How to Boost Walmart.com Sales With Product Reviews
This is a guest post by Amanda Awad, Marketing Manager at Bazaarvoice.
Walmart has become a go-to online shopping destination. The retail giant continues to lure shoppers with a variety of product offerings–from clothing to groceries and everything in between–and win them over, with the help of their robust ratings and reviews program.
Walmart’s same-day grocery delivery service, pickup options, and Walmart+ paid subscription program have helped the retailer stand out amongst the competition, especially during COVID-19. The company’s U.S. e-commerce sales are projected to grow 44.2% to $41.01 billion in 2020, beating previous projections, according to eMarketer.
To maintain this edge, brands must optimize their product pages on Walmart.com to boost discoverability, optimize conversions, and keep shoppers coming back.
The best way to achieve this is by collecting and leveraging user-generated content (UGC), including product ratings, reviews, and visual content.
According to the 2019 Bazaarvoice Shopper Experience Index, 86% of brands and retailers said customer reviews drive online sales. And our 2020 Shopper Experience Index found the largest number of consumers said reviews are what they rely on to make product purchasing decisions faster.
Here’s an overview of why UGC for products sold on Walmart.com matters for your brand, how to collect more review content, and how to engage with Walmart shoppers to boost loyalty.
New to selling on the Walmart marketplace? Check out our beginner’s blog post first.
Why do ratings and reviews on Walmart.com matter?
Ratings and reviews are the hallmarks of success for Walmart.com product pages. This UGC helps build trust with consumers, boosts SEO performance, and enables shoppers to make informed decisions about the products they buy. When consumers interact with UGC on best-in-class sites, retailers can see a 138% conversion lift, and a 159% increase in revenue per visitor, our index found.
At Walmart.com, there’s a direct correlation between ratings and reviews and product discoverability in search, conversion, and sales. Walmart shoppers expect every product to feature a review—many won’t even consider purchasing a product without reviews. The more reviews on product description pages, the more benefits brands, and retailers see. Just one review drives a 10% lift in orders, according to Bazaarvoice data. Eight offers SEO benefits, and 50 brings a 30% lift in orders. 
5 Ways to Get Customer Reviews On Walmart.com
Walmart leverages Bazaarvoice as their ratings and reviews provider due to their best-in-class UGC solutions and service, as well as unparalleled content authenticity and moderation standards. With this partnership, brands have the opportunity to leverage Bazaarvoice’s industry-leading solutions to optimize UGC coverage on Walmart.com, to set them apart from the competition, and ultimately increase sales performance.
1. Walmart Spark Reviewer
The Walmart Spark Reviewer program offers brands the opportunity to send samples to loyal shoppers within the Walmart sampling community, in exchange for honest reviews on Walmart.com. Brands can start seeing reviews on Walmart.com in as little as 3 weeks, once products are shipped – making this an ideal solution for brands needing to boost review volume quickly for high-priority products. If you have new products, seasonal items, Walmart exclusives, or products with outdated reviews on Walmart.com, Spark Reviewer is an excellent turnkey sampling solution to consider.
2. Collect + Distribute
A successful ratings and reviews strategy is one that enables a brand to increase high-quality review content collection for key products and optimize review coverage across all retail sites where their products are sold. With Bazaarvoice Collect + Distribute, brands are equipped with the tools necessary to automate review collection from their customers post-purchase and ensure all reviews collected are displayed across matching retailer sites in the Bazaarvoice Network, including Walmart.com. Brands who wish to also display collected reviews on their own website can opt for Collect + Display + Distribute. By collecting and distributing reviews with Bazaarvoice, brands also have access to industry-leading insights and reporting tools helping them analyze product performance, customer sentiment, and competitive benchmarking.
3. Distribute-Only
Bazaarvoice partners with several other UGC providers and sampling partners to help brands drive maximum success at retail. Whether brands have organic reviews already collected on their website or collect reviews through another provider, Distribute-Only will help make these reviews visible on retailer sites in the Bazaarvoice Network. All review content is attributed to its original source and follows standard Bazaarvoice authenticity and moderation policies before being approved for publishing on retailer sites in the Bazaarvoice Network, including Walmart.com.
4. VoxBox Sampling
Sample products at scale among hyper-targeted audiences within the Influenster community to drive trial and awareness, social buzz, and high-quality UGC. Influenster is a product discovery platform and reviews destination where over 8 million members engage and create content about the products they discover. These members are every day, highly-engaged shoppers who come to Influenster to read and write reviews, share photos and videos, participate in product discussions, and connect with brands and one another. With Bazaarvoice, brands can choose to either place their product(s) in an exclusive “custom” sampling box or participate in themed “co-op” sampling boxes filled with non-competitive products.
5. ReviewSource
ReviewSource is a solution that helps brands optimize review quantity, quality, and recency with an always-on stream of UGC from Influenster to retailers in the Bazaarvoice Network, including Walmart.com. With this solution, brands can collect high-quality review content for any number of products with no effort or expense of shipping products. Want to learn more about all UGC solutions available? Check out this Walmart UGC Solutions Guide or complete the contact form here.
How to Respond to Questions and Reviews On Walmart.com
Shoppers want to have personal interactions with brands and retailers, and reward companies that listen and respond to feedback shared through ratings and reviews. Nearly half of shoppers say they’re more likely to purchase from brands that respond to customer reviews, according to a Bazaarvoice and Deloitte survey. The Bazaarvoice Connections tool allows brands to interact directly with shoppers, address concerns, and gather valuable feedback. Connections Basic lets brands access, monitor, and respond to questions from consumers, while Connections Premium enables responses and monitoring of questions and reviews. Responding to shoppers’ questions at Walmart.com deepens connections with consumers and builds trust with both those asking the questions and shoppers viewing the responses. Brands can also gather key insights from customer reviews, such as ways to improve products or ideas for new products. Here are some best practices:
- Respond quickly: For questions, it’s best to respond to all questions within two business days. And for reviews, a best practice response time is two to five days.
- Be succinct: Provide the information your customers need, but don’t look to upsell or “prove the customer wrong” if they’ve left a negative review.
- Keep your audience in mind: Remember – you’re not just replying to the current customers but future customers as well.
- Identify common themes: If there are frequently asked questions or common complaints, use this information to fix the problem your shoppers are experiencing.
- Avoid canned replies: Consumers see through these. They feel impersonal, unhelpful, and corporate. Instead, engage.
Take the Next Step for Your Business
When brands and retailers join forces to collect more ratings and reviews, they both win, and generating more review content on Walmart.com is no exception. UGC helps boost product page performance, drives conversions, establishes trust with Walmart customers, and offers valuable insights about your products.
Brands should focus their strategies on gathering more quality reviews on Walmart product pages by leveraging the many collection tools available to them—and, listening and responding to consumers.
Visit www.bazaarvoice.com/walmart to get started.
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