The DataWeave Blog

Author: Anurima Das

How to respond to Negative Online Reviews

Most brand & marketing professionals fear negative feedback and reviews. Negative reviews and ratings can not only hurt your organic product visibility online, but they also impact real business outcomes and purchase decisions potential customers will make about your product.

… but getting negative reviews is not always a bad thing. These unflattering reviews help give consumers real insights into your product and help them understand their features, attributes, benefits, and downsides better as described by other customers to give them a more realistic picture. Shoppers trust user generated reviews more than content brands share with them, which is why it’s really important for brands to interject in these conversations, address negative reviews and nudge customers towards building trust in their products.

Here are a few things to keep in mind when responding to negative reviews.

Be actionable and solution-oriented with your responses!

Even the strongest brands can’t avoid negative reviews, but what sets one apart from the other is how they tackle these reviews. A prompt and solution-oriented response can actually help salvage a negative situation in a lot of cases.

Build Brand Trust

Let’s take a look at Clinique & the unique approach they took towards responding to negative reviews. Shown above is one of its bestselling products Moisture Surge™ 100H Auto-Replenishing Hydrator. This product got an average of 4.7 stars since its launch in early 2021. 99% of customers even said they would recommend this product. And, in comparison to the over 370 positive reviews, there were just 5 negative reviews! Instead of basking in the glory of the numerous positive reviews, Clinique chose to promptly reply instead & not dismiss negative reviews even if there were just a tiny number. This goes a long way for any brand.

Negative feedback

Clinique not only addressed the customer’s concerns but also offered a ‘no questions asked’ refund and insisted that the customer take the conversation offline through a customer care agent. This action will help Clinique build long-term trust with not only the customers who had given them a low rating but the new ones too, who may stumble upon these negative reviews and see first-hand how customer-centric the brand is.

Respond promptly to keep things under control

A quick response to a negative review is supercritical. Even if you’re unable to resolve the customer’s problem immediately, acknowledging the review promptly lets them know their concern is a priority. On the plus side, it may also help them calm down and hold them back from posting even nastier comments. Aim to respond within 24 – 48 hours from the time a negative review is posted.

The quicker a customer hears from you, the more sincere your words will feel to them.

Prompt Response

Here’s an example of how Chobani yoghurts tackled a negative review. You’ll notice, they responded almost immediately when a customer complained about the “RANCID” tasting yoghurt. Responding minutes after the review came in shows their seriousness towards dealing with the situation and that they value customer feedback. Apart from prompt response, they even offered to investigate and work towards a solution.

Look for a chance to take the discussion offline

Negative Feedback System

Take the conversation offline by giving a phone number or email where customers can connect with a real person or brand representative. The goal is to move the conversation from a public forum to a private channel where a personal touch can be added. It could be a customer care number, a DM on a social platform, or a direct call back to the customer to listen to the details of their complaint. Additionally, connecting offline helps resolve issues faster without letting the problem escalate.

Do NOT get defensive

When it comes to responding to negative reviews, as a thumb rule pushing back or getting defensive is an absolute no-no. Being humble and accepting of negative feedback is important, and responding with grace, is even more important.

Let’s look at this example of a negative review left by an irate customer about the terrible IKEA customer service. Instead of getting defensive, IKEA politely acknowledges the feedback, apologies for the inconvenience, and offered a solution to help the customer sort out the issue with the order immediately!

Customer Feedback

A brand’s response to a negative review not only helps the individual who left the review in the first place but actually impacts other customers who will read it months down the line.

Remember to follow-up

Many times brands jump in promptly when a customer posts a negative review. They’re solution-oriented and some help resolve customer issues immediately too. The hard part’s done! However, where a lot of brands fall short, is when it comes to following up with customers once their concern has been addressed and they’re back to being brand advocates again.

Keeping that thought in mind, if it’s possible to get a customer who left a negative review to update or change it after their concern has been resolved could be a very impactful way to build brand trust. According to the Retail Consumer Report, 33% of customers turned around and posted a positive review, and 34% deleted the original negative review after having received a response from the brand or retailer in question.

