channelcentral Blog

In our third Blog featuring ‘Buying Servers Online UK eCommerce Survey’, we’re looking at the coverage and quality of sites that offer Reviews. In a B2C context Reviews offer enormous value to a buyer. Buyers are very interested in Reviews and will often base their ultimate buying decision on them. Buyers are also increasingly aware of Fake Reviews and this can lead to disappointment when products fail to live up to online claims.

When channelcentral reviewed Reseller/Retailer Sites many of them didn’t show Reviews at all, and overall the number of Reviews was quite low. This reflects the B2B nature of Servers, and it was evident that some sites had Reviews as part of the store experience because the breadth of products they offered crossed over into B2C products.

Reviews in Numbers

Only four of our 21 Resellers showed Reviews at all and three out of a possible 25 products were reviewed. With a relatively low number of Reviews on the Servers one thing was very clear: empty review pages gives the user no confidence that the site is ‘fed and watered’.

Which Review Providers?

Clearly when looking at Amazon, their Reviews were native to Amazon. Other Retailers also used a Review function that appeared native to their store. We also saw specialist Review Companies such as Reevoo and Testseek. The benefit of using an independent review service is that data hasn’t necessarily been provided by users of that site, but users of an aggregated service.

Other Observations
A couple of other interesting behaviours:

• Unusually, one Reseller has used its own staff to review products, and while in a B2C context that would be contentious, in this context it felt reassuring that the Reseller was prepared to share product pros and cons etc.
• One Reseller showed a popularity rank within Servers which was interesting, but may lead to confusion. A user may be buying the 50th ranked Server because it’s a better fit than the 1st.

Best Practice

If the user experience is not improved by the use of Reviews the advice has to be to suppress them, unless data is present. Reviewing products that you sell is possibly a little tenuous? Server popularity may be confusing, off-putting even (yay I’m buying the 43rd most popular Server!). If one of the data aggregation Review companies has great product coverage in the B2B space: that’s worth investing in. Otherwise leave Reviews to B2C.

There is certainly a gaping opportunity for online sellers in the industry to improve their Reviews features to enhance the purchasing and decision making process for buyers. How to get more buyers to provide useful reviews on products? One suggestion might be to offer incentives for fully completed reviews, perhaps free delivery on the next order.

A well informed buyer is far more likely to be a confident, assured and satisfied buyer. And a satisfied buyer is likely to re-purchase.