Third Wave Fashion // MARCH 2014 // THE FIT TECH ISSUE | Page 32

For Your Review
This is an excerpt from our founder Liza Kindred’s upcoming book about the
future of commerce. Sign up to be notified of the book’s release here!

W

e rate everything these days...
businesses, products, movies,
each other. And while some of it
is for entertainment (e.g., which puppy is
cuter), a lot of it is big, serious business.

positive online reviews have impacted their
buying decisions, on- or offline. And get
this: over half of consumers use the
internet to research products before
making a purchase in stores.

A huge majority 85% of us–85%– use
reviews and review sites to help us make
purchasing decisions, and 78% of us
consider them influential. ere are 100
million business reviews on Yelp alone.

Business and product reviews can be
thought of as a kind of free crowdsourcing.
Want to want what you customers love (or
loathe)? Chances are, they've already told
you somewhere. As we've moved into a
culture of reviews–reading them, writing
them, trusting them–they've become
increasingly essential to doing business
today. A small business with one or two
locations can drastically help (or hurt) their

And people trust the reviews: a whopping
90% of consumers say that they are
influenced by positive Yelp reviews, and
72% of consumers say they trust online
reviews on Yelp just as much as they trust
personal recommendations. And people
who are reading reviews are shopping: a
whopping 93% of people who are
researching on review sites make a
purchase at a business that they look up
there.
On a product level, reviews create a 74%
increase in product conversion, and
increase the likelihood of purchase by 55%.
Consumers are 63% more likely to buy a
product if it has ratings and reviews
attached, and a highly-rated product has a
55% increased likelihood of being bought.
at's a big deal.
ese reviews move us on- and offline as
well: 70% of US internet users compare
prices or read reviews before heading into a
store (and 20% always do). Nearly half of
Yelp's reviews are done on mobile–
meaning that if you have a physical
location, the chances are quite good that
someone has written a review of your
business while in your business. (And over
61% of photos on review sites are uploaded
from mobile.) 90% of consumers say that

“It's perfectly
fair to ask your
customers for
reviews.”
chances of gaining new customers based on
their online reviews, and anyone engaged
in online commerce had best be
incorporating product reviews. In both
cases, ratings and reviews have a direct and
meaningful impact on revenue.
Of special note: while positive business
reviews matter immensely, do not try to
game the system. Businesses should ensure
that reviews are accurate and report any
suspicious looking activity, but (as with
most of life) the best way to have people say
nice things about you is to be nice and do
well by peo K