Conclusion

Even though brands have limited to almost no control over how customers perceive their products online, they can still participate and interact with customers to improve their online reputation. They can listen in on the online conversations and adapt to customer feedback promptly based on what shoppers are discussing via reviews. Also, don’t filter the types of reviews when responding to your customers, and aside from the positive and neutral reviews, treat your negative reviews with extra care. Resolve them responsibly to win a customer for life!

If you need help tracking your online product reviews or analyzing the pulse of your customer sentiments to discover a wealth of insights, reach out to our Digital Shelf experts to learn more about our Review & Sentiment Analysis solution.

January 29, 2022
Manage Your Supply Chain Like a Pro
To make faster, seamless deliveries possible, brands need to tighten their supply chain. The pandemic has put a lot of stress on the global supply chain. The supply shock that began in China in February and the demand shock that followed as the global economy shut down uncovered weaknesses in production strategies and supply chains. Temporary trade restrictions and shortages of pharmaceuticals, critical medical supplies, and other products, further added to the problem.

As a consequence of all this, brands have to reduce or even eliminate their dependence on sources that are perceived as risky and rethink their use of lean manufacturing strategies that involve minimizing the amount of inventory held in their global supply chains. In the post-pandemic world, the supply chain will take center stage, and managing it efficiently with technical support is going to be what gives one brand an upper hand over the others.

1. Micro fulfillment is emerging as the need of the hour

Emerging Micro Fulfillment

Retailers are now faced with unprecedented omnichannel fulfillment complexities. Not only do customers expect faster order fulfillment and delivery, but they’re also opting to ‘buy online and pick up in-store (BOPIS)’ or ‘click-and-collect’. Amazon has spent billions of dollars on building its shipping infrastructure, including its existing operating 175+ fulfillment centers across the world and investing nearly $1.5 Bn to build an air hub in the US. Walmart, on the other hand, is relying on its existing footprint across 5000+ US stores to help deliver online orders faster.

All this is hinting towards micro-fulfillment emerging as a strategy retailers are using to make the fulfillment process more efficient and their supply chain more ready — from receiving an online order to packing it and offering last-mile delivery. This approach will certainly work towards imparting speed to localized, in-store pick-up and combine it with the efficiency of large, automated warehouses. Delivery speed and costs are more important than ever to retain customers and foster brand loyalty. In fact, this will become a big differentiator for grocery e-commerce as the number of people making online grocery purchases has increased drastically the world over and a recent report indicated that in the US, 46% of people use online delivery more now than before the COVID crisis, and 40% use online pickup more.

2. Use big data to tie-in loose nodes

Supply chain management is held at the heart of every successful e-commerce company. Supply Chain efficiency always ensures that the right product reaches the right place at the right time. It ensures cost reduction and enhancement of cash utilization. That is why it is important to stay alert and tie-in all loose ends in the supply chain architecture. Big data can come in handy here and it is that quantitative method and structure that can be used to improve decision-making for all activities across the supply chain. While the role of big data is extremely exhaustive and full-pronged across the entire supply chain design, it is important to understand it in theory in a simplified way so that brands can incorporate it to make their backend operations seamless.

Big data is all about real-time analytics and it primarily does two very important things in making supply chain management easy
- It expands the dataset for analysis beyond the traditional internal data held on Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and supply chain management (SCM) systems.
- Big data apply powerful statistical methods to both new and existing data sources. This helps give structure to new insights. This in turn allows forecasting and helps improve supply chain decision-making capabilities for your brand, all the way from the improvement of front-line operations, to strategic choices such as the selection of the right supply chain operating models.
3. Improve ROI by introducing automation to the mix

Introducing Automation to Improve ROI

Introducing automation will help take care of tasks usually done manually, such as placing orders, processing changes, data entry, and much more. This frees up time and cuts down on human errors leading to error-free, faster processes. Adidas for instance has been able to reduce 60% of its operational supply chain costs just by switching to end-to-end automation. The largest sportswear manufacturer used automation across 400 factories by bringing in standardized, reusable processes to deliver the best results in a cost-effective way across the supply chain, marketing, finance, retail, and eCommerce. On the supply chain part, with automation, the brand was able to globally attend to supply chain service desk management, vendor onboarding, PO change management, Contract form approval, product data verification, and other such tasks in real-time. This highly successful initiative helped the brand save a lot of time, it earlier lost in manually attending to internal processes and reduced the time to market for Adidas by two-thirds. Moreover, automating systems helps cut down slacks and in return allows the supply chain to stay agile and alert for any unforeseen situations. This readiness further boosts the framework towards growth.

