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Bryan Eisenberg has an interesting article over on Clickz - How To Use Customer Reviews To Increase Conversion - where he explores how companies are now using the power of their target audience/customers to create product reviews, which in turn can lead to conversion.

As he says we are all swayed by product reviews when we purchase holidays, books, music, etc from online stores. On our eMarketing course clients, without fail, all our clients say that customer reviews play a huge role in their customer buying decision. Here are some of the stats he comes up with:

1. According to JupiterResearch, 77 percent of online shoppers use reviews and ratings when purchasing.
2. Reviews drive 21 percent higher purchase satisfaction and 18 percent higher loyalty, according to Foresee Results.
3. In a study of 2,000 shoppers, 92 percent deemed customer reviews as “extremely” or “very” helpful, finds eTailing Group.

Bryan goes on to offer some useful advice on how to make your customer reviews even more effective. If you don’t sell products online, you may want to look at customer testimonials, case studies and even blog comments. All of these are very good for adding value to your product, service and/or company and for generating customer buy-in.

I was in a meeting yesterday with a client and prospective Web developer and we were discussing how the way that people searched for information had changed. The client was convinced that the Internet was the way forward for their high-value purchase, B2B products. They also said something very interesting and relevant, “first impressions count as much today as they have always done”.

We were sat in a room where the key, “traditional” tools for competitor and/or B2B search/research could be found – Yellow Pages and Kelly’s. Even though these are increasingly being seen as tools of the past, along with local libraries, I still speak to clients who view the Internet with reluctance/cynicism and still use these methods (if I don’t have my machine in front of me, I use them as a last resort). Common phrases from these clients include: “that’s not the way that people in my industry find out about companies”, “people haven’t got time to use the Internet” or “our clients tend to speak to others in the industry for recommendations”.

All of these are perfectly good arguments but, let’s not beat about the bush, the Internet has changed everything – and especially so if you’re living in the UK, USA and other countries that have fully embraced the technology. When people are looking for company information they tend to use the Internet, when they receive a business card from you they check out your Web address and when someone recommends your business they will check out your company on-line. So many B2B companies develop websites which so badly reflect their product and service offerings and often leave potential clients bewildered, underwhelmed and convinced they will not work with that organization.

The bottom line is this – your clients are going to check you out on the Internet, Google is the favoured tool for doing background and market research and first impressions do count.