Strength In Numbers

Shoppers like to know other shoppers have purchased from an e-tailer before.  This is why customer reviews are so effective.  But, as Jared Spool eloquently demonstrated in his Revealing Design Treasures presentation roughly 1,300 purchases generate 1 review, so for many smaller e-tailers product reviews are often empty.  But that does not mean we can’t build trust in a visitor.  Lewisbamboo.com does something quite impressive.  First, if you scroll down on their orders page you’ll find this wonderful snippet:

And then, clicking the 722 cities link takes you to this page:

This is just a snippet, you can see the whole list here.

Do I have proof this strategy improves conversions? No.  Is it reassuring to someone about to pull the credit card trigger?  I’m pretty sure it is.

PS: I hope they update the date from 2006.