You’ve spent time and energy gathering glowing reviews from customers. They’re displayed on your pages for products. However, are you certain that they’re as productive as they should be? In reality, the location and how you present reviews are as vital as the review itself. An unintentionally placed review widget will get overlooked, and a distracting widget will actually hinder sales. There’s no guesswork. It’s about rigorous A/B tests.
This document provides a data-driven approach to A/B testing review widget placement and layout. When you conduct systematic review tests for conversion of widgets you can go beyond the assumptions you have made and learn what you can do to transform the social evidence you have built into a profitable resource.
The Widget You Never Questioned: Why A/B Testing Reviews Reveals Hidden Revenue
A/B or split testing involves constructing two variations of the same web page element and then displaying both versions to different viewers to find out which one is better in achieving a certain purpose, for example, the conversion rate or revenue. If applied to reviews, this technique is extremely valuable because the traditional “best practices” don’t always work for every company.
Take the example of Awareness Avenue, the jewelry manufacturer. The company conducted a study comparing an online store featuring a prominent Trustpilot widget to one that did not have it.
In contrast to what they expected, the removal of the widget produced an increase of statistical significance in the amount of revenue generated per user as well as a jump of nearly $10 in the average value of orders. The widget was designed to create trust and may in fact have distracted buyers or sparked a conflict with the company’s high-end, emotionally-driven image.
However, this doesn’t mean they won’t perform, but their content must be tailored to the particular audience. A/B testing review widget placement eliminates any uncertainty, and allows you to improve your performance for the specific metrics that matter for example, such as the amount of revenue per user instead of only the flimsiest of measures.
What to Test: Key Elements of Your Review Widget
An effective review widget conversion test can be focused on just one factor. The following are the most effective aspects to play with that are based on real-world examples.
1. Placement on the Page
The place where you put your widget could dramatically alter its appearance and impact. The online retailer for home and garden products
Wickes tested the display of “Top Rated” review messages throughout the sales funnel, including products’ listing pages, details pages and the page for shopping. They discovered that placing the social proof on multiple points consistently led to an increase in conversion rate across various times of trading.
Some ideas for placing tests:
- Above the Fold: Below the fold Does your widget appear with no scrolling?
- Close to the “Add to Cart” button: The Loox team found that having visually-based reviews alongside an Add to Cart button boosts the chance of clicking, which led to situations where it increased the conversion rate by 40 percent.
- The sidebar. in the Product Description: The results of a test conducted by CZC, the electronics retailer, found that an integrated slide-in review widget on the left-hand side of the page beat other widgets in increasing the revenue by 7.5 percent.
2. Design and Density
Your visual approach to your reviews may either catch the attention of viewers or lead to chaos.
Design tests for ideas:
- Format for Star Ratings: Airbnb famously tested the presentation of average ratings from customers within result pages. They found that utilizing decimal points (e.g., 4.8 vs. 5) was a better strategy to boost participation.
- Widget Style: Try an easy text overview against a visual rich grid of photos or the dynamic rotating carousel.
- Distraction Versus Focus: The Awareness Avenue test indicates that removing the widget completely can boost buyer’s intent to purchase by eliminating the visual clutter, particularly when it comes to products that are emotionally driven.
3. The Specific Message or “Angle”
Your language used to write your reviews could be a way to appeal to different motivations of customers.
Tests for messages:
- “Top Rated” Badge: Wickes has successfully utilized this information to speed up purchase choices.
- Review Count: Check “4.8 stars from 1,000+ reviews” against “98% of customers recommend this.”
- The Emphasis on Specific Qualities: Instead of an overall score, you should highlight reviews that focus on a particular benefits of the product (e.g., “Rated #1 for durability”).
How to Run a Structured Review Widget A/B Test
In order to ensure that your evaluation widget conversion test gives accurate results, you should follow this guideline step-by-step.
Step 1: Define Your Goal and Hypothesis
Set out with a specific goal for your business. Do you want to improve the Add to Cart rate, improve overall sales per visit or improve average order value? Make hypotheses from data or observations.
A/B testing review widget placement in examples: ‘We believe that moving the review widget above the product description will increase Add to Cart clicks because it gives customers immediate social proof before they read the details.
Step 2: Choose Your Testing Tool
You’ll require a robust testing system. If you’re using Shopify or similar, applications such as GemX CRO and A/B Testing let you divide traffic among different page variations.
Other software such as VWO or Personizely have powerful test capabilities and were used in the cases discussed.
Step 3: Create Your Variants
Utilizing your test tool Create your control (the first page) and your alternate (the one with only one variable changed). Be sure to alter only just one thing at a time. If you make changes to the design and design at the same time it is difficult to determine what caused which.
Step 4: Run the Test and Gather Data
Make sure you drive enough for the test to reach statistical significativeness. It ensures that your test results aren’t just random. This ensures that your results aren’t based on chance. CZC tests, as an instance, have more than 90,000 users in order to achieve a 95% confidence level.
The Loox team points out that not all tests are one that is a “home run,” but when they ran a variety of tests they were able to quickly pinpoint which tests are truly moving the needle.
Step 5: Analyze the Results
Do not limit yourself to conversion rates. Consider the effects on:
- Revenue per User: as in the Awareness Avenue case demonstrates it, this could be an even more reliable metric than the conversion rate by itself.
- Average Order Value: Did the widget’s changes in a way to encourage consumers to spend more on each purchase?
- Click-through Rates: Are visitors engaged by using this widget? CZC monitored the number of clicks they made on their Heureka badge to determine the extent to which it diverted visitors to a different website.
Step 6: Iterate and Scale
An award-winning test is only the start. The Loox team stresses the importance of “aggregation of minor gains”, when they come across an idea that is successful the team runs another two or three times to maximize all the potential they can before taking it to the next level.
If a test fails take a look at the findings. Maybe the test was not placed correctly or perhaps the messages were not clear enough.
Common Pitfalls to Avoid
- Doing too much at the Same Time: You don’t be able to pinpoint the cause of the issue.
- Do not Stop Tests too soon: Take care to ensure you have a statistically significant sample size.
- Concentrating Conversion Rates: The higher the conversion rate but a smaller average order value may cause a net loss. Track revenue per visitor.
- Inattention the “Why” Behind the Data: Utilize tools such as Hotjar heatmaps that show the way users interact using your widgets. Noticing a rise in rage clicking or turning can be a reason for the poor performance.
Conclusion
Reviews from your customers are an excellent source of social proof. However, their full potential can only be realized by conscious improvement. When you commit to a plan consisting of A/B testing review widget placement and the message, you can go from believing that the social proof you’ve created works, to knowing that it works.
The companies that are successful in e-commerce do not have the highest number of reviews, they’re the ones that have been thoroughly examined to determine the best manner to showcase reviews.
Make a decision based on one idea: Run a clear review widget conversion test, then let the data inform the next steps. The conversion rate of your widget, and the revenue you earn will appreciate it.
