This article was written by Nisha Sharma, pursuing the Diploma in Content Marketing and Strategy Course from Skill Arbitrage, and edited by Koushik Chittella. This article provides a brief overview of different facets of e-commerce content marketing, with special reference to product descriptions and reviews. However, we will first discuss the benefits of content marketing for e-commerce businesses and how to create an effective e-commerce content marketing strategy to understand the role product descriptions and reviews can play in the whole process.

Introduction

As per a report, 54.5% of businesses plan to spend more on content marketing in 2024 than in 2023, and 51% of content consumption derives from organic search. Here is a scenario where a potential customer with some specific needs is looking for information regarding a solution-based product that can address her concerns. She finds and engages with some pieces of relevant information through the available blogs, articles, and newsletters online. After researching, she discovers a product fulfilling her requirements and eventually becomes its happy customer. This is the concept of content marketing in e-commerce businesses. 

A strategic approach that involves creating and sharing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience to drive profitable customer action is content marketing. Content marketing plays a vital role in driving traffic, building brand awareness, engaging customers, reaching and engaging targeted audiences, and ultimately leading to increased sales in ever-vibrant e-commerce businesses. E-commerce content marketing serves as a phenomenon to promote online retail businesses by producing high-quality, informative, and engaging content customised to meet the specific needs and interests of the desired audiences. Through content marketing, e-commerce marketers can build gradual connections and trust, increase brand awareness, and gain customer loyalty by offering information and value that resonates with what prospective customers seek. The major goal of content marketing in e-commerce is to bridge the gap between the brand image and buyer personas through education, engagement, and entertainment by serving useful and relevant content, which can lead to further conversion. The consistent delivery of resourceful and valuable content for audiences can help in gaining and retaining organic traffic, maintaining customer loyalty, and leading to conversions.

Benefits of content marketing for e-commerce businesses

Content marketing for e-commerce businesses is a time-consuming process, but its invaluable advantages are heartwarming. Below are some of the recorded benefits:

• Builds and increases brand awareness

Strategically implemented, powerful content marketing plans can build and increase brand awareness for e-commerce businesses. E-commerce companies use content like e-books, newsletters, videos, and more to make their presence visible organically. The constant flow of high-quality content resonating with the target audience can help the brand make a significant presence and thus be established as a dominant figure in the industry, leading to an increase in the customer base.

• Completes the customer journey

Content carries the ability to hold customers in their purchasing journey from initial discovery to final sale or conversion. Informative, engaging content at every stage of the customer’s journey provides them with the insights they need to make the right decisions about buying the products. Contents like blog posts, product descriptions, visual content, user-generated product reviews, and more help new as well as existing customers access the product history, performance, and customer preferences.

• Improved SEO performance

Effective content marketing plans and their executions can significantly enhance the website’s search engine optimisation (SEO) performance, which results in better visibility on the search engine results pages (SERPs), driving more organic traffic to the e-commerce site. Search engines like Google reward higher rankings for high-quality, relevant content (like blog posts, articles, etc.) addressing the needs and interests of the target audience. 

• Differentiates your brand

Content like blogs, e-magazines, e-books, videos, newsletters, infographics, or podcasts can be personalised as per the values and offers of the businesses and according to the needs of their target audiences. This approach encourages uniqueness and increased engagement, which creates and strengthens the bond between consumers and businesses. 

• Optimises your conversion funnel

The availability of relevant, targeted, and appealing content can convert casual visitors into leads and then into loyal customers of e-commerce businesses.  Every step of the customer’s purchase journey can be guided by personalised content to match the query needs of the customer after understanding their pain points and expectations.

For example, the journey can start with clicking on the link to the blog post on Google search, addressing a need of the customer, followed by product recommendations with educational tutorial videos along with customer reviews.