4. Eye the future and introduce robotics

Robotics is the next big thing in Future

Autonomous technology is not the next big thing of the future but is the most important thing at present defining the face of the supply chain. Autonomous robots are expected to see strong growth over the next five years. In fact, according to the Boston Consulting Group (BCG),the global robotics market is estimated to reach USD 87 Billion by 2025. It is believed that more than half of this will be allocated for the retail market. In fact, it is not uncommon to find giant beetle-like robots moving around busily with vertical shelves stacked on them inside Amazon’s warehouse in southern New Jersey, US. Tesco for instance uses Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) robots who are used to scan inventories for entire stores in just an hour (as against seven hours for a store employee) with far fewer errors.

Even though every word of this sounds too futuristic to be believable, this is the reality for now and retailers are beginning to realize that innovation must set in holistically and extend far beyond just the warehouse or supply chain. Autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) are fast becoming commonplace in warehouses, helping warehouse workers to fulfill orders quickly and efficiently. There are a few different types of robots that companies are considering, and each has its own unique set of advantages. AMRs in totality enable workers to be more productive due to constant collaboration and promote agility, cutting down on slacks and errors.

A cohesive and well-defined supply chain where you can leave enough room for tweaks in the future owing to evolving trends will surely help you gain an edge over your competitors through the entire lifecycle of your product. Getting a grip over the supply chain is necessary now as, by 2025, many supply chains may shift from global flows of goods and services to national, regional, and local networks of buyers and suppliers. So, integrating the supply chain keeping an eye on the global and local is the real deal!
December 9, 2021
Top 4 ways to optimize content to drive e-commerce sales
Content is the reigning king for e-commerce & plays a big role in driving sales and conversions. And, consumer-centric content that drives traffic is vital for e-commerce sales. Unlike offline retail where the sales staff on the ground is always available to answer customer queries, online that is not the case. When shopping online, customers rely on audio & visual product content to give them the information they need in order to make purchase decisions. Understanding that your product speaks to your customers directly on online channels is critical – so optimizing your product content to represent your brand in the best light is very important.

Here are the Top 4 ways to optimize content & drive ROI.

1. Focus on your customer & set a brand tone

Who is your customer? And what type of product is your brand selling? The golden rule to getting the right content for your brand is to answer these two questions right. For instance, if you’re selling furniture and focusing on a family audience then using flowery language will not help your cause. You need to share factual, product-specific content, calling out furniture specs from color, fabric, size, and so on.

Take for instance ProFlowers – a US-based flower retailer who created an entire Florapedia® – an in-depth flower guide. This content helped their customers learn more about the various flowers & discover new flowers they never knew of when making purchase decisions. To drive e-commerce sales, ProFlowers set the brand tone using educational content.
On the other hand, if you are selling clothing or lingerie, you need to be extremely specific about the details of each product. Let’s look at reputed outdoor clothing brand Jack Wolfskin – they use high-quality images for content optimization and showcase real instances and moods in which the clothing can be worn or what they can be paired with. This is a good way to allow customers to picture themselves owning the item, as well as research their unique qualities.

Educational, visual-heavy, or fun & quirky – pick your content style based on your brand tone.

2. Use videos as a powerful content optimization tool

Videos empower content and hook your customers in. In a report, Cisco had earlier projected that by the year 2022, videos will be responsible for 82% of all consumer internet traffic. For e-commerce, video content can not only deliver a message but is easily shareable across all platforms. Videos not only possess the power to captivate people for extended amounts of time, but according to research, if a video is embedded on your website, you’re 53 times more likely to rank on the first page of Google.

Videos work as a descriptive medium to give more details about your product. Further, explanatory videos relieve consumer fears regarding the quality of the product by allowing viewers to visually experience its usages and benefits. MAC for instance uses a host of make-up tutorials and other video content on their website.

