3 Ways to Leverage Consumer Insights from Online Reviews for eCommerce Success

Florence Broder

Sep 12, 2024 ‧ 5 MIN.

In the ever-evolving world of eCommerce, staying ahead of the competition requires more than just offering quality products—it demands a deep understanding of consumer behavior and preferences. Staying ahead of the curve is critical to remain a key player in the market. One of the most valuable resources for gaining this understanding is online reviews and a platform that provides category insights using AI. These reviews are often rich with customer feedback since consumers can express multiple opinions on different facets of the brand or product. These insights can be leveraged to dominate your category, manage your product assortment effectively, and optimize conversion rates on your Product Detail Pages (PDPs). Here’s how eCommerce managers can harness the power of consumer insights from online reviews to enhance their strategies.

Dominate the Digital Shelf by Category

In the dynamic world of online retail, the digital shelf is the prime marketplace where emerging brands, veteran brands, and products thrive 24/7. To maintain brand supremacy, it’s crucial to consistently monitor competitors, focusing on detailed category and SKU-level tracking. By analyzing consumer sentiment and discussion volume around key competitors, eCommerce managers can identify trends, preferences, and pain points within their category. This allows brands to make data-driven decisions that ensure their products stand out.

For instance, if customer reviews highlight a competitor’s product feature as a favorite, this insight can be used to enhance your own offerings. Conversely, understanding common complaints about competitors’ products can help you avoid similar pitfalls, ensuring your brand remains at the forefront of the digital shelf.

Similarly, as new brands launch their products to challenge your position, you’ll quickly be able to identify the ones making a mark with consumers, whether positively or negatively. Take a closer look at the brand’s discussion volume. Is the brand already making a dent in the market? Are consumers loving the new products, or not?

The snapshot below highlights the share of voice for baby stroller brands over the past 24 months. The list includes veteran juvenile product brands like Evenflo, Graco, and Chicco. We immediately note a 12% jump in discussion about the Baby Trend brand. Similarly, there’s a 4% increase in discussion volume for Mockingbird, a relatively new contender in the market, having launched its baby stroller in 2019.

With AI-powered analytics tools, you can explore the reasons behind the jump by drilling down into the review verbatims. Another option is tracking the sentiment of a specific brand to uncover

Assortment Management

Choosing the right products to include in your eCommerce inventory can make or break your online store’s success. When assessing which products to add or eliminate from your digital shelf, consumer insights from online reviews can simplify this decision-making process.

By exploring category insights and understanding what resonates most with your consumers—and those of your competitors—you can refine your product assortment to meet market demand. For example, if reviews consistently praise the durability of a particular product, it may be wise to stock similar items. Alternatively, if reviews reveal dissatisfaction with certain features, consider phasing out those products to make room for higher-performing options.

An easy way to ensure you’re selling the products that consumers want is by using Revuze’s Best/Worst View. The AI engine analyzes products with the highest and lowest sentiment to create a winning product list. In the example below, we pulled the Best/Worst list for the Performance topic in the entire vacuum category, and we see that the Bissell corded vacuum is leading the pack.

Retailers can further customize their assortment by exploring different product categories. In the example below, we filtered for the handheld vacuum category, where the IonVac holds the top spot. As retailers consider their digital shelf, they can leverage consumer sentiment from online reviews to stock products that resonate with consumers.

Conversion Rates

Optimizing your Product Detail Pages (PDPs) is essential for boosting online sales and driving conversions. Consumer insights from online reviews can guide you in crafting compelling content that addresses customer needs and concerns directly.

By using a term cloud generated from online reviews, you can identify key selling points that customers value most and highlight these in your product descriptions, images, and overall presentation. Market to consumers using their own words and cultivate an instant connection.

For example, if reviews frequently mention the ease of use of a product, emphasize this in your PDPs to attract more customers. Additionally, addressing common concerns or questions in your content can build trust and confidence, encouraging hesitant shoppers to make a purchase.

Let’s take a look at some of the terms associated across the Fragrance category for fragrance strength. Many of the positive terms can easily and quickly be incorporated in the PDP. Words that seem to resonate with consumers are scent, floral, fresh, subtle, nice, perfect, along with many others.

These were prevalent words across the category. Now let’s look at terms for a specific fragrance. The term cloud below highlights the words that customers mentioned around Dolce & Gabbana’s Light Blue fragrance. When discussing the scent consumers mention terms like: light, beautiful, perfect, fresh, clean, sweet. Some of these words appear across the category but some are very specific to this particular fragrance.

By updating the PDP to reflect how consumers’ naturally discuss the product, it can help boost conversions. It ensures that you are on the same page with your consumers and target audience.

Conclusion

Incorporating consumer insights from online reviews into your eCommerce strategy is a powerful way to stay competitive, make informed decisions, and ultimately boost your online sales. By focusing on category dominance, thoughtful assortment management, and optimizing your conversion rates through well-crafted PDPs, you can ensure that your brand not only meets but exceeds customer expectations. In a market where consumer preferences are constantly shifting, leveraging these insights will keep your eCommerce store agile, relevant, and poised for long-term success.