• Reduces marketing costs

Quality content may enjoy a high ranking on search results pages, causing the continued attraction of other visitors for a long time. However, once it is created, it significantly decreases one’s expenditure on promotions. For example, a blog post that ranks higher attracts more readers naturally long after its publication, giving some longevity and cost-effectiveness to the effort. By investing in quality content, a sustainable marketing strategy can be created that boosts visibility and lowers expenses in the long run.

• Amplifies brand loyalty

High-quality content draws in fresh customers and enhances the loyalty of the existing ones to a particular brand. The business maintains consistent interactions with its client base by providing captivating, informative, and fun items, including articles and blog posts. It also enables prospective buyers to identify themselves with those who recommend its products or services genuinely because it gains trustworthiness through user-generated channels like feedback as well as reviews of other users. Consistent investment in content marketing creates positive brand sentiment and consumer evangelism that leads to long-term loyalty building. Besides customer retention support, the approach also sustains business growth.

Creating an effective e-commerce content marketing strategy

For the e-commerce business to be digitally all-pervasive, implementing a robust content marketing strategy is a must. Below are some of the content marketing strategies that an e-commerce business can adopt to make a strong impact online:

1. Creating content hubs: A content hub that tailors multimedia content specifically for your audience acts to streamline information on the e-commerce site. It includes popular articles as well as niche articles that are handpicked alongside captivating new ideas.

Examples include themed articles, video tutorials, product highlights, and guides, which increase the chances of one discovering the content as well as maintain the interest of a visitor, thus improving the effect of a content marketer.

2. Writing SEO-Optimised Product Descriptions: Product descriptions should include feature information such as size, weight, usage, and precautions for customers to make informed choices. The use of industry keywords enhances SEO rankings and also results in increased traffic. Responding to customer inquiries using detailed explanations, keeping content concise and easy to understand, and using fresh content to avoid getting penalised by Google, and hence crafting SEO-friendly product descriptions, are some of the best practices to be adopted.
3. Embracing user-generated content (UGC): Testimonials, reviews, and social media posts are examples of user-generated content (UGC), and they are used to improve e-commerce advertising by including customer-generated products in promotions once they have been permitted to do so. This strategy increases social proof while at the same time helping to establish strong customer relationships since it facilitates free content creation, which not only promotes stronger brand loyalty but also enhances trustworthiness.
4. Embracing email marketing: Capturing emails, sending targeted brand promotions, and maintaining the cost-effectiveness of getting in touch over mail. In sharp contrast, broadcasting to subscribers is free, unlike paid advertising on social media. placement of brand messages within carefully selected exclusive content and deals rewards the customer while inspiring their continued subscription.
5. Build a glossary of terms: A glossary of terms defines the terms used in a specific industry. Users are educated on the meanings of these terms in the glossary. By adding certain keywords to your e-commerce site, you may attract natural visitors, for example, by elaborating more about those terms in your glossary section. This way, you increase your organic traffic since people looking for such information will likely use those terms in their search engines.
6. Use infographics/gift guides: Infographics as well as gift guides are the newest trends in product promotion since they help in passing information in a way that can be shared easily on various communication platforms, thereby increasing the awareness level of any product being advertised widely. For instance, one might compare features on different items here, describe how things work; and show results from surveys-all of which make these items not only visually appealing but very useful tools in marketing.
7. Tutorial videos: Uncertain clients who require guidelines are the ones who are most suited to tutorial videos that explain how a product is used, put together, or installed. For items that have many features and are made in a complicated manner, such recordings go beyond written descriptions, thereby making their points straight, making it easier for people rather than dedicating more time to reading. This visual material serves as an assistance to those who cannot make up their minds while deciding on what they want to buy due to its ability to describe things so clearly in such few words.
8. Update existing content: Improving prior content—videos, blog posts, and product descriptions—can boost relevance and SEO rankings. Make sure to review and rewrite blog posts if necessary in order not only to shape but also to fit today’s web requirements. Also, make sure that you include your target words in the descriptions of products and make them capture consumers’ attention. To improve the outcome, try teaming up with an expert in search engine optimisation.
9. Reviews/comparison pages: Reviews and comparison pages help online shoppers decide what to buy by giving reviews of products. First, they inform consumers why they buy something, and after buying an item, they give feedback, which can help improve satisfaction rates before shopping.
10. FAQ and help pages: FAQ and help sections help e-commerce brands give answers easily accessible to customers so that there are fewer calls and emails for queries. FAQs are brief questions and responses, whereas the help section contains more in-depth information and can be searched easily. When each FAQ answer is optimised for SEO, it increases its visibility, thus making sure that search queries relating to products rank highly.
11. Customer stories: When customer stories are shown on your online store, it makes the information more trustworthy for potential customers. To this end, genuine experiences from customers themselves should be shared so that, with time, trust is established, which compels individuals visiting it to have a fonder understanding of it.
12. Distribute your content through multiple channels: E-commerce brands should tap into multiple channels to maximise how much content goes out to consumers. For example, apart from sharing the blog posts on social media and email, think of repackaging the information across many platforms. Like converting a blog post into several Facebook posts or an explainer video. This way, they can also be seen by more people and remain more interactive with multi-channel marketing techniques.
13. Create brand collaborations: Brands can become more visible and credible when using influencers and industry experts as partners. It’s good to choose influencers who are impartial, so they can be more related to your business and target customers. While choosing between sponsored content collaborations, product reviews, guest blogging, or co-creation, new audiences are reached via such partnerships that lead to influencers’ use of established brand loyalty and authority among their followers.

Product descriptions in e-commerce

In a physical store, we can see, touch, feel, use, and get a demonstration of the product. These are not possible in an online store and are replaced by a very well-written product description. Online customers need to rely solely on the product descriptions to decide whether to continue and complete the purchase journey with the product.

Product description: meaning

A product description is an indispensable component of the e-commerce content marketing strategy that furnishes all the important information about the particular product to the online customers who visit the product page during their purchase journey. Strong product descriptions connect the product to its customers by providing them with essential information to make decisions.

Product descriptions are powerful branding agents that stir the interest of potential customers as well as inform them so that they get motivated to make purchases. Furthermore, they are essential in developing buyer-seller relationships within e-commerce settings by affecting online purchasing behaviours like repeat buying and turnover volumes. At the same time, product descriptions can be well-written to stop customers from just browsing around their online stores, such as by converting them into actual buyers who eventually increase sales volumes in general.

Importance of product descriptions

1. Builds connection and trust: Compelling descriptions help the customer connect well with the product. The product description, which addresses customer pain points and highlights benefits, resonates with the target audience. Detailed and precise descriptions breed confidence, which results in higher customer retention rates. Being transparent and clear helps a business gain the unwavering trust of the customer and prevents them from dropping off.
2. Enhances the user experience: Product description is an essential tool for online sales. It significantly improves user interaction online. Detailed product information must be provided to help a potential buyer know all about it before buying. Below are the points to be considered:
   1. Brief and well explained: The customers should be able to quickly locate important facts like sizes, material lists, and user instructions. This way, they can make sound decisions without having to search extensively.
   2. Anticipating and addressing customer concerns: Detailed descriptions are a form of preemptive action where any potential inquiries or apprehensions by possible buyers are addressed beforehand, thus minimising worries and ensuring one’s confidence in purchasing.
   3. Informative and engaging content: The right descriptions can provide customers with enough information to connect with the product by visualising the to-be-derived benefits.
   4. Brand voice and messaging coherence: Aligning descriptions of products with the brand voice ensures a cohesive user experience, reinforcing brand recognition and values and making users feel more confident and familiar with the brand.
   5. Visual elements support: Detailed descriptions help increase comprehension by expounding on features and advantages that are usually absent in images, thus increasing revenue due to the increase in customer involvement leading to a boost in satisfaction.
3. Helps build brand credibility: Embedding social proof, for instance, customer reviews and testimonials, in product descriptions is an effective method of verifying trustworthiness. Positive remarks confirm the promise of a product and also give buyers peace of mind. Trust can be built through positive ratings, reviews, and testimonials from different customers. Making detailed descriptions without errors is very important because badly written or too common content can be harmful to credibility. Descriptions, which are well written, demonstrate attention to detail and a commitment to quality, increasing credibility and encouraging customer trust.
4. It helps online businesses stand out from the competition: Fruitful product descriptions are essential for brand differentiation within the highly competitive online realm of shopping, where many stores offer the same type of product; therefore, they must attract potential buyers and not be easily forgotten. This helps pinpoint what makes the product unique in the market by emphasising its advantages and benefits compared with its rivals. Storytelling and a distinctive brand tone can then lead to an emotional connection with customers.

