September 2022 - Premium eCommerce marketing services

Month: September 2022

Why are customer reviews important for eCommerce, and how can they be managed efficiently?

Posted on by LION Digital

There is a general understanding among eCommerce business owners that reviews are important. However, the true significance of client reviews frequently eludes due to various, at first glance, more essential priorities in overall business processes. In a year-on-year comparison, more consumers read online reviews while searching for products and services. According to the 2022 State of Reviews provided by LION’ partner REVIEWS.io, 94% of users claim that reviews left by preceding business clients are influential when making a purchase decision. Moreover, 62% of respondents say that reviews significantly impact them and only 6% report no impact.

Where to find eCommerce business, product and service reviews?

Although eCommerce clients use multiple channels on the internet, there are three of the most influential points for review management:

  • Google. Google remains the first source to search for new businesses for 75% of consumers. Google Seller Ratings and Google My Business helps to build trust at the first point of contact for paid and organic channels. Google Seller Ratings helps improve the performance of Google paid marketing by increasing an ad’s click-through rate, thus lowering SEM’s cost-per-click (PPC). Whereas Google My Business and, properly integrated through data markup, Google 5-star ratings for individual products and services help businesses to stand out in organic SERP results and capture top-of-funnel traffic before competitors.
  • Social Media. Only 36% of customers go on social to directly search for products and services, which is more than twice lower as on Google. Nevertheless, the speed of information spread and the value for the user expressed in the amount of everyday dedicated time makes social media one of the most critical sources for client reviews.
  • Review sites and marketplaces. For some businesses, “Yelp” and other specialised review sites, Amazon and similar marketplaces could be the core source for customer reviews that can’t be neglected.

Trends and eCommerce customer reviews management

New requirements for trust

Preceding years of fake review generation finally gave the fruits, eCommerce prospects now frequently request if companies can fake reviews and question the perfect picture of 5-star reviews. They inspect reviews’ relevance, authenticity, recency and consistency through a critical lens, which found proof in 81% of respondents, claiming that reviews should be recent and contain relevant information to have significant influence. Hence, customers expect more balanced ratings and quality reviews from verified sources with factual insight into a business, products and services.

Average rating matters

Even if it is only a part of the bigger picture, 68% of respondents answer that before engaging with the business, they preferably search for the company with a 4 as the average star rating. In contrast, only 3% of consumers appeal to companies with 1 or 2 average star ratings. At the same time, 68% somewhat agree that a high rating could be trusted only if a significant number of such reviews support it.

Reviews before price

With the massive spread of online shopping and eCommerce businesses as a response to demand, shoppers’ behaviour is also gaining more sophistication. As a matter of fact, the most influential aspect of the decision-making process when it comes to online store choice became the reviews with the share of 40% of respondents, which overtook even the price with 27%, delivery time and free returns with 20% and 13%, respectively. Interpreting the numbers, it is an opportunity for retailers with higher prices to sell more than those with lower prices for the same goods just by having better reviews.

Fewer purchases proceed solely based on the product representation messages in marketing channels initiated by the company, and more people instead rely on the experience of others. Reviews increase the probability of unknown brands being discovered by customers and competing with top brands in their categories. At the same time, the competitiveness in the eCommerce market allows not to endure poor customer experiences, which amplifies the importance of client reviews.

Company’s response to a feedback

If there is something equally important in eCommerce client feedback management as past client experiences wrapped into words and images, it is the company’s response. Especially the one to negative feedback since the question “Do you read replies to negative reviews?” received “Yes” as the answer from 90% of eCommerce users that were approached. Most merchants seem to understand the importance of feedback, and 62% claim that they respond to all or most of the reviews they receive, in contrast to 15% that say they never or rarely respond to online reviews.

Negative reviews first

Research demonstrated that the first thing e-shoppers do while studying reviews nowadays is apply a filter for 1-star to check possible cons and evaluate the risks. Compared with the past, when an unsatisfied customer could most commonly influence people from his inner circle, the negative eCommerce review placed immediately alongside the goods and services descriptions can abruptly change the intention of any user that came on the page. Thus, responding to negative customer feedback promptly and adequately increases the positive impact on the client’s decision-making process even more.

