Feefo - is it worth it?

[MrsBee]

Hi all ..... I have had Feefo on my website for the last 18 months. I have around 960 reviews and I generally receive very good feedback on both service and products.

I am starting to wonder though, is it actually worth it? Would my sales levels remain the same without it? I pay nearly £100 a month to SellerDeck for Feefo integration, however I actually have no idea whether my business would suffer if I didn't use it. Other than asking my customers directly whether the Feefo reviews influenced their purchase (and I have considered doing that) I have no idea how else I would find out.

So I would like to ask any fellow (or past) Feefo users please: how important do you feel Feefo is to your website? Have any of you stopped using Feefo and, if so, would you be able to share your thoughts/experiences on the effect (if any) that it had on your sales? Are there any non-Feefo users who feel it would not be worth it, in which case may I ask what puts you off? Basically, I would love to hear everybody's thoughts/opinions regarding Feefo please - users and non-users alike!

[Mike Hughes]

I guess the answer to whether Feefo is worth it or not has to come down to what it can do for you / your website.

The way I see it the advantage of Feefo membership can be grouped into four key areas:

1. You get product reviews.

- Useful if you have products that customers might not be familiar with or need help choosing.
- If you have lot's of product reviews it shows that lot's of people are buying the product from you. It helps give prospective customers a feeling of security from the safety in numbers principle.
- The reviews also give fresh content that helps with SEO and with searches for 'xyz reviews'

2. You get service reviews.

- Will make prospective customer feel safer in buying from you (as long as your reviews are good).
- Again, lot's of reviews shows lots of people are happy to buy from you.

3. You get links to your website.

- You get links from feefo to the products that have been reviewed and your home page. These will help your SEO.

4. You get Stars in Google Shopping and sometimes in the SERPS.

- Makes your offer stand out a bit and demonstrates a good product / company.

Some of the things above can be done cheaper and by other methods.

In terms of how much extra sales this is worth I suspect for most of us it's going to be somewhere between 2 - 10% depending on how relevant each one is to your business. For me I suspect it's probably in the 5-6% range but this is really just a gut feeling rather than something I've analysed and tested.

I have been pondering leaving Feefo too as I feel it could be done better and cheaper by other means. The problem of course is finding the time and effort needed so for the meantime I'm going to hang on in there.

Mike

[Mike Hughes]

I thought I'd add another set of data to this. According to Reevoo, reviews can add a sales uplift of 18%.

Retailers and brands that embrace reviews and recommendations into their online retail strategy see a sales uplift of some 18%

Of the 18% total uplift, 11% is due to conversion improvements, 5% to increased average order value and a further 2% to repeat visitor uplift.

The data, from Europe’s leading social commerce company Reevoo, shows how, when reviews are read by consumers:
• Conversion rates increase by 177%
• Average product purchase value almost doubles
• Visitor return rates rise by 13%.

Being an analytical sort, I immediately question how these number are reached as an almost threefold increase in conversion rates and a double in average purchase value should lead to a 6 times increase in sales not 18%.

Presumably the get out phrase is 'when reviews are read by consumers' which I guess means not all products have reviews and not all customer read the reviews. If I can find time over the next few days I'll try and find the original paper and see if it explains it.

The 18% uplift apparently is based on 100 large Reevoo partners in 2010. If this is the result of a before / after analysis then you have to wonder over what period this was measured and what else the companies might have been doing at the same time.

Anyone else have any thoughts on all this?

[chickenhouseman]

But are the product reviews served within a frame or something so not part of the seo? I use soapbox so the reviews are directly coded on the page as crawlable content and integrates to give you the product stars in a google SERPs. If nothing else it, a handful of gold stars next to a product make it stand out. Are you collecting product or customer reviews?

[chris ashdown]

Not aiming to be the cheapest range of products on the shopping sites but hopefully offering a good service, I think the Feefo stars make a big difference over the non stars sellers

I also think its important to have a few negative posts to prove it's not fixed, I would question any site that has a 100% record as experience shows me the fickle behaviour of customers, who order something in Red confirm Red and then complain they wanted Blue and it's you fault you must have changed the order

[Mike Hughes]

Chris, I agree. I have seen some research that says negative reviews actually help increase sales as long as there aren't too many of them.

I guess it's probably a case of people looking at the bad reviews and deciding 'that isn't going to happen to me' and 'if that's the worst that could happen then there's nothing to worry about'.

Regarding Feefo's reviews. The customer is given the opportunity to review both the service and the product so you get both product and service reviews. The standard Sellerdeck integration does use an iframe but you can download the review data and build your own HTML which is what I do.

[brucet]

Negative feedback actually increases shopper confidence.

Firstly, it validates the positive feedback, because visitors can see the feedback is genuine, and you haven't made it all up or deleted everything negative. And secondly, they can see how you respond to complaints, and what kind of post-sales service they can expect.

The feedback can also help you improve your customer service and refine the range and quality of products that you offer - even if you don't display the reviews on your site.

[Mantra]

But are the product reviews served within a frame or something so not part of the seo? I use soapbox so the reviews are directly coded on the page as crawlable content and integrates to give you the product stars in a google SERPs. If nothing else it, a handful of gold stars next to a product make it stand out. Are you collecting product or customer reviews?

Does the Soapbox option enable feedback on service/product review according to customer choice and not rely on annoying follow email feedback requests?
Can this be integrated easily to work with SD2016?

Martin
Mantra Audio

[Buzby]

Soapbox is product review only.

However you could set up products for service etc and use that instead.

[mje]

We ran it on our site for a few years - was £10 a month in 2012 but cancelled the subscription when it was increased to £50 as we were only getting one response to ten requests sent out .

I think if I had the budget I would use it, everyone likes a pat on the back, but the pricing of Feefo / TP etc puts them beyond the reach of many of us.

Always been a mystery to me why Sellerdeck don't use Feefo themselves?