You've heard before that adding product reviews to your ecommerce site can increase sales. But did you know just how rapidly-and how much? Adding even one product review to a product page increases order volume by 10 percent on average, according to the study Conversation Index Volume 8 from Bazaarvoice.

Based on data from over 57 million reviews on Bazaarvoice's customers' websites, the study found that online product reviews rapidly pay off for an ecommerce company. Here's some of what the study found-and how you, too, can profit from the power of product reviews.

  • Adding 30 customer reviews to a product page increases order volume by 25 percent.
  • Visitors to product pages who read customer reviews convert at a 58 percent higher rate than those who don't.
  • Adding customer reviews to a product page boosts search traffic to that page by an average of 15 to 25 percent.

Customer reviews have many benefits for ecommerce websites' SEO. First, search engines reward new content-and adding reviews is a great way to develop a stream of new, user-generated content that's continuously refreshed. In addition, customers writing reviews tend to use the same types of keywords that search engine visitors use, which helps boost SEO even more.

Here are some tips for using product reviews in ways most likely to boost sales.

  • Include reviews on each product page so you can increase sales of each specific product. Display them prominently, with access to reviews above the fold so they're easy for viewers to find.
  • In addition to using standardized ratings systems such as stars or points in your review forms, provide space for customers to input their own text reviews. This will give you additional user-generated content.
  • Allow customers to post their own product photos as part of their reviews. The study found shoppers almost always look at photos before any other type of online content.
  • Don't edit reviews. Shoppers are 51 percent more trusting of unedited reviews, so resist the temptation to correct bad grammar, acronyms, abbreviations or even misspellings. Misspellings in reviews can actually boost your SEO by attracting users who misspell the words the same way.
  • Encourage new reviews by providing links to your review page in followup emails after products or services are delivered. Or offer customers the chance to be entered in a weekly or monthly drawing for a gift card or free product if they provide a review.

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