Review collection strategy

As a part of nature, people are more eager to share their opinions in the extreme grades of perception – when experience exceeded or was below expectations. Therefore, an average customer with an intermediate level of satisfaction with the product or service is usually not eager to leave a review without encouragement. For instance, over half of respondents admit to leaving online reviews four times a year or even less, and 26% have never left a review at all. At the same time, only 5% of consumers say they never leave reviews based on a positive experience. Thus, eCommerce businesses should focus on an effective review collecting strategy that would include a 360o-degree view and engagement motivation at the final customer journey stages.

Review collecting systems

According to 81% of businesses that participated in the study, review collection systems provide a profitable return on investment.

REVIEWS.io provides tools for collecting and managing company and product reviews, user-generated content and other reputation management technologies. The system integrates with all popular eCommerce solutions, including Shopify, Google, WooCommerce, Klaviyo, Magento and many more. Reviews.io is trusted by over 8,200+ brands, such as Cake Vaay, BoxRaw, Bloom & Wild, helping businesses to grow through customer trust & advocacy.

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Article by

Asselya Sekerova –
Marketing &
Project Director

6 Tips for Google Merchant Center

Posted on by LION Digital

Introduction

ALAN KENT: (00:07) Google Merchant Center is a great way to share data about your eCommerce business with Google. Hi. My name is Alan Kent, and I’m a developer advocate at Google. In this episode, I’m going to share six tips on how to get the most out of Merchant Center for your presence in search results. The most common use for Merchant Center is to upload product data via structured feeds. Because feeds are designed to be read by computers, data is extracted more reliably than Googlebot crawling your site and extracting data from web page markup. If you’re familiar with structured data, you may wonder whether to embed structured data in web pages or provide a feed to the Merchant Center. Google’s recommendation is to do both. Google may cross-check feed data against your website. So product-structured data in web pages is still recommended even if you also provide Merchant Center feeds. If you have physical stores, you can also share inventory location data with Google. This can then be used by Google when answering queries for products near me.

Tip 1. Ensure products are indexed

(01:50) The Googlebot web crawler attempts to locate all products on your site by following links between pages. Googlebot, however, may miss pages in some circumstances. For example, you may have some products only reachable from on-site search results. Google typically does not enter search terms into the on-site search box to discover new pages. If you have a product page and are unsure if it is indexed, you can use the URL Inspection tool. This will report what Google Search knows about your page. You can also use the site colon URL as a search term to search for that specific URL. In a previous episode, I described creating a Sitemap file to list the important pages to index on your site. The Sitemap file is used by the Googlebot crawler to find pages on your site without relying solely on links between pages. But there is another way. Creating a Merchant Center product feed will help Google discover all the product pages on your website. These product page URLs are shared with the Googlebot crawler to potentially use as starting points for crawls of additional pages. It is, however, important to note that this and some other Merchant Center features are not available in all countries. Please refer to the Merchant Center Help Center for up-to-date lists of countries’ features available.

Tip 2. Check your prices are correct in the Search results

(03:26) The second tip is to check the accuracy of product pricing data used by Google. If Google incorrectly extracts pricing data from your product pages, it may show your original price instead of your discounted price in search results. To check if Google is extracting price data accurately, quickly test a sample of results. You can search for a product page and check the price displayed if rich results are displayed. Search using the site colon URL for your product page to return the web page as a search result. To accurately provide product information, such as list price, discounts, and net price, it is recommended to add structured data to your web pages and provide Merchant Center with structured feeds of your product data. This will help Google correctly interpret pricing shown on product pages.

Tip 3. Minimise price and availability lag

(04:24) Tip number 3 is to minimise inconsistencies in pricing and availability data between your website and Google’s understanding of your site due to timing lags. For example, Google crawls web pages on your site according to its schedule. Changes on your site may not be noticed until the next Googlebot crawl. On the other hand, Merchant Center can be updated on a more consistent schedule, such as once a day or even once an hour. These delays can result in Merchant Center and search indexes lagging behind site changes, such as when a product goes out of stock. I described how to check Google’s understanding of your pricing data in the previous tip using a site colon URL query. In addition, Merchant Center may identify products that have different pricing data according to your website due to delays in processing. This can negatively impact your products’ search results until the discrepancy is resolved. Merchant Center also allows you to download all pricing data in bulk if you want to do a more exhaustive reconciliation of pricing data in Merchant Center against your website. To reduce lag, you can request Merchant Center to process your feeds more frequently. This can reduce the time lag between the product data changing on your website, and Google is aware of it. Another approach is to enable automated item updates in Merchant Center. This causes Merchant Center to automatically update collected pricing and stock-level data based on web page contents when discrepancies are detected. This is based on the assumption that your website updates in real-time when pricing or availability changes.

