Online shoppers should be writing much of your web site. That’s a clear conclusion from a new study of Internet retailers by the Internet marketing consultancy, e-consultancy.

Their study, done in conjunction with the social commerce organisation Bazaar Voice, shows that the presence of customer reviews of your products and services has a dramatic impact on your sales. According to the study, the presence of customer reviews can increase your conversion rates by 79%. Plus, the additional content provided by your customers helps search engine placing, improving things by an average of 59%.

Amazon led the way with customer reviews, such as these recent reviews of books. By adding such reviews, the credibility of the site and its products are increased.

For your web site this means adding facilities which enable people to add reviews of your products and services. One of the most popular ways of doing this is to add a script to your web site. A well known one is called Red Queen. Other are to be found listed on a script index. If you don’t have the technical skills to add these scripts, many of the programmers who wrote them will do the installation for you.

You could also use a forum, a guest book, or blogging software to enable reviews. However, these are more cumbersome and more open to abuse. If you sell products online, having some kind of review system, though, appears to help you sell even more. So this should be a high priority item to consider.