Customer reviews ‘help shape online buying decisions’
Web retailers have been advised that buying decision are often influenced by the opinions of other customers through reviews, forums and blogs.
Research by More Computers found that two thirds of UK online shoppers rely most heavily on the opinions of their peers when pondering whether to buy a product or service over the web.
This suggests that online marketers could use user-generated content such as blogs or forums to increase their appeal to customers searching for their products.
Brian Trevaskiss, operations manager at More Computers, suggested that the next big thing in online shopping will be video reviews.
"Customer reviews are very powerful, and video reviews will soon catch up in popularity," he said.
"Video sites like YouTube are full of product reviews and, when you’ve seen a good one you’re converted. Nothing beats getting your hands on a new gadget, but it’s not possible when you’re shopping online."
While social websites can provide some traffic to websites, visitors are far more often arriving from search engines.
Using search engine optimisation to highlight the reviews on the company’s website could be one technique to both boost the ranking of the site on search engines like Google and increase the popularity of the brand.