Tip 4. Ensure your products are eligible for rich product results

(06:18) Tip number 4 is to check that your products are getting rich results treatment in search results. Rich results are displayed at Google’s discretion but rely on Google having rich product data. To check if your product pages are receiving rich results presentation treatment, you can use a site colon URL query to search for a specific web page. If not found, the page may not be indexed. You can also use the Google Search URL Inspection tool to verify if Google is indexing your product page. To get the special rich products presentation format, it is recommended to provide structured data in your product pages and a product feed to Merchant Center. This will help ensure that Google correctly understands how to extract product data from your product pages needed for rich text product results. Also, check for error messages in Google Search Console and Merchant Center.

Tip 5. Share your product inventory data

(07:18) Tip number 5 is to ensure, if you have physical stores, that your products are being found when users add phrases such as “near me” to the queries. To test if locality data is being processed correctly, you may need to be physically near one of your physical stores and then search for your product with “near me”, or similar added. Register your physical store locations in your Google Business Profile, and then provide a local inventory feed to Merchant Center. The local inventory feed includes product identifiers and store codes, so Google knows where your inventory is physically located. You might also like to check out Pointy from Google. Pointy is a device that connects to your in-store point of sale system and automatically informs Google of inventory data from your physical store.

Tip 6. Sign up for tab Shopping tab

(08:15) The final tip is related to the shopping tab. You may find your products are available in search results but do not appear. To see if your products are present, the easiest way is to go to the Shopping tab and search for them. To be eligible for the shopping tab, provide product data feeds via Merchant Center and opt-in to Surfaces Across Google. Structured data and product pages alone are not sufficient to be included in the Shopping Tab search results.

Conclusion

(08:45) This is the final episode in the current series on improving the presence of your commerce website in search results. If you have topics, you would like to see included in a future series. Please leave a comment. If you have found the series useful and want to see more similar content, make sure to Like and Subscribe. Google Search Central publishes new content every week. Until next time, take care.

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Is your business suffering
from the September slump?

Posted on by LION Digital

Seasonality is an unavoidable challenge for any business. No matter if your business sells products that are geared toward Winter or Summer pursuits, or if you have a product that is in demand all year round, we all have to weather up and downs throughout the calendar year.

The majority of ecommerce clients’ peak season is unsurprisingly Oct-Dec, with Black Friday, Cyber Monday and the holiday gift-giving period boosting conversion rates and driving up revenue. However, this often means dealing with a much softer market in the month of September. The IMRG Online Retail Index noted a 12.5% drop in online sales YoY in 2021, and we can see a similar trend across the majority of clients this year.

On average, across our accounts, we can see a drop in conversion rate by a full percentage point or more compared to August, which has affected performance across a wide range of industries; however, CTRs on average are up by 25%, suggesting the consumers are in a stage of “browsing not buying”.

Considering the current economic climate, with consumers seeing a constant barrage of news around supply chain issues, rising inflation rates, and reports of an impending recession, this drop in performance is, of course, a concern to many. However, it’s not all bad news.

“Early data from Morning Consult, a global intelligence company, finds that people plan to spend about the same amount on gifts as they did last year.” Inflation rates and concerns around cost saving, however, mean they will be in the market for deals and discounts.

With this in mind, here are a few tips from the LION team on how to weather the storm and win in the holiday season:

  1. Capitalise on any low-cost traffic to the site now. Consumers who are visiting your site have put you in their consideration set and may come back to purchase in the following months. Invest in owned channels, like SEO, Email and CRO and make the most of the visitors already have and how you can expand this.
  2. Start planning for sales and promotions now, and talk to the team about the best way to market these. You might want to consider adding retargeting to your strategy to let people know about discounts or flesh out your email strategy to capture low-hanging fruit. Think creatively about how you will stand out from the crowd during Black Friday and other upcoming holiday sales periods.
  3. Consider your ROAS thresholds carefully. While we don’t recommend going dark during this time, don’t spend at the cost of margin to the business when the money can be better used later in the year.
  4. Leverage new formats like YouTube shopping and awareness channels to bring new customers to the brand.

Reach out to the team at LION for advice and strategy tips that are personalised to your business.

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Article by

Leonidas Comino – Founder & CEO

Leo is a, Deloitte award winning and Forbes published digital business builder with over a decade of success in the industry working with market-leading brands.

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