If you’re buying a product online, you’ll take a lot of factors into account. You’ll read the description, look at other products, hover over the spec, and obviously check the price. But when you make your purchase, there’s one factor that outweighs everything else. The star rating.
Yotpo analyzed one million reviews across 6,600 products on their site. Their findings underlined the importance of star ratings. They found that:
- 96% of all purchases are made for products with an average rating of 4 or more stars
- Products with an average rating of 4 stars get 11.6 times more orders than products with an average star rating of 3
- There were 126% more orders for products with an average of 5 stars than those with an average of 4 stars
In other words, the difference between a 3.9 star rating and a 4.1 star rating could result in the loss or gain of thousands of orders.
For marketers, product designers, and analysts, this raises important questions.
- “How can I improve my score?”
- “How do my competitors rank?”
- “How has my score changed over time?”
Brandwatch Reviews provides answers.
In this guide we’ll talk through 12 game-changing insights you can discover in minutes using Brandwatch Reviews.
1. Can I predict how customers will review my product next month?
To predict the future you have to take a look at historical trends.
Monitoring reviews over time helps us gauge consumer trends and better predict how consumers will behave in the future.
In this chart we’ve analyzed nine year’s worth of reviews for a microphone. Since 2017 we can see five star reviews have started to drop off, but the volume of one or two star reviews is still consistent. At this rate we can predict a significant number of future reviews will be negative.
Without a significant change to the product or price point, the rating of this product will continue to drop, which in turn will lead to a reduction in sales.
2. How can I avoid misleading claims?
A quick fire way to lose customers is to set the wrong expectations. Turning up at what was marketed as the hotel of your dreams only to find it’s infested with vermin and derelict is unforgivable.
Brandwatch Reviews can help spot when products are falling below consumer expectations. When we look at this baby sunscreen, we see that the most negative characteristics are the terms “pack” and “tube.” Clicking into the reviews shows that users felt misled by the product description when they received a single tube – they thought they had purchased a pack of three.
Quickly spotting insights like these can save your product not only from negative reviews, but potentially from long-term failure.
3. What product features do customers want?
Many brand managers and product designers value focus groups. It’s a chance to hear from multiple customers about what they love and don’t like about your product.
But what if you could listen to thousands of customers, rather than a dozen? And what if you could rapidly sort through hundreds of comments to find out what customers really want?
For the Garmin eTrex, we’ve applied a filter to only show reviews containing the phrase “I wish”. It reveals some of the features customers want.
Importantly, these are from consumers who are rating the product pretty highly (3-5 stars). They’re clearly happy to buy the product, they just want a few small improvements.
To keep these types of customers loyal, it’s vital for you to analyze their reviews as well as those that are primarily negative.
4. How do I eliminate one star reviews?
On a weighted ranking system, a one star review can drag your overall score down by many points – it’s a business killer. Staying clear of them is vital for your product’s longevity.
When we look at the baby sunscreen reviews referenced earlier, we see that there were a high volume of one star reviews last spring. However, the one star reviews (caused by the misleading description) declined once summer began.
When we click into the entity “pack”, we can see that it hasn’t been mentioned at all since last spring.
The company fixed the description and added clear options for packs of one and packs of three. One star ratings subsequently plummeted.
5. Are packaging issues impacting my product reviews?
Deliveries are a key part of the consumer experience for ecommerce firms.
For example, when we looked into reviews of a popular paint brand, we saw that the topics driving negativity included “damage”, “mess”, and “dents.” The product itself isn’t the issue – it’s the way it’s packed.
With Brandwatch Reviews, you can quickly identify these flaws before the problem develops and damages your brand image.
6. How can I quickly detect shifts in review trends for my products?
Keeping on top of live consumer opinion wasn’t possible in the past. Instead we’d rely on monthly surveys or quarterly focus groups.
Today, just by opening up Brandwatch Reviews, we can see there has been a net sentiment decrease for this multi-surface cleaner over the past 24 hours.
Clicking into the dashboard shows that the shift was driven by customers claiming that the listing is a scam, and that the sellers have put a different cleaner into the branded bottles.
