Online sellers and marketplaces mainly live on their reputation. They sell on the basis of their reputation in the market. Buyer reviews and opinion – both are important to them as these are the things that define and maintain their credibility in their target market. If the customers are not satisfied enough, an online marketplace can survive only so long. That is why you can trust them to provide you with only the best of the best. A company survives only if it keeps the trust of its customers and keeps expanding on its basis. Making a purchase online is something very much demanding of trust and credibility. Back when Amazon launched, it took them years to make shopping online a generally accepted concept – unplagued by issues like mistrust, uncertainty, and buyers’ remorse.
Reviews play a great role in allowing companies to gain trust and credibility and maintaining their Online Reputation. Let us take web hosting for an example – when people want to sign up for a web host, the first thing that most of them do is to search for web hosting reviews and read reviews that look comparatively credible – the good side and bad side both are out in the open. Why? Because it is a big decision and it is going to affect their website – its functionality including uptime, speed, resources, tech, and SEO – for a long time. Most web hosts offer 50% or so off at the three yearly plans. Three years is a long time to be in for. So, they would rather make some research and get an idea of who is offering what and which one is going to be the best shot at it.
In the same way, making any other purchase online is a matter of trust and the only way to find out how good a product or a service actually is to read the public opinion about it. The reviews from previous buyers are just the thing that can allow prospective to know what the product is worth when they are shopping online. Product descriptions are meant to incentivize them to make a purchase – they know that reading a sales copy clearly would not help them in the process of making an educated decision. On the other hand, if they read buyer reviews, they would have enough knowledge to make a completely informed and educated decision about any product or service while they are shopping online.