Adopting a unique writing style is essential in creating a strong brand identity, which helps in distinguishing the brand from competitors, attracting like-minded customers, and offering an exceptional shopping experience. For this to happen, a powerful brand image has to be created to have an upper edge over other industry business players, thus promising customers an extraordinary purchasing experience.

5. Boosts search engine visibility and search engine optimisation (SEO): Informing potential customers and engaging them are not the only reasons why well-written product descriptions are important; they can also significantly improve search visibility and e-commerce SEO. Here is how:
   1. Strategically utilise applicable keywords for enhancing internet visibility, which results in products appearing among search results.
   2. Unique product descriptions improve position in the search engine ranks, thereby signalling useful information to search engines.
   3. To enable search engines to match pages with user searches, specific product pages become more relevant with accurate descriptions.
   4. Engaging descriptions keep visitors on pages longer, signalling valuable content to search engines and potentially improving rankings, hence leading to a longer time on the page and lower bounce rates.
   5. Compelling descriptions can attract backlinks from other sites and thus improve SEO. These backlinks help enhance site authority, making it trustworthy.
6. Increases revenue: Businesses improve their sales and overall revenue by having product descriptions that aim to get customers to understand the products they want to purchase. A good and elaborate description goes beyond giving the basics, as it can have the potential to attract buyers to make purchase decisions. It emphasises the unique characteristics, advantages, and worth of the product to help customers make decisions about purchases and thus distinguish it from its competitors.

Attributes of well-crafted product descriptions

In this section, we are going to refer to a product of Dessoi: Dessoi Naturals. Here are some of the attributes of well-crafted product descriptions:

• Include product benefits

We are considering Dessoi as a brand example, as shown below:

Many e-commerce brands concentrate entirely on product features, deterring customers in the process. Even as buyers require information on features and specifications, details about how the product would benefit them are far better. It would be good if, in an entrancing product description, every benefit came right after its corresponding feature. Such a way enables one to know more than just a product’s functionality but also its impact on their lives.

Imagine that you describe how long a laptop can carry charge by saying it has a long battery life, allowing users to be off the charger for a good duration. Thus, it becomes more captivating and convincing.

• Catering to the customer’s imagination

During online shopping, customers rely on written descriptions, product images, and videos, given the intangibility of the situation. Attempting to engage the senses through the creative use of language in product descriptions is paramount to convincing them to buy. A newly launched highly useful product with no value per se in the current market requires effective words explaining it to connect with the prospects’ demands and thus fill the gap. Bold and suggestive language enables customers to see how useful these goods might be in real life, leading them to a satisfactory purchase.

• Enhance readability through the use of bullet points and formatting

An effective product description must be such that even hurried shoppers can easily peruse it. A list of product features should be made using bullet points or small paragraphs. Product-specific characteristics should only be concentrated on instead of having numerous bullet points; this helps in making the product more readable. This strategy guarantees the accessibility of critical information at a glance to enable potential buyers to make informed decisions. This results in an exemplary shopping experience where conversions are highly likely due to short description specificity.

Benefits of product descriptions

1. Achieving higher SEO rankings: Search engines are such extensive web directories that evaluate thousands of websites based on search terms and rank them accordingly. The uniqueness, originality, and relevance of the webpage are evaluated by algorithms. Enhanced SEO rankings can be attributed to unique product descriptions.

