The following article is a guest post by Aruna Ram.
Based on a survey of online customers, it’s understood that 83% of buyers are influenced by product reviews, and about 70% actually look for product reviews before making their purchase decision. So how do you write the kind of product review that’ll influence thousands of buyers to hit the ‘Buy’ button? Begin your journey with our 15 tips.
1. Define The Ideal Buyer
Mention clearly who the product is for; allow the reader be able to assess if the product is right for him, her or a person that he or she knows. The idea behind this is to make sure that the right people buy the product.
2. Understand What The Product Does
Download or purchase the product and use it till you know it really well. Writing a product review based on other people’s impressions will not make you an authority as far as the product goes. Make sure you demonstrate your in-depth knowledge to your readers; this will both impress them and influence their decisions.
3. Provide A Detailed Product Description
Put yourself in the shoes of the buyer and read your product description. Would you be willing to buy the product based on what you’ve written? Add everything you would want as a buyer – complete features, tech specs, warranty and so on.
4. Get More Usage Details
Scour discussion forums, Yahoo! Answers and other sites for more information. The more you read of people’s opinions of the product, the better your own understanding will be. Plus, you’ll be able to provide an honest-to-goodness look at the product, knowing well that your readers will look up the same info sources.
5. Demonstrate That You Have Used The Product
Prove that you’ve either directly used the product or have personally reviewed what it does based on your research. So many product reviews are paid for by product companies that customers are getting wary. Take a picture of you holding the product, if possible, or provide extensive details that are not found elsewhere.
6. Give An Unprejudiced View Of The Facts
Even if you are writing the review for money, don’t be influenced by anything other than the need to serve your audience to the best of your ability. Only by being completely objective and unprejudiced you can win your reader’s trust.
7. Be Clear About The Purchase Outcome
Let the reader know clearly what to expect from the product. There’s no need to wax eloquent, promising the skies and the seas. Is the post-sales service good, average or just plain horrible? Let the reader know – product is great but service is not.
8. Point Out What Doesn’t Work Well
While specifying the positives, it’s good practice to let users know in what areas the product doesn’t really do that well. Don’t hold it back. It’s not up to you to influence buyer’s decision – it’s your job to inform the buyer, that’s all.
9. Write With Both New User And Expert Perspectives
Some of your readers may not know the product at all and some might be expert users, wanting to know what you think of it. Introduce each functionality from a new user’s point of view, but include enough technicalities and detail to interest the expert user as well.
10. Don’t Regurgitate PR Text
Any PR text you have from the manufacturer is strictly for reference only. Other than tech specs, nothing else should find its way into your review. That’s a sure fire way to lose reader trust.
11. Add Your Personal Opinion
Don’t forget to personalize the review. Add a few lines about your personal experience with it, what impressed you, what didn’t and the things you would do to improve or update the product. This sort of detail helps your reader to relate to the overall review and feel as though they’ve already purchased it.
12. Talk To The Manufacturer
Get some direct feedback from the manufacturer. Let them know you’re doing an unbiased review and you’d like their take on their offering, future updates, what to look out for, any special offers, issues and workarounds and so on.
13. Don’t Forget To Visually Represent The Product
An image or a video of the product and how it works will add a great deal of visual interest to the reader. No matter how cleverly you describe what the product does or how it looks, your words cannot replace the impact a picture can offer.
14. Write A Concise Product Summary
Summarize the entire review, minus the tech specs into a concise summary. Remember not everyone wants to read the entire review, unless they plan to purchase immediately.
15. Provide a Call-to-Action
Whether you want your reader to directly order, or download the product, or read more reviews – put it in your end of review call to action. Review the page to which your call to action takes your reader and explain what to do there.
Aruna Ram writes for Invesp – a conversion rate optimization company helping online business in improving conversion rate of their campaigns.