Marketing
eCommerce Growth Strategies: 7 Ways to Elevate the Customer Experience
July 24, 2023
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5 min read
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Today’s consumers face endless options and often struggle to make confident purchasing decisions.
What they’re looking for is validation, and that increasingly comes from fellow shoppers. Brands that use reviews effectively gain an edge: more visibility, stronger credibility, and higher conversions. Let’s look at how.
With so many brands competing for attention, customers are overwhelmed by choice. Often, the deciding factor isn’t product specs or price, it’s the reassurance that someone else has bought and liked the product. That’s why reviews are so influential. In fact, 66% of people say they trust consumer opinions posted online, and 70% say they trust reviews displayed on brand websites.
The impact of this trust is substantial. A product with positive reviews can outperform a better-known competitor that lacks visible social proof. It’s not just about whether a product is good - it’s whether people know that others think it’s good. Reviews do that job.
Failing to collect and display customer reviews means missing out on early-stage trust-building. If your competitors are doing it and you’re not, you’re likely losing potential customers before they even consider your offering.
Customer reviews don’t just help buyers, they also help your brand get discovered in the first place. When reviews are structured properly and tied to your product catalog, they contribute to how you appear across search engines, especially in high-intent moments like shopping queries.
One of the biggest performance wins comes through Google Seller Ratings. As a Google licensed review partner, REVIEWS.io allows you to turn verified reviews into star ratings that appear directly in your search and shopping ads. These stars are proven to increase click-through rates and can reduce cost-per-click by as much as 17%.
But even beyond paid performance, reviews can support your organic rankings, enhance your product listings, and improve user engagement across your site. They make your content richer, your offering more credible, and your customer journey more complete.
Many brands worry that asking for reviews will be disruptive but the truth is, most customers are happy to share feedback if approached the right way. In fact, 77% of consumers say they’re willing to write a review if simply asked.
The key is timing and delivery. With REVIEWS.io, you can automate review invitations based on fulfilment and delivery data, ensuring that you reach out when your customer has had enough time to use and enjoy the product. Email invitations work well for branded, longer-form content. SMS requests are ideal for mobile-first audiences who prefer something quick and simple. You can also personalise your requests based on customer segments or product types to improve your response rate.
This flexibility allows you to capture authentic, high-quality reviews at scale - without compromising the customer experience.
Once collected, reviews shouldn’t stay buried in a dashboard. To drive results, they need to be visible where they have the most influence. The most effective placements include your product and category pages, landing pages, social media feeds, and paid advertising channels.
Displaying reviews directly on your website helps build trust at the point of decision. Integrating them into your paid search strategy - via Google Seller Ratings - makes your ads more compelling. Sharing quotes and visual reviews on social media brings added credibility to your brand voice. Each of these placements serves a purpose, helping customers feel confident enough to take the next step.
Reviews tell you what customers liked or didn’t like but if you want to understand why they made their decision, surveys provide the missing piece. Short, targeted surveys can uncover valuable insights around product quality, service expectations, pricing perception, and more.
REVIEWS.io offers multiple ways to deliver surveys: post-checkout, post-review, or via shareable links that can be distributed in emails or social posts. These insights allow you to refine your messaging, enhance your customer experience, and identify purchase motivators you may not have considered.
Even a small sample of survey data can help shape smarter campaigns, better attribution models, and more effective product development decisions.
Beyond written reviews, visual content from real customers is another powerful trust signal. User-generated content (UGC), like photo and video reviews, or Instagram mentions, helps new customers see products in real-world settings, making your brand feel more human and relatable.
REVIEWS.io enables you to manage all your UGC from one place. You can tag products in submitted content, create shoppable galleries, and embed dynamic visuals into emails or product pages. This is particularly effective in email marketing, where UGC has been shown to increase click-through rates by up to 78%.
Adding UGC to touchpoints like abandoned cart emails, post-purchase flows, or seasonal campaigns turns happy customers into your most persuasive advocates.
Word of mouth may look different today, but its influence hasn’t faded. In fact, it's stronger than ever thanks to the digital tools that let us collect, publish, and amplify customer voices at scale.
Reviews, surveys, and user-generated content give modern brands everything they need to stand out in a crowded market. They build trust. They inform smarter marketing. And most importantly, they convert.
If you’re ready to unlock the full power of customer feedback, we’re here to help.
Book a demo with REVIEWS.io to see how you can turn every purchase into a marketing opportunity.
It’s customer feedback shared online, like reviews and UGC, that builds trust and influences buying decisions, just like traditional recommendations.
Yes. Reviews add fresh content, boost keyword relevance, and support rich results like Google star ratings - improving visibility and clicks.
Automate requests post-delivery via email or SMS. Timing it right improves response rates without disrupting the customer experience.
Display them on product pages, landing pages, in Google Ads, emails, and social posts to build trust at every stage of the journey.