7. How can I optimize the price point of my product?
Looking at reviews of a popular gaming headset alongside Amazon pricing data from CamelCamelCamel.com, we can see how price and reviews affect each other.
The lowest price for this headset was listed at $49.99. From February 1 to March 24, the price fluctuated between $60 – $65. On March 25, the product price spiked to $79 and it has remained within $1 of that amount ever since.
When looking at the ratings over time, we can see that the volume of 5 star rankings has decreased, while the volume of 1, 2, and 3 star ratings is increasing. Many of the lower star reviews posted after the price change mention the terms: “price”, “waste”, and “purchase”.
For this product, the optimized price point is within the $60 – $65 range. The data shows that increasing the price to this point maintained customer satisfaction. However, increasing the price to $79 led to a decline in reviews, star ratings, and customer sentiment.
8. How do I compare to the competition?
Looking at a popular moisturizing lotion, we found that one particular competitor was being mentioned in many of the reviews. The products were clearly being compared side-by-side by consumers.
We searched for mentions of the competitor within reviews of our original moisturizer to see how the star ratings looked.
81% of people who mentioned the competitor in their reviews gave our original product 4 or 5 stars. It turned out consumers were delighted by the price point compared to the competitor.
Uncovering why consumers are switching from your product to a competitor’s is vital, not just for product development, but for your marketing as well. It’s important to keep a close eye on your own reviews, as well as those for competitor products.
9. How do I beat the competition?
Let’s take the example from above, but compare our moisturizer to a competitor that’s getting better reviews.
Zooming in on the positives around this competitor, “smell” is a key reason why people love the product.
But, for our moisturizer, smell is actually one of the worst rated aspects. Users claim it is “perfumey” and leads to rashes and reactions.
Improving the scent to be less potent will help our brand improve against competing products.
With Brandwatch Reviews you can single out specific product characteristics and compare them like-for-like with the competition to see how you stack up.
10. How do I increase my rating average?
To increase your rating, it’s always worth starting by analyzing the negative parts of your reviews.
When analyzing a Letsfit Smart Watch we found customers feel positive about the price, battery life, and features, but they have negative feedback about the app.
If we filter the dashboard for the word “app,” the term “notifications” stands out as the biggest pain point. Clearly, a quick win to improve ratings for this watch would be to improve the notification experience in app.
Uncovering specific features to improve isn’t easy. Many firms resort to focus groups and surveys which take months to offer results. With Brandwatch Reviews you can get similar recommendations in minutes, safe in the knowledge that these insights won’t just improve the product, but increase your star rating too.
11. What product improvements should I be investing in?
The dashboard for a popular chewing gum tells us that the top entity discussed is “flavor.” Clicking into the reviews, customers claim that this product is not as flavorful and doesn’t last as long as they’d hoped.
Since this is having a negative effect on star ratings, the company would be wise to invest in improving the flavor to keep customers coming back for more.
12. How can I understand how my product is performing in a particular category?
Your product is likely used by different people for different things.
Let’s go back to our moisturizing lotion mentioned above. We wanted to know how it helped people with acne, so we searched within the reviews to find out.
Reviewers who mentioned “acne” gave the product an average rating of 4.4 stars
When we compare to other categories, “sensitive skin” performs at 4.3 star average and “dry skin” yields an average or 4.5 stars. The product is working best for people with dry skin.
From reviews to riches
All too many companies struggle to create products that consumers love, and according to HBR 80% of consumer products fail to generate value.
As marketers and product designers, it can seem almost impossible to truly know what consumers want and to build features that satisfy their needs. Analyzing online reviews offers a solution.
Reviews are unsolicited, real feedback that other buyers rely on. Learn from these reviews and you’ll build a product that customers love and that ranks highly. Fail to take notice of them and you’ll quickly fall behind the competition.
With Brandwatch Reviews you can get that vital competitive advantage with insights that keep you one step ahead.
To see how products rank online, get in touch and we’ll organize a personalized demo. We’ll also be going into depth on Brandwatch Reviews in our upcoming webinar – register below.