Prioritising accurate, relevant, unique, and original product descriptions for the online store can lead to it appearing at the top of search engine results pages. These descriptions optimise the visibility of the online store and, in the end, attract more potential customers, which will drive conversions due to enhanced credibility and authority.

2. Increasing organic traffic: Increasing your e-commerce site’s presence in search engine results can lead to more natural visits. Furthermore, planting relevant search engine optimisation keywords in every single product description can also help increase natural visits. Manufacturer-provided product descriptions are non-unique and might potentially damage the e-commerce business later on.

Google gives importance to distinct and not duplicated product content when ranking e-commerce web pages. Guaranteeing that the product explanations are one-of-a-kind, will not only make the online shop seem different but will also comply with the preferences of search engines, which in the end will enhance visibility and attract interested parties.

3. Decreasing bounce rates: As the below infographic shows, an average bounce rate of 45.68% is usually experienced by e-commerce sites, which signifies that there are a lot of potential clients who leave without buying anything.

Source: https://cxl.com/guides/bounce-rate/benchmarks/

But through good product descriptions, we can make them stay longer, reducing our chances of losing them completely. Online stores could better manage to retain customers by providing captivating and useful product descriptions that would make them stay longer, hence increasing their chances of purchasing.

4. Eliminating duplicate content: Having thoroughly researched and well-aimed product descriptions plays a vital role in avoiding duplicate content, which hinders one’s search rankings. Multiple web pages with the same content only work to compete internally, thus decreasing the chances of individual pages ranking highly. To avoid duplicate content and optimise SEO, unique and well-crafted descriptions all across e-commerce stores must be used. Visibility is improved via this approach, while at the same time increasing the chances of ranking higher on search engines represented by SERP.
5. Attracting more returning visitors: Customers coming to the website always look for clear and concise product information. Detailed product descriptions provide such information, making customers visit again. Moreover, supplementary content, for instance, case studies, FAQs, articles, and customer testimonials, builds trust in the brand. An effective strategy is one that not only tells potential customers about the things you are selling but also gives them more trust so that they can buy from you. Detailed product descriptions and useful information on the products increase customer success rates and audience loyalty.
6. Creating a vivid product image in the mind: The process of thinking, which affects our beliefs, views, and the way we act, is largely influenced by visual representations formed in our minds. Virtual buyers can identify themselves with items they have not physically interacted with via the use of texts attached to different goods. Thus, product descriptions play a significant role in forming a perception and emotional state towards the firm.
7. Fostering emotional connection with buyers: Potential customers have emotional responses to well-designed product descriptions. An example would be the iPhone, which carries “luxury,” “status,” “class,” and so on. In addition, these narratives are capable of drawing clients into them.

Product descriptions, for example, can be employed in the way of narrating, such that there would be active participation by customers in it. In so doing, brands are capable of establishing stronger tie-ups with their viewers through feeling-laden product descriptions and stories that would encourage more involvement as well as long-lasting commitment. 

Strategies for building successful e-commerce product descriptions

Here are the strategies for making compelling product descriptions that, if done, can work wonders in selling the e-commerce products available online:

In this section, we are going to refer to a product of a brand: Skullcandy

1. Knowing the audience:

Understanding the target audience is essential for effective marketing. Deliver tailored product descriptions based on their likes, wants, and drives by creating elaborate customer personas.

2.  Using persuasive language:

Powerful phrases are persuasive in ways that can influence prospective customers’ emotions. A product, for example, may become more appealing with the use of words like “exclusive,” “guaranteed,” or “effortless.”

3. Structuring your content:

To easily assimilate the product description, the format must include headings, subheadings, and bullet points. Items listed in bullet points that specifically describe advantages and dividends pull the audience into your content.