Videos bring brand storytelling to life and keep visitors informed. In the case of the videos created by MAC, they are not only informative and engaging, but they also help the brand answer common shopper questions with live examples. Customers who land upon the MAC website can watch videos relevant to the products they want to shop for, understand the product details and then decide if the product is for them. Thus, brands using videos can create a better customer experience by giving the visitors an immersive brand exposure online, just like they could have got offline.

3. Focus on making your product page consumer-centric

A product page can be highly discoverable if it aligns with the best practices & standard e-commerce algorithms put in place by popular marketplaces and e-commerce channels. This is because the organic product ranking algorithms vary across channels and are composed of direct and indirect factors used to match a consumer’s popular search queries to products they are most likely to purchase. For better content optimization that ensures visibility, start by mapping platform-specific content standards. Then follow the SEO trends and tweak your product titles and description, to give your brand content a boost.

Love Hair Product

Take for instance the LOVE Hair product pages – the product titles are crafted using product features and benefits like revitalizing, nourishing, volumizing. Consumers searching for shampoos normally type in these attributes to look for shampoos that may suit their requirements – so using attributes as a hook in the product title is a great idea to make the product more discoverable against that keyword or attribute.

Next, keeping these standards as a backbone, fine-tune the product details you are putting out on the page. Your product features are the reasons why your consumer will buy your brand as compared to your competitors, so your descriptions should be crisp, easy to read, highlighting all the product features & facts that help them make that purchase decision. Let’s look at the Fitbit product page…

Fitbit Product Page

4. Optimize content based on devices

With mobile commerce reaching the tipping point in the e-commerce sales funnel, you cannot ignore attending to content optimization for hand-held devices. Many times, buyers on the go use mobile devices to conduct their research and your success lies in being able to entice them with a perfectly optimized e-commerce page even on their mobile device. Here are a few tips to keep in mind:
- Keep their reading experience in mind. Use shorter titles, and bite-sized product information so key points are upfront and visible on a tinier screen
- Be concise with your content presentation
- Video content should not autoplay on mobile. The less invasive your content, the better
- Keep video & image file sizes small so that page load time is quick
E-Commerce Product Page

A perfectly balanced e-commerce product page is even more vital in the new normal, given that COVID has accelerated e-commerce, globally. So, whether you are selling furniture, books, clothes, or health juices, with the right focus on product content, you can convert shoppers into customers more easily and increase your sales & revenue. Feel free to take inspiration from some of the examples above to apply some of these strategies to your online store.

And if you need to get your brand discovered with content optimization, here’s how DataWeave can help!

Building the right product page with the right content is not enough. You will also need to keep rehashing your product pages with reviews, offers, and other such relevant nodes to deliver the right punch. After all, delivering the right customer experience starts with a product page done right.

Want to see first-hand how DataWeave can help brands with content optimization? Sign up for a demo with our Digital Shelf experts to know more.
November 29, 2021
How Artificial Intelligence is giving the Indian Beauty Industry a Facelift

With the help of artificial intelligence and machine learning, beauty and cosmetics companies are exploring new possibilities. According to a report by Avendus, the global beauty and personal care market are expected to touch US$725 billion by 2025 and the young Indian market is expected to grow to $28 billion by then. This segment is a space of opportunity and today we have more than 80 Indian brands in this domain.

D2C beauty brand logos

While technology in this space plays a very important role, Artificial Intelligence (AI) amongst everything else is giving the beauty industry a makeover. This is because, AI can create an impact on all stages of the beauty value chain — from research & development to supply chain management to product selection, marketing, and more! Resonating this thought, Chaitanya Nallan, CEO & Co-Founder, SkinKraft Laboratories mentions “As a digital-first brand, we sell across multiple e-commerce platforms as well as through our own website. Thus, it is very important that we track and maintain inventory across all channels in real-time to avoid stock-outs and loss of sales. We use AI for this. We have built an in-house data tracking dashboard that pulls in inventory information from all warehouses and maps them against sales to give us an accurate estimate of days of inventory across all SKUs and across all platforms. This information directly feeds into our procurement dashboard and also helps the marketing team to create the right sales strategy.”

Stock availability is crucial to driving sales. If you need help tracking your online inventory – DataWeave can help give you a near real-time view of your product stock status across marketplaces.

With AI being a powerful technology wand, here is how it can drive the future of beauty brands within the D2C segment in India.

