Before you invest in product reviews

The advice here is unglamorous, which is probably why it gets skipped. Before you spend anything on product reviews, it is worth confirming a few things are already true.

Small percentage changes matter here because they apply to every order, every month. Check it against what you would want a competitor's site to get wrong.

Prerequisites

• You can describe the outcome you want in one sentence
• Someone owns it after the work is done
• Reviews answer the questions your copy avoids
• You have a way to tell whether it worked

What to watch for

A few critical reviews make the positive ones believable. It is worth being explicit about, because assumptions differ quietly. If it only works because one person remembers to do something, it does not work yet.

Reply to bad reviews in public, calmly. The reasoning matters more than the rule, because the rule has exceptions. The teams that stay on top of it are the ones who put it on a calendar rather than a wish list.

How to tell if yours is fine

Trust does most of the selling online, and trust is built from unglamorous details. Three things worth confirming about product reviews before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• A few critical reviews make the positive ones believable — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

If you want a second opinion on how yours is set up, ask.