4. Highlighting features and key benefits:

Instead of simply listing the features, showing the customers the value they can anticipate from the product is a well-thought-out product display idea. Giving a comparison of how the product serves customers better than their competitors in the market saves them time and thus increases credibility.

5. Being descriptive and specific:

Customers can be engrossed in the product’s experience through vivid and descriptive language. The creation of sensory images conjures emotions and sparks desire.

6. Focusing on the customer experience: The products that enhance lives can be shown through stories and scenarios. An emotional connection with potential buyers can be established through captivating narration and product videos.
7. Unique Selling Proposition (USP):

USP: Sensory Bass Headphones With Personal Sound

The idea of writing effective product copy should always be based on the unique selling proposition (USP) of the product to outshine the competitors. Concentrating on unique features and converting them into a customer benefit makes the audience understand why they ought to prefer one product over another. This is indispensable for creating catchy product descriptions.

8. Utilising compelling CTAs:

Having attention-grabbing CTAs encourages visitors to feel a sense of urgency to take immediate action.

9. SEO optimisation: Keywords and phrases can be used to tune the product descriptions and improve search engine rankings. The inclusion of keywords more naturally leads to better results in terms of visibility and genuine traffic.
10. Using high-quality product images:

Product descriptions complemented with high-quality images that showcase your product from multiple angles and contexts help customers visualise the product and make informed decisions.

11. A/B testing and optimisation: Monitor the effectiveness of product descriptions and test different versions through A/B testing. Real data sources, feedback from customers, and performance indicators can be used to guide the optimisation of the descriptions towards the best results.

Product reviews in e-commerce businesses

The first thing an informed customer does to gauge the product’s efficacy after visiting an online store to buy a product of a brand is to see the product reviews section and learn the feedback and experiences of the product of the other customers who have already bought the same to make further decisions.

     Source: https://www.powerreviews.com/what-incentives-generate-reviews/

Product reviews: meaning

Product reviews are the after-sales user-generated content in the form of written commentary, video or photo testimonials, or star or number ratings on the e-commerce online store where customers share their opinions and experiences with the brand and its products, which in turn helps future customers to further their decisions.

The report titled “Effect of online reviews on local business customer opinion 2020,” published by Stacy Jo Dixon, has the below infographic depicting some data on the survey done during December 2020 on U.S. online customers. 

The data describes that 94% of the customers feel that referencing positive reviews makes them more likely to use the business, 92% of negative reviews make them less likely to use the business, and 79% trust online reviews just like personal recommendations from family and friends.

Source: Statista

In another report titled “Number of online product reviews expected by U.S. digital shoppers in 2019, by age,” published by Stephanie Chevalier, most consumers in the 18–24 age group expected more than 200 reviews per product. The average number of expected reviews was 112. Overall, younger shoppers expected more reviews than older shoppers. 

Source: Statista

Importance of product reviews

When purchasing products or services, customers prefer to ensure that they make the right choice for them. Ratings and reviews give customers useful information that helps them judge other people’s experiences against what they want or expect by looking at their qualities or properties, thus making reasonable choices.

Source: https://www.mageworx.com/blog/why-reviews-are-important

Below are some of the major reasons that explain why it is important to have product reviews on e-commerce websites:

• Boost sales: Reviews are capable of boosting sales by enabling customers to have confidence in their purchasing decisions. High ratings given by past buyers serve to persuade potential customers of the product’s quality and dependability, contributing to more sales and client satisfaction.
• Improves conversions: Product reviews greatly influence the decision to buy. Studies have shown that products with five reviews have a purchase likelihood 270% higher than those that have no reviews. For more costly items, favourable reviews improve conversions by 380%, whereas cheaper items have a 190% increase.