Making Virtual Product trials a reality

Virtual Product Trial

Augmented Reality (AR) is a prevalent term and many companies are already using it on an everyday basis. More commonly, the Snapchat and Instagram filters we use are all powered by AR. In a similar vein, virtual images can be laid over actual images in real-time using AI. And keeping this concept handy, beauty brands are bringing to the front the AR-powered ‘virtual mirrors’ that let consumers try on cosmetic products in real-time. Modiface by L’Oréal is a perfect example of VR-mirrors, which has pioneered the AR-powered makeup try-ons in the market. These virtual mirrors use AI algorithms to detect the user’s face through a camera by focal points and map the face. Then using AR, images of makeup are adjusted according to the terms obtained and overlaid over the features on the face giving consumers a virtual feel of what they’d look like wearing the product.

Virtual Try-on

Much recently, Indian brand Lakme has made ‘virtual try on’ possible by creating a smart mirror on its official website that allows customers to watch their reflection, try on different shades, and customize those shades according to their preferences. Shade matching until a few years back was an entirely on-ground phenomenon and customers visiting a local cosmetics store were able to choose and match the shade of compact, eye shadow, and lipstick against their true skin tone. Today AI can allow you to narrow down on products based on a virtual shade card, put them against your skin in real-time.

Make it Truly Personalised

Every customer is unique, and one size does not fit all. Everyone has a personalized beauty regime they follow & understanding this could be the key to success for beauty brands. For this reason, the future of beauty lies in harnessing AI and AR solutions to tailor the beauty shopping experience to match the needs of the individual consumer. This not only enhances digital engagement but also increases purchasing confidence which in turn helps brands drive conversion and brand loyalty.

Pre-pandemic, offline beauty advisors played a consultative role when customers were making purchase decisions. A lot of this has moved online – take for instance Olay. It launched an online “Skin Advisor” app based on a deep-learning algorithm that analyses a consumer’s skin using a simple selfie! Armed with information on their skin type, customers can make an informed, personalized purchase that’s right for their specific skin type.

Skin Advisor App

Understanding customer preferences and using data from their past purchases also help with personalized marketing in a big way. “Data-driven personalization gives brands insight into what their customers are interested in. We integrate this data into our marketing campaigns and deliver specific, personalized, and relevant content. This way, we make sure to target the right audience with the right messaging. This, in turn, helps us increase engagement and retain customers. Moreover, this combined data, allows us to get repeat sales through upselling and cross-selling. Further, knowing customers beyond just simple demographics helps us improve our targeting and helps us predict future behaviour. We’d like to know, for instance, if a customer clicked on our advertisement, liked, or commented on our social media product displays, signed up to our email list, etc. These analytics reveal a customer’s interest. Combine it with demographics – and you get a sense of what the customer is interested in,” Dhruv Madhok, Co-Founder, ARATA highlights.

Boost Product Development

Social listening

AI algorithms can be used to study and analyse customer feedback. The algorithm works towards interpreting customer comments, reviews, and feedback on a brand’s website, social media channels, and other online platforms. Artificial Intelligence can also decode and analyse questionnaires and feedback forms that the customers may have responded to online or offline.

The beauty and personal care industry is largely driven by usage and customer preferences, so gauging how customers feel about key products can help businesses create & develop products that customers will most likely prefer to buy. For instance, reputed beauty brand Avon recently mentioned that it developed the True 5-in-1 Lash Genius Mascara based on actual consumer feedback! They used machine learning & artificial intelligence to read, filter, process & rank thousands of online consumer comments to determine the top features they crave in a mascara. Using this customer gathered intelligence, they developed a unique product that consumers we’re “asking for”!

True 5-in-1 Lash Genius Mascara by beauty brand Avon

Need help listening to what your consumers are saying about your brand online? Read more about DataWeave’s AI Powered Sentiment Analysis solution.

More and more brands are listening to customer responses closely to give way to new products, bring in tweaks to their existing basket, and innovate further. “Our ORM team is leading the knowledge accumulation as far as social listening is concerned. They are not just responsible for responding to customer queries, they are also instrumental in highlighting key insights based on user behaviour being observed,” Chaitanya of SkinKraft Laboratories further asserts.

