gains in click-through rates there (might be a code issue on my end -- I'm looking into it). The shopping ads only show the site rating once someone has clicked the ad to see more information, so the product reviews are really having the much bigger impact.

The biggest advantage we've seen from the site surveys is from the feedback. The initial survey at checkout gives us realtime insight into what people are thinking about the checkout process, pricing, shipping rates, and even problems they might have had. The follow-up survey is worded as a "delivery confirmation," which I think is genius because it encourages higher participation rates than just asking for a review. We see about 15% of our customers filling out this survey. This information then gives us the opportunity to respond quickly to shipping problems or damage if needed. Overall, it's given us another tool to improve our customer service efforts.

All of that said, you asked about quantity of reviews. There's probably a point of diminishing returns on the number of reviews. However, getting reviews on a regular basis keeps the content fresh and makes your store look active. Depending on how you implement reviews on your site, search engines will give you points for freshness, in addition to indexing all of that user-generated content as part of your pages. That's all good stuff.

What are you doing currently?

[dutch]

We're using the review module from Glendale. We only get around 5 per month, we've tried a bunch of things but we're stuck there. Shopper approved pitches that we'll immediately get hundreds of reviews which I was wondering the credibility of that claim. If Google isn't displaying the rating on your SERP I'd be bumming too, that's definitely a big selling point for them.

Do you use product listing ads? I was told the review stars would come through on PLAs as well. Wonder if that helps there?

[joshpappas]

I'm not seeing as many reviews as ShopperApproved pitched, but I'm getting quite a lot. I just checked my notes, and 25% of people filled out the initial survey at checkout, and 15% completed the follow-up survey a week later during the first 2.5 months we had this in place. That's 15% of everyone, not just those who complete the initial survey. Your mileage may vary. With PowerReviews, we get reviews for about 2.5% of orders. We like having this sent separately, though, because we stagger the follow-up timeframe. Our products are used for events, so the first email confirms that they received it OK, and the second arrives a couple of weeks later to let them review the performance of the product itself. ShopperApproved sends that all in a single email.

We do use product listing ads, and having ratings listed there is a big help for CTR since our competitors aren't using that feature. We don't use ShopperApproved for that, but they do the same thing.