The addition of customer reviews can benefit any eCommerce store by increasing conversions, cutting return rates, and forming communities around stores and products. While opening up your site to user comments might seem like a scary proposition, if you have confidence in your product, there is little to fear. In the age of the social web, many users have come to expect this interaction opportunity from eCommerce sites. Reviews can also aid in Search Engine Optimization; your users are giving you content for free, adding valuable keywords and phrases to your product pages. In the end, the benefits greatly outweigh the risk, and we want to help you get started.

We’ve gathered screenshots from 30 of the top online retailers to inspire you to take the step, along with some tips for how to get the most out of customer reviews in your store. If you’ve experienced success with adding customer reviews we’d love to hear your story and tips in the comments.

Some Tips for Adding Customer Reviews:

• Keep the interface streamlined and easy to use for both customers who are skimming the ratings and review headlines, and for shoppers who want to drill down into the content. The layout of reviews should be straightforward and minimize clutter in your design to encourage participation. Blinds.com does this well… not only is the review section easy-to-read with a helpful layout, but they also feature customer review images to showcase the product in use, a helpful touch.
• Decide how you’re going to rank reviews. Some sites elect to rank from “Most Recent” to “Least Recent” while others rank by how helpful the review has been to customers browsing the product. Both have benefits. The former showcases the most up-to-date reviews the site has to offer, and can be especially helpful in markets where the products are constantly changing (software or hardware). The “Helpful” ranking further increases user interaction as well as bringing the most helpful and well-written content to the top of the section. This method also prevents the shopper from having to sift through pages to find the most relevant reviews. You can see an effective example of this at work in Audible’s review section.
• Use reviews as an opportunity to reinforce your brand. Fully integrate the section into your layout, and change the rating icon’s color scheme to match the rest of your site. Even better, change the rating icon itself if you can. If stars don’t mesh with the site’s design be creative and find something that does - a tiny flower if you are an online florist or a tiny hammer if you run an online hardware store. Both CD Baby and Kneedraggers are great examples of this.

Click on any of the thumbnails below to see the full-sized image, and good luck!

Ace Hardware

Audible.com

Barnes and Noble

Blinds.com

Buy.com

CD Baby

CDW

Circuit City

Cooking.com

Crutchfield

eToys

GameStop

Golfballs.com

iHerb

KneeDraggers.com

Lowes

Lumber Liquidators

Musician’s Friend

New Egg

Netshops

PC Mall

Petsmart

PriceGrabber.com

Sears

ShopLocal

SmartBargains.com

Sweetwater

Swiss Colony

Toys ‘R’ Us