Bombay Shaving Company too with its data-centric culture leverages customer responses for decision making & product development. “In-home personal care and hygiene exploded during the pandemic. We used data analytics to explore different dimensions of in-home experience-driven needs (new usage occasions, need for convenience and DIY, etc.). We listened to our customers & were able to introduce our women’s brand, with innovative hair removal products in a big way during this period. Which today contributes to a significant percentage of our business,” Shantanu Deshpande, Founder & CEO, Bombay Shaving Company mentions.

Given the scope and scale of the beauty and personal care industry that is major ‘usage’ driven, Artificial Intelligence with its diverse potential can bring a paradigm shift in the industry. AI can help not only with virtual trials, personalization, listening in to customers’ feedback but also with monitoring a brand’s Digital Shelf. Brands can amplify their online sales by tracking Digital Shelf KPIs like share of search & product visibility, pricing & discounting, product content, availability & assortment. Reach out to our Digital Shelf experts to learn more.

November 17, 2021
6 ways Reviews & Ratings can Skyrocket your eCommerce sales

As per recent research conducted by Deloitte, approximately 81% of consumers use reviews to make purchase decisions. Reviews work like social testimonials. They are credible recommendations, as a vote of confidence from an existing customer. And when satisfied customers express themselves through the right words, automatically your product gets a boost.

In case you’re thinking, ‘who has time to read through each and every review?’ Put a pause to your thought, because more than 70% of people regularly or occasionally read online reviews, and 19% of US shoppers trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation. Online reviews matter and for brands that are selling online, this is becoming a big deciding ground, contributing to sales.

Let’s go a little deeper and take a look at why good Ratings and Reviews are important for your eCommerce sales.

1. Use your customer’s voice as a marketing tool!

Reviews have emerged as a new and effective product promotional tool that never fails to attract the right audience. Even standalone, reviews or word-of-mouth from real users have always been the hook for consumers, so using reviews in your marketing amps up the impact. And the best part is, that it is absolutely free and user-generated!

Here’s how Fabletics in the UK is using reviews for marketing – they’ve brought these customer testimonials right onto their website homepage! These attention-grabbing reviews showcase the voice of their existing customers and serve as the main influence for future customers that visit their website and want to know more about their brand offerings.

Fabletics website

Using reviews in Search ads is another really impactful way to amplify your customer’s voice and confidence in your brand. Here’s a sample of how we at DataWeave could use our fantastic G2 reviews to build out a Search ad.

G2 Review

2. Use Reviews & Ratings to influence buying decisions

Product page from Suja website

Display your reviews upfront. Help consumers make their purchase decision easier. Take for instance Suja, a cold-pressed juice brand. Suja converts user ratings and reviews into scores for each of their organic drinks and displays it right below the product, so at one glance users know which products have high reviews and which don’t. This further eases purchase decisions and every customer can decide on the variant right at the product page and then add it to the cart if it meets their expectations.

3. Positive reviews impact your brand’s conversion rate

Experts say that 50 or more reviews per product can mean a 4.6% increase in conversion rates. McKinsey has attempted to quantify the relationship between reviews and conversion rates by analyzing reviews and ratings across the 70 highest-selling categories on a major online platform. After tracking hundreds of thousands of individual SKUs over a two-year time span, they found out that the correlation between star ratings and product sales was positive in 55 of the 70 categories they examined. In fact, a jump in rating was also seen to add to the conversion rates growing. Loyalty drives ratings and that, in turn, leads to positive conversions.

Negative or fewer ratings can directly impact sales. We at DataWeave can help Brands adapt to consumer feedback by tracking their reviews and rating.

4. Use honest & transparent reviews to build trust, including negative reviews.

Take for instance this detailed review for a Lancôme mascara on Ulta Beauty. It not only gives the user a ready guide to the product they are eyeing but also makes the brand come out very transparent and believable, courtesy of the cons & negative reviews on display. This helps build a relationship of trust with customers across the board. Various studies have been conducted where consumers said when looking at reviews of businesses, they would trust the company less if there were no negative reviews on display. And they said the probability of every single customer having a four or five-star experience just isn’t believable – this would cause suspicion and has a strong potential of turning them away from making a purchase. Consumers clearly want the real story about a brand or business and not just a rosy picture.

