How Are Seller Ratings Affecting Your AdWords ROI?

What happens to your CTR and ROI when you allow your website’s seller ratings to be displayed as an ad extension on your Google AdWords ads?  While you might think it’s great that your seller ratings are now being displayed, you need to view the experience as your potential site visitors do.

Here is what happened when I searched for “silk turtleneck” on Google.com:

Two of the top three paid search ads have seller ratings of roughly 4.5/5.0 stars.  But, that’s not all.  Here are the remainder of the paid search ads that appeared in the right column (this is just the Page 1 search results):

Half of these ads have seller ratings of roughly 4.5/5.0 stars.  Two ads have seller ratings of 5.0/5.0 stars.  Can we say redundant?

At this point, the ads that stand out are the two ads that don’t display seller ratings.  Is that a good thing?  Not necessarily.  A larger brand with higher levels of recognition, such as Ralph Lauren, can easily get away without having their site’s seller ratings displayed with their AdWords ads without having web surfers question if the lack of the seller ratings means that the site is questionable to shop on.  A smaller, lesser-known brand may run into the issue of web surfers questioning the integrity of shopping on that sight and choosing to click on one of the paid search ads that displays a high seller rating (though they all have high seller ratings).

Before you rush to check if your AdWords ads are displaying your seller ratings, here are a few points to take into consideration:

1. Google is automatically displaying seller ratings on AdWords accounts for those domains that have at least 30 unique user reviews and a seller rating of at least 4.0 stars on Google Product Search. (This is the point that doesn’t make sense to me.  Most people using Google to search for a product or service are not aware that only the 4.0 or higher ratings are being displayed.  Google really needs to eliminate the minimum 4.0 star rating and display all the ratings.  If a site has a seller rating of 2.0/5.0 stars, display that so anyone who clicks on that paid ad has an expectation that they might have a really bad customer experience if they decide to purchase from that site.)
2. Google Product Search seller ratings are really an aggregate of ratings from third-party sites, such as BizRate and Epinions, and Google Checkout reviews.  SMBs that don’t want to pay for BizRate, etc., will need to add Google Checkout to their sites in order to build up to the minimum of 30 reviews.
3. The seller ratings currently are only displayed for searches on the following Google domains: .com, .co.uk, .de, .fr, and .nl.

Going back to the Page 1 search results that displayed on Google.com for “silk turtleneck”, one organic search result demonstrates how to trump the paid search seller ratings:

The listing for Orvis.com displayed the product rating with the number of reviews for that specific product.  When I moused-over the right arrows, I could see in the page preview that the page is for a silk turtleneck (just what I searched for) and that it’s available in four colors.  While 27 product reviews doesn’t sound like very many reviews, do you think your site’s personas would be more likely to click on any link, paid or organic, based on your site’s overall seller ratings or on the product-specific ratings?

Here are the next steps to consider:

1. If your AdWords ads are displaying your seller ratings, check your AdWords and site stats.  Have the ratings had a positive or negative impact on your conversions, ROI, and CTR?  If you’re seeing a decrease in conversions and ROI, fill out Google’s form to notify them you want the seller ratings removed from your AdWords ad extensions.  If your CTR has decreased but your conversions and ROI have not decreased, you probably want to look at the keywords you’re bidding on and your title and ad copy.  (Take a look at the first image in this post, neither the RalphLauren.com nor VictoriasSecret.com ads contains the keyword “silk” and the RalphLauren.com ad doesn’t even contain the keyword “turtleneck” yet both of those ads were triggered by my search for “silk turtleneck”.)
2. If you’re not using the product extension option for your ad extensions, do so.  You just need to link your Google Merchant Center account (free to set up and upload your product info to) to your AdWords account. 
3. Include product reviews on your product pages.  Look at the advantage Orvis has in the organic results for the search I performed.  Orvis’ product page isn’t first in the organic results, but their product page stands out because it’s the only organic result on this page with the product rating.
4. Don’t forget SEO on your product and category pages.  No, you’re not going to get into the Page 1 search results overnight, but it’s worth the investment.  (Please use a better description tag than what Bluefly.com did.  Blatantly trying to get the keyword twice in your description tag by stating that the turtleneck is a turtleneck makes you look lazy and like you didn’t take the time to identify your primary personas.)

On that note, what do you think of Google displaying the seller ratings on AdWords ads?  Have you, or your clients, seen positive or negative changes to your AdWords account since the seller ratings went live?

How to Keep User Reviews from Defeating Your SEO and SEM

You’ve optimized your product pages for SEO - copy on the page targets the primary personas for the product, you’ve improved your site design for usability, meta tags are complete, and you’ve A/B tested the calls-to-action and the product graphic to increase conversions. You’ve even improved your SEM – your ppc ads are optimized to crush the competition, you’ve blogged, tweeted, and posted your facebook updates with links to the product page. Yet the conversion rates on the product page have not increased. If you’ve got user reviews on the product page (and you really should allow your customers to review products on your site), here are the options for preventing bad or irrelevant user reviews from negatively impacting your conversion rate:

Option A: Dealing with Irrelevant User Reviews

• Have an employee monitor your user reviews on all your product pages. For instance, a few days before James Rollins’ latest book was published, I went to barnesandnoble.com to check on the price. Since barnesandnoble.com limits the number of reviews seen per screen to five reviews, the reviews I saw on the product page consisted of two negative reviews complaining about the prices charged for ebooks for the Nook and two counter reviews from individuals explaining that authors have no control over ebook pricing.

Oh, and my favorite, one review for a different book was a link to a competitor’s web site with the coupon code listed in the review.

Who cares? I certainly didn’t consider any of the four reviews to be relevant to the actual book. However, not every visitor to your product page will read the reviews, opting instead to just look at the average rating of all reviews. All irrelevant ratings affect the total average rating so delete the irrelevant reviews.

• Update your site policy to state that all irrelevant reviews will be deleted and include examples of irrelevant reviews. Make certain to include a link to this policy on the form page where your site visitors enter their reviews and prominently list your customer service phone number on both pages so any disgruntled customer can call and complain to a human being.

• In Barnes and Noble’s case, create a call-to-action button for visitors who have “comments” about your Nook and ebook pricing. Include that button on at least the product user review form page and site policy page. Then, link the call-to-action button to a page where you address the issue with ebook pricing (how are the prices determined, why are some prices higher than the paperback version of the book, why do prices differ between ebooks, etc.), the issue with employees overstating the benefits of buying the Nook, what you’re doing to resolve all issues and complaints, and then providing a form for your disgruntled customers to submit their comments and view the comments that other users submitted.

Option B: Dealing with Bad Reviews

• Do not delete the bad product reviews. The last thing you need is for the negative word-of-mouth to spread about how you’re deleting negative reviews and misleading the public.

• Have an employee monitor all product reviews, categorize the negative product reviews (furniture pieces not properly manufactured, sizing is too small or too big, colors of shoes don’t match, etc.) and forward the reviews to the appropriate staff members.

• Send a thank-you to each customer who had a bad experience, apologize for the problem(s), state how your company is resolving the issue and offer an incentive to return to your site and make another purchase.

In the overall scheme of the business world, you can plan ahead all you want but you will never be able to control how your customers or competitors behave. How is your company or client handling negative reviews and irrelevant reviews?