If you have an e-commerce website and you’re trying to generate traffic, so that you can convert it to sales, one of the factors that you need to take into consideration is that word-of-mouth advertising is going to be one of your biggest sellers – or your biggest killers – depending upon your products and your customer service, or other factors that affect people’s happiness. But why is word-of-mouth advertising so important on the Internet and especially for e-commerce?

First of all, people are spending money on a website that they have never been to before and they may be a little wary. In this day and age, scams are present everywhere and so people are reluctant to trust the new website unless they are sure that their credit card isn’t going to be stolen. That’s where word-of-mouth advertising comes in. If they have seen other people talking about your site – and about their purchase – they are no longer worried about spending money there.

In addition, people trust what they hear other people talking about. These days, reviews can be gained. Amazon is forever removing reviews because they been paid for or traded for. So, people have a hard time trusting even reviews unless there’s enough of them. But when someone discusses a purchase that they made and that they were happy with – or unhappy with – people are going to know that the customer is legitimate and therefore the store they bought it from is legitimate.

Also, word-of-mouth is important because people are on social media and that is the number one way that the word is going to get out about your business. It is also the number 1 Potential Way that your promotion or product or blog post is going to go viral. Although word-of-mouth generally refers to one person telling another in the real world, in this case word-of-mouth means spreading the word on social media and that is huge for your business.

Finally, when someone shares your business with someone else the original customer that already purchased something from you is going to remember you even more than if they had purchased a product and forgot all about it without telling anyone. If they were pleased enough to tell their friends, they are going to remember you next time, and that word-of-mouth advertising is going to stick in their mind as well as the friend that they’re telling it to.