How To Write Product Reviews That Convert Into Sales

If you’re a blogger that’s spent any amount of time looking for ways to make money from your blog then you’ll have probably been told that product reviews are the best way to go about it, and that’s because they generally are. When done right, product reviews can provide an easy and effective source of income.

However, writing product reviews is one thing – getting them to convert into sales is another (and since you’re here reading this post I’m going to assume you’ve already discovered that the hard way).

So the purpose of this post is to show you ways in which you can dramatically increase the number of sales that you make from each of your reviews by increasing the conversion rates of your visitors.

And you’ll be glad to know that increasing the conversions of visitors to sales is is actually a pretty easy process, in fact after just few small tweaks you’ll no doubt see your conversion rates soar through the roof.

To summarise, here’s a breakdown of what you’ll learn in this post:

• How to effectively drive more visitors to your reviews
• How to dramatically convert more readers into sales with a few simple tweaks

Let’s Get Started…

The reason reviews are generally so effective for making money is because 9 times out of 10 the people that land on your reviews are people that are already considering purchasing the product/service. All you need to do is gently nudge them into making that final purchase decision, which is usually very easy.

It’s certainly a lot easier than recommending a product that’s new to them & then trying to convince them to buy it.

As an example I have a post on my blog entitled “How To Start a Blog & Make Money Blogging” and in that post I recommend AWeber (an email marketing service). The tutorial post converts OK, but my dedicated review of AWeber converts WAY better & that’s because the people arriving that post are already interesting in purchasing it, and already have an idea as to what it is & how it can help them.

Basically, in my tutorial I’m convincing people, in my review I’m nudging people – that’s the difference & that’s why reviews are so powerful.

The best part is that your review doesn’t even need to be positive in order for you to make money, because you can simply use a bad review as a funnel through to a better product.

As an example I recently came across an online business opportunity (or should I say scam) named Copy My Websites, I reviewed it & it turned out to be a heap of junk. There’s no way I’d recommend it to my readers, but now I can use that post to funnel those visitors through to my post about making money blogging instead.

So you can cash in on a good review by nudging your visitor into purchasing, and you can cash in on a bad review by nudging your visitor over towards a more suitable product. Basically product reviews are gold.

How To Get Visitors To Your Reviews

Before I dive in & show you how to increase the conversions of your reviews I want to firstly make sure that you’re taking the right approach to publishing your reviews to attract the maximum amount of visitors. After all regardless as to what your current conversion rates are more visitors still means more money.

The main source of quality traffic (visitors) to your reviews will be coming from search engines since that’s the first place people will generally go to when they want to find out more information about a particular product.

Now the obvious thing to do would be to title your review “company name + review” & hope for the best, but the clever thing to do would be to put your mind in your potential buyers shoes & name the review not only what you think they would search, but name it what you think they would want to see.

You see unlike traditional SEO (search engine optimisation) where people search something & generally just click on the first, second or third results – reviews work a little different.

People searching for reviews want the “scoop” on a product, which means they’re willing to dig a little deeper into the search engines – so whilst it’s always nice to rank at the top spot when it comes to reviews it’s also a good idea to have an enticing headline (and meta description) because that way you’ll still be able to grab a lot of visitors even whilst positioned lower down the ranks.

Let me show you what I mean using AWeber again in my example…

I could publish a review of AWeber & give it the following title & meta description:

AWeber Review
Read my review of AWeber and learn more about the company and how it works.

OR… I could give it the following title & meta description instead:

Is AWeber Right For You? Ultimate Review Reveals All
Don’t even think about joining AWeber until you’ve read this review where we outline the ultimate list of pros & cons and determine if its right for you.

Obviously the second one beats it hands down – and chances are that’s the one people would choose to click from the search results even if it happened to be lower down the page. This is because whilst people are searching for an AWeber review, what 9 out of 10 of them are really trying to work out is whether or not AWeber is actually right for them. The second title hits on that straight away & that will undoubtedly draw them over to the review.