5 Ratings and reviews can boost SEO

Use ratings and reviews to structure the entire listing

Online reviews are estimated to make up 10% of the criteria Google algorithms use when displaying search results. Every brand understands the importance of putting SEO-optimized content online via blogs & an array of other content marketing activities. Reviews can contribute to that cause too! User-generated content like reviews can work as a ready stream of optimized content, which Google can crawl to rank products higher in search. What is interesting is that buyers when posting a review for products are bound to mention the brand name and use certain words to describe their experience, which subconsciously in most cases become the right keywords! This actually then turns into organically generated authentic, keyword-optimized content. In fact, brands can collect and use rich snippets of reviews on their website or use it for marketing purposes to further optimize listings on Google. Take for Instance Face Theory, they use ratings and reviews to structure the entire listing for their own e-commerce website. This helps them rank higher in search on Google and even on Amazon.

#6 Understand Customer Sentiment via reviews

Consumers use reviews to make purchase decisions. On the flip side, what’s interesting is that brands can also gauge their consumers through reviews or feedbacks they submit. This feedback helps brands align with the ground reality of how consumers really feel about their products. And by synthesizing & breaking down reviews across channels, brands can work towards bringing more innovation and personalization for their customer, just the way they want.

Understand Customer Sentiment via reviews

Take, for instance, Starbucks, a leading international coffee chain introduced MyStarbucksIdea in 2008. This was an instant hit and Starbucks customers within just the first five years of operation, shared over 150,000 ideas and recommendations to the brand, and the company put hundreds of them to use. This is a real case of a brand becoming an advocate to customer sentiments to drive its innovations directly from the core of ideas and reviews submitted by discerning customers.

In today’s scenario, brands do not need elaborate programs like MyStarbucksIdea, they can simply ask customers for their ideas, thoughts, and suggestions via online reviews across numerous platforms! The only task from there is on is collecting and analyzing these reviews to glean insights.

The new normal has led to an explosion of product reviews as more and more people shop online. In the US alone reviews were 40 – 80% higher during the core months of the pandemic in 2020 as compared to 2019.

Reviews matter, and even more so now. Brands need to build it as part of their actionable strategies and incentivize consumers to rate and review products with each purchase.

Need help tracking your online ratings? Or decoding customer sentiment from reviews they’ve left for your products? Sign up for a demo with our team to know how DataWeave can help!

October 26, 2021
4 Hacks to improve your online Product Visibility

With online shopping becoming increasingly important for brands, the concept of ‘product visibility’ within this ecosystem has emerged as the most noteworthy path to generate sales & win the Digital Shelf. Research shows that on Amazon, the first 3 products garner 64% of business generated. And post-pandemic, more and more people are now shopping online, which means your ‘digital product visibility’ becomes as critical as your in-store product visibility. What’s more, this digital shopper loves to start their search for products directly at leading marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, and the likes. As per the Shopper-First Retail report released by Salesforce almost 87% of shoppers begin product searches online. So, this is the window that brands have and this is where they need to hold their customer’s attention. But the primary question here is how to appear high up on your customer’s search?

Imagine the pages of an e-commerce marketplace as Digital Shelves and correlate that with the offline space. Will the customer sieve through a rack-full of products to reach for your brand, lying at the back of the shelf? No, they won’t. If they have to buy a personal care item, they will choose the brand that is visible to them at the front of the rack. In a similar vein, when they search for a product online on popular marketplaces, they will quickly click “add to cart” for the ones that come up top in the search.

Algorithms of popular e-commerce marketplaces are usually well-kept secrets, but here are 4 hacks brands can consider to increase product visibility on their Digital Shelf.

1. Optimize what you say about your products

Work on the product listing content

To ensure that your products are visible, you will have to work on the product listing content judiciously. And it’s all about using the right keywords. Here, you will have to tighten the strength of your content to ensure that both your listing text and titles are accurate, and include natural language search keywords that consumers normally use when searching for products. Ignore, jargon or business-heavy words, and think what a real consumer may use to search for a smartwatch – for instance. ‘Bluetooth watch’ or ‘Smart Watch’ or ‘Camera Watch’ etc. The product title below has it all covered. So no matter which of the 3 keywords a customer is searching for, this watch will come up in their search results.

