Online Reputation And Fake Reviews

In business, reputation is everything. Reputation determines which businesses succeed and which businesses fail. This is especially true when a business operates online. If someone physically travels to a store and meets with a salesperson, even if the business doesn’t have the best reputation, a personal connection with a salesperson or any employee can be a positive influence on buying something. Also, customers can actually see and hold the real product up close and determine if it meets their standards. However, when products are online, customers must rely on reviews to determine if the product is worth the money and if there is still the possibility of being scammed by a seller. That is why online shoppers place so much importance on reviews. Most people in business know this, but just to be clear about how important reputation is, let’s take a look at some statistics.

According to SEO software development company Moz, businesses can lose as many as 22% of their customers when just one negative article is found by people who are considering buying their product. If you have four or more negative articles about your company or product appearing in Google search results you are likely to lose 70% of potential customers.

57% of consumers will only use a business if it has 4 or more stars and consumers read an average of 10 online reviews before they are able to trust a local business.

According to Review Trackers, a customer review software company, 94% say that a negative online review has convinced them to avoid business and 53% of customers expect businesses to respond to negative reviews within a week.

Although it’s meaningful that people are generally aware of the importance of their online reputation and the online reputation of their businesses, in desperation to make their businesses stand out from the rest, many people have turned to fake reviews in order to reduce the fallout from any potential negativity about their products or their company.
Unfortunately, this means that many of the reviews posted on e-commerce marketplaces are actually fake reviews.

How To Spot Real Reviews vs. Fake Reviews On Amazon

Fake reviews in e-commerce are so prevalent that companies like Amazon have had to develop tags to represent which product reviews are most likely, to be honest. In a study by Best Reviews, out of 488 different products listed on Amazon with a total of 360,000 user ratings, 66.3% were 5-star reviews, an unrealistic number, especially considering that there were hundreds of products included in the study. In order to try to point shoppers in the right direction, Amazon includes a verified purchase tag on honest reviews, and it is suggested that shoppers search for products with this tag on them in order to read the most honest reviews and try to avoid fake reviews.

So Just How Common Are Fake Reviews in eCommerce?

A study by Fakespot, an online service for identifying and analyzing fake reviews, discovered that 52% of reviews posted on Walmart.com are inauthentic and unreliable, and 30% of Amazon reviews are fake or unreliable. These companies have undoubtedly two of the largest inventory of products, and with fake review percentages as high as that, it continues to be increasingly more difficult to determine whether a review is a fake review or a real review.

Many of the fake reviews for products on sites like Amazon and Walmart are either written by the person selling the product or are given a four or five-star review by the person who purchased the product in exchange for free or discounted product samples. With online reviews holding so much value to consumers, how can they proceed to make educated decisions about what products to buy when so many of the reviews they read are not truthful? Today’s e-commerce marketplaces have been unable to answer this question, but the e-commerce marketplace of the future will be able to do so.

AllForCrypto’s Solution To Fake Reviews

In the near future, AllForCrypto’s e-commerce marketplace will include features that guard against fake reviews. This will make it possible for shoppers to rely on online reviews of the products listed on our marketplace without any doubt that they are accurate and truthful. Our marketplace will also use blockchain technology, offering further security and protection than in today’s popular e-commerce marketplaces. The lack of fake reviews on the AllForCrypto marketplace will also help to reduce the likelihood of scams because environments that are free from dishonesty and offer protections to consumers are not easy targets for scammers. Not to mention, credit cards won’t be a payment option, so you won’t have to worry about the possibility of your identity being stolen.

Are you tired of reading fake reviews on eCommerce marketplaces? Interested in shopping on a more secure marketplace and leaving your worries behind?

Help us create a better shopping experience for you by investing in our project. Find out more at allforcrypto.org!