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Nationwide Candy Savors Sweet Success with Product Reviews from RatePoint

Posted on: Wednesday, 21 October 2009, 09:05 CDT

NEEDHAM, Mass., Oct. 21 /PRNewswire/ -- Nationwide Candy, an Albuquerque-based wholesale retailer of candy and snack products for both the vending and retail industries, has boosted its site's searchable content, increased customer confidence and identified hidden problems through its use of product reviews from RatePoint, a leading provider of customer feedback and online reputation management services.

Research has shown 81 percent of online holiday shoppers read online customer reviews (Nielsen Online, December 2008) and 82 percent of those who read reviews said that their purchasing decisions have been directly influenced by those reviews (Deloitte & Touche, September 2007).

Nationwide Candy General Manager Ken Henson knew product reviews would build trust with online shoppers and generate additional sales. Through RatePoint, the site has generated more than one hundred product reviews from customers and increased the searchable content on NationwideCandy.com, which has boosted the site's search ranking.

"Our customers tell a really touching story in a review, like how they grew up with Cracker Jacks and used to eat them at the ballgame," Henson said. "For other customers, it reinforces that it's a good product."

In addition to sales and search ranking, product reviews have helped Nationwide Candy to find latent issues that it was able to resolve. A product image was matched with the incorrect item and without a product review posted through RatePoint, Henson said Nationwide Candy would have not seen the problem and would have continued to lose sales on that product.

"Customer feedback is very important," he said. "Sometimes you can get stuck in a rut with how you do things until you hear feedback from a customer about improvements that can be made."

Nationwide Candy's story was recently featured in a Wall Street Journal article about improving small business reputation, noting that "a negative review can sometimes be helpful."

This holiday season, many retailers are learning to embrace feedback as a mechanism to build trust as consumers continue to spend from a limited amount of disposable income.

"Many companies fear negative feedback, but failing to recognize and fix customer experiences can harm a company, its reputation and its future sales," RatePoint CEO Neal Creighton said. "Product reviews have proven to build the trust that smaller retailers need to stand apart from their competition."

About RatePoint:

RatePoint, Inc., the leading provider of customer feedback and online reputation management services, helps businesses protect and build their online reputation, allowing businesses to harness the power of credible customer feedback and leverage it into a sales, marketing and customer service asset.

RatePoint's easy-to-use, Web-based communication services include customer feedback tools to collect business and product reviews, email marketing, survey and dispute resolution capabilities to provide small- and medium-sized businesses with the ability to collect, manage and promote customer feedback directly from their Web site. For more information, contact us at: 888-777-1636 or visit: www.ratepoint.com.

SOURCE RatePoint, Inc.

Source: PR Newswire

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