Listing Text and Title enables Product Visibility

This aside, the title should highlight as much as possible about the product and the description should be pointed and readily related to the search one can use to look for it. For instance, in the below image Puracy, has not only used the word shampoo in its title, which normally the consumers will use to search, but has given all the major highlights as a part of the title. The consumer at a glance would get the whole picture inclusive of the quality, fragrance, quantity and the dispenser type.

Product features mentioned in Title ensures greater Product Visibility

Search engines take consumer’s natural language preferences into consideration, so a bad or incomplete product description or title will never help customers see your brand easily on the marketplaces listing. Here’s a listing, which does not work at all.

Bad or incomplete product description is bad for Product Searchability

Let’s look at the above example closely. If the customer is a diehard fan of Calvin Klein and is searching for a Calvin Klein sweater, then this product will definitely show up in their search results, but what if he was looking to buy full sleeve polos or wanted a full sleeve sweater, or a navy blue sweater – even though this product fits the bill completely for all the searches, but it may not show up in his search results only because the right content/ keywords have not been used to describe the product. And that is why it is important to use common keywords in your product content that consumers normally use when searching for your product.

In fact, according to a recent Forrester survey 45% of online shoppers do not complete a purchase if they cannot find what they are looking for, and insufficient product information adds to the cause. If you want to audit your current e-commerce content, DataWeave can help!

2. Improve product ranking through the right reviews

Good Reviews and Ratings boost product page rankings

Marketplace search engines prioritize products with good reviews and ratings and show them higher up in search. This prompts product visibility and assures your brand of organic discoverability. So, it is important to fetch as many honest reviews and ratings for your products, in order to gain marketplace visibility.

Research shows that 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations, and 72% of consumers are inspired to trust a brand based on the positive reviews it receives. Moreover, millennials, trust user-generated content 50% more than other media. Even though bad reviews are part and parcel of any business, a brand’s focus should be on ‘honest’ reviews. Real user-based reviews have the power to generate customer trust. When customers begin to trust your product and in your brand, they are more willing to add that product to their cart and finalize their purchase. Good product reviews will certainly make your Digital Shelf a lot more attractive & boost your product sales. Learn how DataWeave can helps brands monitor & stay on top of their Reviews & Ratings

3. Give importance to pricing and attain the sweet spot with product ranking

The right Product Pricing leads to higher rankings in Searches

Intelligent pricing, which is not too low or too high should be your weapon to make your brand gain ample visibility among its competitors. Moreover, if the cost of your products is ominously dissimilar from other products it is competing with, it is bound to impact your position in search results. To achieve great results, either you can consider your competitors and analyse the pricing to reach a perfect mid-ground or choose a dynamic pricing strategy. This strategy will allow your products to cost less than the competition, marginally.

Amazon is pretty sophisticated in this department and reprices top-selling items 3 or 4 times per day and the same can be repriced up to 12 times daily. Following in line, McKinsey reports that multichannel leaders are also changing the prices on 10 to 20 percent for their online assortment daily.At DataWeave, we can help brands track prices on a daily or even every few hours during sale season, when prices are the most sensitive. Learn more here.

4. Invest in paid advertising to improve your listing

Paid ads on Online Retail sites can boost product visibility and Sales

Investing money in paid promotion at e-commerce marketplaces will help you gain visibility and push your products on top of the first page of your category listing. Today, e-commerce platforms allow you to pay for promoted listings that are displayed near organic search results. In fact, a paid Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign will allow you to build up your sales volume and brand awareness, which will in turn assure your brand of long-term organic search placement.

The idea of sponsored ads is getting well-received all across and Amazon’s accelerating ad revenue growth is a living proof of this. In the fourth quarter of 2020, Amazon’s ad revenue reached $7.95 billion, up 66% over the previous year.

The e-commerce marketplace is expanding and in 2020, retail e-commerce sales worldwide amounted to 4.28 trillion US dollars and e-retail revenues are projected to grow to 5.4 trillion US dollars in 2022. To be able to make the most of this growing market, make sure your brand is winning the Digital Shelf, starting by winning the appropriate ‘Share of Search’. Want to learn how DataWeave can help you win the Digital Shelf? Sign up for a demo with our team to know more.

October 5, 2021