4 Benefits of using “Questions and Answers” for Businesses
While product reviews are the backbone of Social Commerce and Facebook is the community of choice, questions & answers can often be overlooked. A recent study from the e-tailing group has found consumers are spending significantly more time researching products before making purchases. Half of the people polled in the survey said they spend 75% or more of their shopping time researching products and they rank Q&A as the 2nd most important social tool for research behind customer reviews. However, the benefits do not stop there. In addition to being a highly effective research application that is proven at driving conversions, PowerReviews’ AnswerBox tool can also boost SEO, lower call center volume and can help shape product descriptions.
AnswerBox drives conversion: PowerReviews’ clients are reporting conversion rates between 10 to 40% from the Answer Notification email (the email that notifies customers when their question has been answered). Sierra Trading Post reported a 50% increase in conversion and a staggering 300% increase in click-through for this email over traditional email marketing campaigns. Another retailer reported that customer’s who did convert, typically did so within 24 hours of receiving the email. When was the last time you launched an email campaign that put up those kinds of numbers?
AnswerBox boosts SEO: AnswerBox generates content and lots of it. Many retailers and brands see a 2:1 ratio of questions to reviews and for some merchants this ratio can be much higher. Since AnswerBox acts as living FAQ doc on your product page, it naturally generates an abundance of keywords. The great news is this fresh content can be indexed by all of your favorite search engines. Just like with reviews, PowerReviews’ patented Inline SEO technology comes standard with every AnswerBox implementation.
AnswerBox can lower call center volume: After going live with AnswerBox, Skechers noticed a 30% reduction in call center volume. Tim Lakin, aka Tim the Shoe Guy, answers just about every question submitted on the Skechers site and says providing customers with quality answers is invaluable. “One of our newest and most technical shoes, the Pro Resistance SRR, was receiving a high volume of call center questions. By submitting very detailed answers we were able to drop calls for that product down to 0% as well as increase conversions by 25%”. – Tim Lakin, Ecommerce Merchandising Manager at Skechers
Develop effective product descriptions: It can be difficult to determine whether or not your product descriptions are effective at delivering the desired message to your customers. With AnswerBox, retailers are able to tell right away if descriptions are doing their job by simply looking at the number of unique questions associated with a product as well as the number of times a synonymous question is asked. Nautilus noticed they were missing out on valuable content on their product pages and quickly took action. “We were able to improve our product pages by analyzing AnswerBox data and incorporating our customer’s questions back into our product pages”. – Ricardo Cheriel, Sr. Content Administrator at Nautilus
So in summary, questions and answers is a great partner to a reviews solution on your site. With customer engagement complementary to reviews and powerful content opportunities, the addition can quickly create instant value with your customers.
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