  Source: https://spiegel.medill.northwestern.edu/how-online-reviews-influence-sales/

• Helps in creating a positive brand image: With a customer-oriented and fair approach, the brand is positioned in a way that highlights the commitment made to customer contentedness and transparency.
• Increases customer engagement: Actively responding to customers’ feedback stimulates more customer engagement. The company demonstrates that it values customers’ opinions in this way, thereby creating a sense of bond and trust that can increase loyalty and satisfaction.
• Problem-solving: Negative reviews are a helpful source for spotting, acknowledging, and rectifying problems by showcasing improvement areas. When these flaws are known and rectified, they improve the quality of your product or service, showing your dedication to customer satisfaction and high quality.
• Supports in decision-making: Assists customers in making informed decisions, resulting in greater satisfaction with their purchases.
• Reduces returns and refunds: The reason for the reduction in items returned or refunded is customer reviews. Customer reviews enable customers to make informed choices rather than guesswork.
• Increases customer loyalty: Another contribution of online feedback to supporting customer relationships is increasing customer loyalty and trust, which in turn increases the chances of getting repeat orders.
• SEO support: Reviews and ratings spur user-generated content, boosting SERP rankings and traffic. This cycle of feedback enhances visibility, attracting more visitors to the e-commerce site. Google acknowledges that responding to reviews can improve local SEO efforts.

Google’s algorithm gives high rankings to pages with reviews from customers, and there is also an additional word count that provides further opportunity to add related keywords.

Tactics for collecting online reviews of the sold product

1. Automating review requests: Trust among customers can be built and enhanced by sending automated emails that ask them to review the product they bought a few days ago. Customers can be asked to share their experiences with the product.

Making the review process easier for customers to respond To have prompt responses from the customers in terms of reviews, the review process must be made easier so that they don’t have to put in much time and effort. The review-sharing process on the webpage, social media handles, business page, and other platforms should be made short and user-friendly. Incentivizing the customers

     Source: https://www.powerreviews.com/what-incentives-generate-reviews/

According to Shopify, 91% of shoppers like to receive free products, and 67% tend to purchase a future product for a discount. Giving customers freebies, discount codes, refunds on shipping costs, coupons or vouchers, or additional loyalty cards can encourage them to write reviews that will help pay off in the long run, as the benefits of having reviews are greater than the costs.

2. Sharing customer surveys: A good way of gaining concrete feedback is through surveys, and they can provide insights that usually don’t surface. Once the items are delivered, the customer can be reached with queries like how easy it was to make the purchase, the quality of the received items, and if what was received was the same as was anticipated.

The display of these customer responses on the e-commerce site helps in earning trust as well as enhances the purchase journey of future buyers. This comprehensive strategy makes sure to receive a lot of opinions to improve the products and create a happy customer base.

3. Engaging with customer feedback: We all like to be heard, which includes our customers as well. Acknowledging customer reviews even with a simple response plays a subtle role in connecting with the customers personally, which helps in gaining their loyalty towards the brand.

As discussed earlier, Google keeps a watch on the review process, and it was found that engaging with the customers on their reviews resulted in 33% turning around and posting a positive review, and 34% deleting the original negative review. 

So, whether the customer review is a positive one or a negative one, it must be well attended to so that the customers as well as the search engines know the e-commerce business’s commitment to customer satisfaction.

Acquiring customer reviews to boost website traffic

Below are the steps to be followed to gain customer reviews as an SEO strategy to boost website traffic:

1. Encourage customers to leave honest reviews sharing their experience, favourite features, and how the product fulfilled their needs.
2. Install an easy-to-use feedback system on your site to encourage customer submission and opinion.
3. Frequently scrutinise the accuracy and relevance of the content on the e-commerce site authored by users. You can moderate where necessary and timely respond to positive and negative reviews so that the customers know that their feedback is valued and their experiences are important.
4. Highlighting positive reviews on product pages and other relevant sections will help establish client trust and make the business credible.
5. Customers can be asked to include relevant keywords in their reviews to boost search engine visibility and increase your product’s discoverability.
6. Structured data and schema markup can be used for user search engines’ comprehension of customer review content. 
7. Relevant keywords can be extracted from client comments to enhance the site’s metadata and tags. 
8. By getting customers to share reviews on social media, a company can enhance how quickly they are found and the degree to which they are trusted.
9. Circulating testimonials and reviews boosts credibility. Enhance engagement and increase click-through and click-per-open rates by sharing them on the website, social media, and emails.
10. Incentivize growth and visibility with discounts, loyalty points, or other incentives when customers leave product reviews or testimonials.
11. Frequent evaluation of the feedback system, updating it, and optimising it as necessary to improve user satisfaction and experience.
12. Monitor the effects of user-generated content on metrics such as organic traffic and conversion rate using analytics and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) so that strategies may be adjusted accordingly.