Keywords are still certainly important, but what I’m trying to say is that you don’t have to go keyword crazy. Search competition for product reviews is generally much weaker than it is for primary keywords so incorporate your keywords but keep a strong focus on creating a captivating headline too.

How To Convert More Visitors Into Sales From Your Reviews

This is the fun part of the post because I’m about to show you a handful of simple yet extremely effective tweaks that you can make to instantly turn each of your product reviews into high-converting money-making funnels.

So here we go…

#1 Give Your Readers a Quick, Clear & Concise Summary

Many people think that the best way to get sales from a review is by making their review the best (and biggest) out there. This is something that certainly helps the review rank higher in search engines but unfortunately it’s not something that directly converts visitors into sales and in fact it can actually have the opposite effect.

You see, the majority of people landing on product reviews are actually very close to their making their buying decision and all they are really looking for is a little reassurance to convince themselves to hit the “buy now” button. This means that all they want to see is a “yes do it” or a “no don’t do it”.

Therefore it’s vitally important that you always place a brief summary box at the top of your reviews which clearly states your verdict on the product/service being reviewed. This give people looking for a quicker answer exactly what they want to see & that’s important because these are generally the people that are going to make you the most money.

Here’s 6 Things Your Summary Should Contain As A Minimum:

1. The name of the product or service that you’re reviewing.
2. The costs involved with the product/service & details of any trials offered.
3. A visual representation of a score (more on this below).
4. A very brief straight to the point summary, around 50 words at most.
5. The most relevant image to the product/service (photo or screenshot – NOT clip-art).
6. A link for the reader to purchase the product/service.

And here’s a snapshot as to what it should look like in practice:

As you can see if somebody lands on that particular review they are presented with a quick & easy to read summary which means they can instantly learn whether I recommend the particular product or advise against it. Then, if they want to they can proceed to read more to find out how I came to that conclusion or they can simply go ahead & follow the link to make a purchase (or in that particular instance check out the alternative product I recommend instead).

Often I hear about people being worried to add affiliates to the top of their posts because they’re worried that Google don’t like it & that it will damage their websites search rankings. This is nonsense – providing your post is of quality content & providing you haven’t overdone (spammed) the links throughout the post you will be absolutely fine & adding a link at the top of your post will be no problem at all.

You’ll also see that I’ve provided a score for the product, and the important part to note is that I’ve coloured the score red. This is a visual representation and it’s very important – a common alternative you might have seen on other websites is a star rating system.

Basically a visual representation is just something purely visual that a person can look at to figure out whether it’s a good or bad review without even reading anything. We live in a world of providing fast information & you have to understand that some people are not even willing to take the time to read unless they can see something quick & easy that catches their attention, which is why a visual scoring system is so important.

So whether you use stars or colours, it’s important to somehow make it very easy for your readers to come to a FAST conclusion with just a glance.

#2 Use Text Links, Not Banners or Buttons

Regardless as to how flashy or cool you think your banner or button is, 9 times out of 10 text links convert WAY better.

As a society we’ve been “trained” to ignore banners because generally banners contain adverts, and more often than not adverts that we’re not particularly interested in. I too do it myself, as I’m reading blog posts I scroll past banners without even knowing that there was a banner there – it’s called banner blindness.

Whereas when we’re reading a paragraph and suddenly see a nice underlined hyperlink we’re more likely to be intrigued to click it. Human nature.

#3 Keep A Consistent Layout For Your Reviews

Keeping a consistent is important for a few reasons…

• It makes your review look more professional, making it more trustworthy
• It prevents readers becoming confused if they navigate through multiple reviews on your site
• It makes it easier for readers to find the information they need from your reviews

If your review has a nice layout & looks professional then that alone will massively increase the amount of conversions because people will trust your review. If your review isn’t well presented then the reader may feel like they have to check elsewhere to verify the information that you’ve given them before making a purchase, meaning somebody else will most likely steal your sale.

