How Review or Comparison Sites are Beneficial to Affiliate Programs

If you’ve shopped online on Amazon or Facebook Marketplace, there’s a high likelihood that you’ve read a review prior to purchasing. You’re not the only one. Millions of transactions occur everyday, leading to an increase in the amount of users utilizing social media or their search engine to research reviews prior to purchasing a product.

The Significance of Review/Comparison Sites

An affiliate marketing review site is a marketing tool used by a company or digital marketing agency that has enabled the consumer, or website visitor, to have less buyers remorse if they were lured by Amazon ads, leading to overall higher customer satisfaction and affiliate commission. According to Statista, since COVID-19, millennials and Gen Z consumers have increased their digital spending by more than 63%, causing users more now than ever to rely on affiliate marketing review sites in order to help them make purchasing decisions. 

The key to developing and strengthening a successful affiliate marketing program is to take advantage of your affiliate network and identify reliable review or comparison sites to increase affiliate revenue and create brand awareness for your target audience. To generate traffic for a product or to the affiliate site, an affiliate marketer could build their own review site or hire a website builder, but this would take a lot of time and be costly. One shortcut to this is to reach out to already existing affiliate marketing review sites.

Benefits of Review Sites to Affiliate Programs

Having an established and credible review platform for an affiliate website can lead to an increase in affiliate commission and sales. An affiliate marketing program should look for a trustworthy review platform that specializes in the seemingly profitable niche for the particular affiliate product they’re marketing for. This is essentially “killing a bird with two stones.” You should also verify that the affiliate marketing software that is being used is efficient and suitable for your business needs. 

With honest and reputable reviews, review sites in specific niches have already established their audience confidence. Thus, the target audience is likely to trust the review site’s recommendations and increase the conversion rate. When researching for niche review sites, it is important for an affiliate partner to watch out for their overall credibility and reputation of this beneficial digital marketing tool.

Finding Credible Review Sites For Your Affiliate Program 

According to Inc, 84% of consumers trust reviews as much as their friends, signifying the importance of finding a credible review site for your affiliate website or program. Listed below are three general rules to keep in mind when determining if a review site is credible for your affiliate program:

#1: Research the Review Site. Researching feedback on a review site will help determine the degree of confidence in their opinions. Be wary of “new review sites” since they won’t have as much credibility as established reviewers. Lastly, make sure to read other related product articles. 

#2: Watch out for Similar Wording in Reviews. This can be a powerful indicator for an affiliate partner that the review sites are being compensated for their reviews, leading to a biased evaluation. To identify if this is a trend, read other reviews.

#3: Ignore Drastic Review Sites. If a review site regularly posts an excessive amount of negative or positive reviews, then it can be a strong indicator to do more research on the site. The site may have incentives to post drastic reviews which could overall lead to biased information. 

What was Learned?

With the growth of online shopping, a successful affiliate marketer should know review sites have the power to help affiliate programs provide their clients with the best service and create more product traffic. When using review sites to promote an affiliate program, it is important to understand how to choose the right one, as a review site influences consumers’ purchasing decisions. When done right, selecting the right review site can lead to an increase in the affiliate product’s sales and brand awareness for that affiliate management program.