Is your internet business set up to allow product reviews and ratings by the visitors to your web site? How about your Facebook Page? Do you have product reviews and ratings posted on that? If not, you’re missing out on one of the fastest-growing trends there is, and that is the sharing of peer reviews and information when making purchasing decisions.

Shopping Behaviours Are Changing

Bazaarvoice is one of the leading providers of user-generated reviews and ratings and new data they have published shows how dramatically online consumers are changing their shopping behaviour.

During the week of Thanksgiving of this year (week ending 28-11-10), online shoppers showed a voracious appetite for peer provided reviews and recommendations courtesy of Bazaarvoice to the tune of 2.7 billion.

Massive Year Over Year Increases

To give some perspective to that number, it represents a 44 percent increase in the number of peer opinions read from 2009 and a whopping 128 percent increase over the number reported in 2008.

It seems consumers are looking to each other in record numbers for advice and recommendations for their shopping decisions, with more than 550 million product-related discussions having been recorded just on Cyber Monday alone. In fact, Bazaarvoice reported that, during peak times, something like ten thousand opinions per second were being exchanged among consumers.

Change In How Reviews Are Accessed

Obviously, there has been a seed change in the way consumers are shopping and making their final shopping decisions by taking the advice and opinions of fellow-shoppers. But, not only has there been a change in the way shoppers gather intelligence relating to products and services, but where they get that data has also changed dramatically.

The most common platforms for people to check for reviews and ratings are the social networks, mainly Twitter and Facebook. And the most common tool used to access the social networks is a mobile device, which is the way more and more people are conducting any type of online transaction. Many companies now provide reviews on their Facebook Page, meaning consumers don’t even need to leave Facebook to find out all they need to know about a particular product or service.

It’s obvious that, if you want engaged customers who are likely to purchase from your site, providing them with the ability to review your products and interact with like-minded consumers either on your internet business web site or on your Facebook Page or on Twitter or all of the above is essential.

Talk to a UK internet marketing consultant for help setting up customer reviews and ratings features for your business and watch your conversion rates soar.

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