The FTC Has Spoken on Ratings and Reviews. What's Next?
We’ve all experienced it: a product with thousands of glowing reviews leads to a quick purchase and the inevitable letdown when the item arrives and falls exceedingly short of expectations. Fake ratings and reviews are—to quote Anthony Bridgerton—“the bane of our existence.“
Good news looms on the horizon, though! This past week, the FTC unanimously voted to ban fake reviews, prohibit exaggerated influence, and forbid payment for positive or negative reviews on retail websites. We are thrilled that these changes are slated to take effect in October 2024.
Why are ratings and reviews important?
To understand the impact of this ruling, it is crucial to fully understand why ratings and reviews are an essential part of retail today.
In a world where retail is everywhere - brick and mortar, online, social media, and more - brands must continually build customer trust in their products, services, and business. By allowing for customer reviews, a brand is essentially opening the door and handing out a megaphone for customers to share about the value of the product or service they sell. According to a recent Soapbox Influence survey on holiday shopping habits, 63% of the 133 shoppers surveyed who prefer to buy online look at ratings and reviews before completing an online purchase!
How brands benefit from authentic ratings and reviews.
Authentic ratings and reviews are essential to omnichannel commerce, with a few key benefits:
Improve customer trust and loyalty. Ratings and reviews essentially ask for customer feedback, implying that the customer’s voice is not only heard but an important and integral part of the brand. Allowing customer input shows current customers that their opinions matter and allows for a more authentic word-of-mouth experience for future customers.
Glean insights for product or service improvement. Want to know what customers like about your product? What do they hate? What would they love to see changed to make it a better value for them? Ratings and reviews are crucial to garnering valuable customer feedback to give your brand a leg up in the marketplace.
Stay ahead of the competition. As FTC Chair Lina Khan stated, “Fake reviews not only waste people’s time and money but also pollute the marketplace and divert business away from honest competitors.” While every brand wants to rise above the competition, doing so at the expense of a fair market and customer trust is never the right way to go. Gathering and understanding customer ratings and reviews allows brands to do right by everyone.
Increasing PDP visibility. A well-designed and complete PDP includes customer ratings and reviews, allowing the page to rank higher in SEO prioritization. Ratings and reviews are a big puzzle piece in improving search engine rankings and increasing product visibility.
What are “authentic” ratings and reviews?
A key term we keep using is “authentic ratings and reviews.” Here at ShopCart Creative, we highly value authenticity in everything; it’s a hallmark of our business and programs.
Authentic ratings and reviews come from actual human shoppers who have experience with the product or service and who leave honest feedback, regardless of whether it is positive or negative. Here are a few key questions to ask when hiring a vendor to help with gathering ratings and reviews:
Are the reviewers real shoppers? The bar is low here; reviewers need to be humans who shop. Voilà!
Do they have experience going through the purchase process or with the product or service? Is it easy to verify their purchase? Did they shop for the product (or have it gifted)?
Are the ratings and reviews honest? Do reviewers have the ability to rate and review regardless of whether their feedback is positive or negative?
Authentic ratings and reviews build genuine trust and also provide valuable feedback for brands to continue improving and growing their market share while still taking care of existing and potential customers. It’s a win-win!
How ShopCart Ratings & Reviews programs work
How does one build a bank of usable, honest, authentic ratings and reviews? We’re glad you asked!
For our ratings and reviews programs, we like to hit on all of the points mentioned above:
We engage our community of 20,000 real, everyday shoppers.
We encourage reviewers to fully experience the shopper journey and product/service to give the most well-rounded ratings and reviews possible.
We deliver the ratings and reviews directly to our clients in weekly updates from our team.
We offer custom pricing based on every brand’s needs.
Ratings and reviews are important for reaching current and potential customers and for improving products. To truly harness the potential of authentic ratings and reviews, you need more than just access to gather them. You need a team in your corner to ensure that those ratings and reviews meet the criteria for actually being helpful!
This is where ShopCart Creative ratings and review programs come in, allowing brands to meet the demands of the retail market with ease and confidence.
Grab some time with our team today and get the power of authentic ratings and reviews working for you today! (link: bit.ly/ShopCartRFP)
HEATHER DISARRO
SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER