Amazon.com recently introduced a new webstore feature for its on-line shoppers; Customer Quotes. Amazon has for a long time shown customer reviews and star ratings. The new Customer Quotes expands this, featuring customer reviews even more prominently. Hover your pointer over the star rating and a window appears with excerpts quoted from customer reviews of the product.
Check out Amazon Customer Quotes in action for the Mumi&Bubi Solids Starter Kit on Amazon.com:
So what makes this a ‘selling feature’ as opposed to just yet another website feature?
The answer lies in the emerging patterns of customer on-line shopping behaviour. Customers often research products on-line before making purchases. Customers trust other customers, often before they’ll trust the vendor. This makes Amazon one of the top web destinations for shopper’s research because for many products Amazon has the most and best reviews from customers. The more reviews by customers, whether positive or negative, the more a shopper is likely to trust a product and be confident in making their purchase on-line. This new Customer Quotes feature is a natural extension of that concept, giving customer reviews more prominence with the objective of converting more shoppers to buyers. This is what makes Customer Quotes a ‘selling feature’.
How are those quotes selected? Amazon says, “Our system automatically selects quotes from customer reviews to give you a quick overview of what customers are saying about an item.” Its likely that reviews voted ‘Helpful’ are more likely to be quoted, and that popular products with plenty of reviews are more likely to be chosen to have the Customer Quotes treatment.
Like so many new features at Amazon, it’s been introduced as a beta. This means that some of us will see it, some of us won’t. Amazon will be monitoring feedback and they’ll be testing whether a product sells better with or without the Customer Quotes feature turned on. If you don’t see Customer Quotes when you visit Amazon.com, don’t be alarmed. Amazon have stated, “This feature is something new that we’re trying out, so you may not always see it, and it won’t be available to all customers yet.” We can be fairly sure that if Customer Quotes does indeed lead to an increase in sales then it will be around for a long time to come.