On top of that though when visitors browse multiple reviews on your website (such as in an instance where you link to an alternative product from a negative review) they will see consistent and will know exactly where to look in the review to find the information they need, speeding up their buying process. The more drawn out the process is of finding information the less likely they will be to make a purchase.

Plus if your visitor hops from one review to another & discovers they are both presented in an entirely different format this will most likely confuse them & confused visitors leave. People don’t like being confused & on the internet it’s easier to close a window than it is to stick around & try to figure it out.

#4 Use A High Quality Image That Best Represents The Product

The image you add to your review is one of the most important things that will determine whether or not the visitor stays or leaves so using a high quality image that well represents the particular product or service is vital.

This is because there are a LOT of products/services online, and a LOT of them have similar names. People will therefore look for some sort of quick visual reassurance that the review they’ve landed on is a review about the right product.

So be sure to use an image that immediately relates to the product. Ideally it would be an image of the product itself, but depending on the what is it you’re reviewing you might want to use a screenshot of the websites homepage or a company logo.

I personally also like to add a border & a shadow to my images because this makes them really “pop” out the page at the user and grabs their attention as soon as they land on the page.

#5 Don’t Be Scared To Repeat Affiliate Links Throughout The Review

When it comes to adding affiliate links to the review, don’t go crazy – but be sure to add a link at any point where you think you’ve pushed the buyer into making a purchasing decision.

As an example if halfway through your review you made an awesome point about the product/service or listed it’s main features then that could be a great opportunity for you to drop a link over to the “buy now” page because it’s quite likely that the reader will now have reached a purchase decision & will be ready to buy.

#6 Don’t Offer Alternatives

This is a bit of a controversial one and it will require testing on your end, but generally I find it best not to offer alternatives.

As an example to what I mean, I see a lot of blogs publishing positive reviews about products and encouraging them to buy those particular products but then also providing links to alternatives instead.

In my personal experience this decreases sales because in the online marketing world if you give people choice people generally choose nothing. This is because choice adds confusion & it also lengthens the buying process – a lengthier buying process always results in less sales.

People came to your review because they were considering buying that particular product, so sell them that particular product. Don’t complicate the process.

Of course the opposite applies to negative reviews, in that instance you should always use the opportunity to recommend a positive alternative – but that is literally the only instance in which I’d advise recommending an alternative.

#7 Finish With A List of Pro’s And Con’s

Fewer readers will make it all the way to the end of the review but those that do will be more qualified buyers, however the fact they’ve gone all the way to the bottom means they are fairly indecisive so you’ve going to have to really push them into making a decision.

The easiest (and best) way to do that is to provide a power list of pros and cons.

After reading a summarized to-the-point list of the pros and cons the reader will have definitely made up their mind as to whether or not they want to buy.

It’s important to keep your review honest, but at the same time if you’re trying to recommend a product you don’t want the list of cons to seem like it outweighs the list of pros. This means you’ve got to put it together tactfully.

State the cons but state them in a way that makes them sound like they are not such of a con and similarly always make sure the size of the pros list is visually bigger than that of the cons list.

The people at the bottom of the review are generally the easiest to convert because they have already spent a fair amount of time reading your review about the product, so subconsciously “not buying” would make them feel like that time wasted. This means that providing you put together a good pros & cons list you should be able to convert almost all of those who hit the bottom of the review.

The Bottom Line

Product reviews are and always will be the easiest way to make sales on a blog because you’re attracting people who are already looking into purchasing the product & in most instances you’ve got much less competition to battle against in the search engines.

The hardest thing is figuring out how to convert the readers of your reviews into sales but hopefully with the help of this blog post you’ll now have a good idea of what changes you can make on your website to increase sales. More than likely just a few small tweaks will see your conversions dramatically increase.

If you do happen to implement any of the methods above (which I highly recommend that you do) be sure to leave a comment below & let me know how it affected your conversion rates. Did you see an increase?

And whilst we’re on the topic of making money from your blog, be sure to check out my list of ways to make money from your blog where you’ll find a whole bunch of different methods & techniques that you can implement to boost your blogs profits.