The Wall Street Journal featured a story yesterday that credited PowerReviews with helping ecommerce businesses boost customer review volume and build trust among online shoppers. The results: shoppers feel more comfortable buying online, while merchants are better able to identify problems with their products or services.

The article highlighted the success stories of PowerReviews clients drugstore.com and Diapers.com.

Drugstore.com’s 300% lift in review volume after implementing our software and launching a follow-up email campaign (a PowerReviews best practice) not only helped to lend credibility to their products, but garnered a legion of verified buyers, adding even more authenticity to the reviews. Layering on the lasting benefits of the follow-up email, drugstore.com CMO David Lonczak said that this practice helps customers receiving these requests in their inbox “feel important” and “increased our brand’s connection [to drugstore.com customers].”

Our AnswerBox solution also received an honorable mention–with a focus on its capability to help merchants “reap the benefits of input from consumers before a sale is made, by posting questions from people thinking about buying a product and the answers, including comments from other consumers.”

Bazaarvoice’s capability to link customer reviews to users’ Facebook profiles was also mentioned, reinforcing the viral nature of peer-level feedback online.  (Read about our own Facebook publishing feature – Social Megaphone.)

When consulting online reviews, a shopper’s level of comfort largely depends on feeling that sense of connection to the person making a review. Director of E-commerce Solutions at Diapers.com Josh Himwich remarks, “the most important recommender is going to be people who are in a very similar situation to yourself.” However, not all reviews solutions provide this crucial information.

The article pointed to Diapers.com’s use of our Affinity Reviews™ as a feature that sets PowerReviews apart from others in the industry. This PowerTags™ technology, unique to PowerReviews, captures structured customer feedback to help shoppers “distinguish one reviewer from another” (’first-time parent’ or ‘grandparent’), and is critical to helping to guide their purchases online.

The common denominator here: social commerce solutions that drive measurable results for businesses – through more sales and deeper customer relationships.

What is Review Accelerator?  It is a simple and easy way for PowerReviews Express clients to send follow-up emails after their customers purchase a product, inviting them back to review.  Review Accelerator is the result of years of optimizing the format, design, and process to maximize the response rate and quality of reviews with hundreds of our Enterprise clients (to achieve response rates as high as 15%).  We take care of all the complexity and implement the best practices for you.

Why is Review Accelerator™ so important?  Quite simply, without a well-implemented follow-up email program, you won’t get enough reviews.  Our research shows that 74% of customers believe that four reviews per product is the minimum needed to make an informed buying decision.  Review Accelerator can help you achieve this milestone 10 times faster (in 1-2 months instead of 1 year).

With the addition of Review Accelerator, we believe PowerReviews Express provides a complete review solution that will exceed your expectations.  You not only get our unique tag based solution that consumers prefer 2-1 over stars and comments, but a program that accelerates your review collection.  It is the fastest and simplest way to reap the benefits of reviews on your site.