A new article has surfaced over on CNN money, and what it has to say might shock you:

Allowing customers to review your products and services live on your website builds new-customer trust and returning-customer loyalty. And, get this — according to the article, it doesn’t even matter if some of the reviews are bad!

Obviously, if all of your reviews are negative, you’ve got far bigger problems to focus on than worrying about optimizing the customer experience of your website You’re screwed. However, having a few bad reviews sprinkled in can give your website an air of legitimacy since most saavy web-users tend to become wary and suspicious if every review they read about a certain company is glowing.

If you’re still worried about putting a review system on your website (and opening the flood gates to any criticism that you were able to conveniently ignore before), know this: according to the article, an average of 87% of all reviews are positive.

What you should take away from this: Reviews (and in the grander scheme, testimonials) are an invaluable asset that should be added to any organization’s website, whether it’s goods or services that are being sold. Reviews help build customer trust and loyalty, and can vastly increase your sales. And most importantly: don’t be worried about bad reviews driving your sales down. In a very strange twist, mixing some bad reviews in with the good ones adds legitimacy to your reviews and should actually help drive your sales up further!

Now, Go Out There and Get it Done!

An excellent article surfaced today on CNN that expertly covers how to market your retail business in order to increase noteriety and sales.

Unfortunately for me, the real message of the article is hidden behind paragraphs detailing how Maxine Clark started Build-a-Bear. Fortunately for you, I’m here to cut through the clutter and bring home the bacon!

What you all should take away from this article is something that, unfortunately, most retail owners forget: customer experience should be one of the pillars upon which you build your success — and the most important types of customer experience in retail, I would argue, are fun and convenience.

Build-a-Bear has appropriately built their marketing scheme upon these pillars (and, of course, others), and are reaping the benefits even in a down economy.

What you should take away from this: If your customers are having fun, they’re going to spend more money.

Go out there and make it happen!