Testimonials on E-Commerce websites

In the word of e-commerce where products and services are sold and purchased it would seem that customers thinking over a purchase will actually read through testimonials and comments left by other customers.

It is these testimonials and comments which reassure them and thus they may decide to go through with their order, deciding it won’t be a waste of money. However new research has actually suggested that we shouldn’t base our purchases on the reassurance of these comments and in reality we should treat them with caution. The warning has been issued after in depth research was conducted and showed that within the world everyone is competing to have their message received.

Therefore based on this people feel the need to be extreme and thus they express extreme opinions and over exaggerate. In reality it has been advised that simple yes or no answers would be more beneficial than those which would allow for more elaborate answers subject to over exaggeration and extreme, farfetched opinions.

When given the chance to provide more elaborate answers on a website review, testimonial or guestbook people compete for the attention and influence resulting in these striking comments. Then as more and more people leave their comments on a product or service provided the messages carry on becoming more exaggerated and thus less credible and less representative of the service and product they actually received.

The research questions just how seriously should we take customer reviews online? The majority of companies or businesses who are selling their products and services online actually have the ability through their web design to discard any comments which are not suitable for their website and usually approval is needed before a comment is made live.

This in itself is wrong, just because a customer has had a bad experience with a product or service why shouldn’t they get their chance to share their opinion. Companies would discard such a comment and it would never go live, it would never be allowed to tarnish the company or businesses reputation.
Simple binary opinion polls which ask the reviewer to provide a standard yes or no answer could well be more realistic and more true to life than more detailed surveys. They could even prove to be more informative to a potential customer.

As a web design company this is something that interests us – as a customer or potential customer people should be aware that not everything they read is a true representation of the facts or in this case a true representation of a product or service.

Testimonials, comment pages and guestbook pages are just one of the ways in which content can influence a visitor to your site and encourage them to purchase a product or service. Engaging content is another way through the use of a news page, it is these news pages which can contain a whole range of articles incorporating your keywords and phrases. This in turn can help to attract and drive in visitor traffic that is targeted and qualitative and thus could result in more conversions – helping that bottom line total!

Brick technology can help you to keep your news page up to date as well as ensuring that articles and content contain your keywords and phrases. This can be achieved through continuous web development combined with our internet marketing services.

For more information then please contact us on 01254 277190 or email info@brickweb.co.uk.

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