Elements to consider when displaying customer reviews

Here are the elements to be considered while displaying the customers’ reviews: We are going to take an example of the product in the link: Amazon

• Review snippet: For a quick and easy guide to a product page, the top section offers reviews and ratings.

• Review Snapshot: While going through the product page, a detailed review display is found, which consists of customers’ feedback, star ratings, and the distribution of the ratings.

• Search and filter: Using search and filter, visitors can use preset filters or search for particular phrases to help them find what they’re looking for.

• Information about the demography: This assists in looking for content from clients with similar features and needs.

• Verified Buyer Badge: The verified buyer badge is a signal of trust because it confirms that the product has been reviewed by someone who has purchased it.

• Visual content display: Visual content from the customer in their reviews shows and encourages engagement to improve the digital image and attract the attention of the user base efficiently.

• Customer Q&A: Publishing customer questions and responses helps other customers who are looking for the same answers have points of reference.

How to respond to e-commerce reviews

There are different kinds of responses based on the reviews received. Here are some ways:

Responding to positive reviews

In response to the positive reviews, the following gestures can be adopted to derive the best out of the process:

• Quick response to acknowledge that they are heard
• Let the response be brief
• Be sincere
• Add a small call-to-action, like inviting them to like the social media pages or introduce a new product.

Moreover, positive reviews left on the product can be shared on social media stories or posts or displayed in the testimonial section of the website.

Responding to negative reviews

While receiving the negative reviews, here’s what can be considered to alleviate the situation:

• Respond as soon as possible
• Be honest and acknowledge your errors
• Fix mistakes
• Showcase your strengths
• Give a personal touch to communication
• Take the communication offline
• Take responsibility if necessary
• Give compensation, if necessary, by offering a return and refund or a free product.
• If the issue is resolved, ask the reviewer to edit their rating or the review
• Request loyal customers to share their experiences
• Be consistent in your stance
• Know the mechanics of rating and reviewing sites

Review platforms customers can use

Below are some examples of customer review sites according to Google:  

Source: Google

Conclusion

We realise that we live in the era of content marketing, which starts with uploading the product details on the e-commerce site, and finally leads to its sale after completing the entire customer journey through the purchase process. A well-crafted product description and collected product reviews are efficient content marketing tools for e-commerce businesses to leverage the benefits. A product description is a powerful asset of the brand that does the work of an efficient salesperson virtually. 

Crafting effective product descriptions involves 3 vital components: knowing your audience, optimising for SEO, and using persuasive language. These components distinguish an e-commerce brand from its competitors and thus attract more sales. In the average duration of 9 seconds on a website, if the visitor becomes inclined towards purchasing the product by just having a rough glance at the product description, it means that a lot of effort has gone into making the product look so appealing for the further steps of the sales process. A strong product description carries the power to transform a casual visitor into a loyal customer on the e-commerce platform.

In this article, we have also discussed the importance of product reviews and how they can help with efficient content marketing. We have discussed that product reviews increase purchases, develop faith, improve search engine rankings, and shape consumer decisions. The trust of the customers can be built by addressing their reviews, whether positive or negative. SEO is boosted by adding images or movies to the reviews of the products. To get more product reviews, requests could be made through email messages or social networks, assign incentives, simplify the procedure, and involve customer support in this process. Customer feedback is also possible through personalised emails.

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