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77% of People Read Online Reviews Before Buying: Are They Finding You?

Jimmy Rodela

Did you know that 77 percent of people take the time to read product reviews before they make any purchases online?

It’s amazing how most marketers are keen on running all sorts of online marketing campaigns, yet they don’t take the time and initiative to have others write a comprehensive review about their products.

Can you imagine how many of your “would-be customers” end up buying from your competitors, all because they couldn’t find any reviews about your product?

Considering how a good number of consumers are taking the time to read reviews online even before they start buying anything, not taking the time to write comprehensive product reviews for your business is clearly a terrible mistake—and a costly one at that!

At this point, you should already be convinced of how important product reviews are, and why you should integrate product reviews in your marketing strategies (if it isn’t included yet).

However, if you’re oblivious about how to write product reviews that really bring in the bacon, then these tips are for you.

These tips aren’t just hypothetical ones. I have used these on several of my clients and they are proven and tested to work.If you’re looking for tried-and-tested tips on how to write product reviews to get more sales online, then this guide is surely what you need.

1. Be the Prospect Customer and List Your Key Questions

This ensures that you’ve pretty much covered all the aspects your review should.

Since providing value to the readers is the name of the game when it comes to writing content, one of the best ways to give them as much value is to answer as many of their questions as you can.

As you can probably imagine, once they’re done reading your content, they’ll have all the information they’ll need to solve their problems. Since we are all consumers, we can pretty much tell what each of us are looking to in a product before we buy them.

At this point, all you need to do is “change hats” from being the developer of the product; to a possible buyer of the product.

Once you’ve done that, all you need to do is hack away on your keyboard all the questions that comes across your mind as a possible buyer of the product.

Note: this technique can also help you when you’re struggling with the writer’s block. Because you have all the questions listed, you pretty much have an amazing outline of the entire article making it dead-easy for you to write.

2. Add screenshots to your review

Adding screenshots is especially helpful when you are walking your prospect’s through your product’s features, or doing quick how-to guides.

A great example would be this anyoption review, take note.

The screenshot that the writer added has made it plain simple for the users to navigate and understand how the product works, because of the labels that the writer added on the screenshots.

This is important because the more your prospect customers have a deeper understanding of your product, the lesser objections there will be in their minds as to why they shouldn’t buy them.

The sooner they see first hand that your products have what they need, they can easily convince themselves to make the purchase.

3. Write in a conversational tone

The ability to build rapport with your readers has a massive impact when it comes to enticing them to buy your products after having read your product review.

More often than not, people will want to buy from people—and not from companies.

That is why a lot of these ginormous companies take the time to hire well-known personalities to represent their brands.

This strategy makes their brand look more “human," therefore more relatable, making it easier for them to establish a connection with their audience.

Writing in a conversational tone is also an effective technique since this puts you and your readers on the same page.

Since you’re writing in a conversational tone, your readers can easily relate, and understand your content. They can easily see themselves experiencing the same things that you’re writing about because there is nothing in your content that alienates them.

Conclusion

With how effective product reviews are to convincing your customers to clicking  your “buy now” button; making sure that your product reviews are highly optimized for sales isn’t just a luxury nowadays. It’s a must.

 

Image Credit: stefanamer / Getty Images
Jimmy Rodela
business.com Member
Jimmy Rodela is a freelance writer, professional blogger and a content marketer. His work has been featured on websites with millions of monthly traffic like Yahoo.com, Monster.com, Business2Community and SocialMediaToday.com. He is the Founder and creator of the GuildofBloggers.com.