In today’s incredibly well-connected world, the opinions of others have never mattered more.

Every day, 95% of shoppers make sure to read reviews before making a purchase. You know the drill, and so do we. You’re interested in buying something, you look it up, read a few amazing reviews about it, then click ‘add to cart.’

Online reviews matter regardless of the purchase but tend to be given more consideration if the item being purchased is expensive. However, it isn’t just any review that will do. Shoppers give much more credit to verified buyer reviews than to anonymous or unqualified reviewers.

In a testament to the sheer power of reviews, a study by Spiegel Research Center found that displaying reviews can increase sales by 270%. That figure is nothing to sneeze at, which explains why merchants are opening up their products to on-site reviews like never before.

Additionally, while positive reviews are great, negative ones give the product in question a realistic look. In fact, having a less than perfect rating often gives a product the kind of credibility shoppers like to see.

By now, we hope we’ve made one thing overwhelmingly clear: Online reviews matter — a whole lot. However, there is a major problem with the way they work. You spend money on an item, and then provide a free review which is mined and monetized by AI data harvesters.

Isn’t this a bit backward? Shouldn’t you be getting paid for your efforts?

TEE-coin is using cryptocurrency to encourage genuine reviews

Reviews are incredibly valuable to the eCommerce sector. For merchants, getting users to leave one is an indispensable part of any business plan.

When reminded, about 60% of users will leave a review. That number increases when the user has a very positive — or very negative — experience with the product.

Considering that reviews can more than double a merchant’s sales, and that they protect shoppers from buying poor products, it becomes apparent that reviews are crucial for everyone in the eCommerce ecosystem.

That’s the long and short of why TEE-coin has created ChatTee, the world’s first blockchain-based rewards system platform that incentivizes users to leave reviews. Using ChatTee, users are rewarded in TEE-coin for every review they leave.

At first glance, the arrangement appears one-sided since it rewards shoppers for their reviews but seems to leave merchants out of the picture. In fact, by rewarding users with cryptocurrency every time they leave a review, we’re doing two amazing things for merchants:

1. Creating a higher rate of reviews left which, in turn, accelerates sales

2. Users spend the crypto they earn at participating merchant stores

Regarding the second point, TEE-coin differs from traditional rewards system greatly because the reward is merchant agnostic. What this means is the TEE-coin reward can be spent at any merchant, which creates liquidity across the entire ChatTee merchant network.

By rewarding shoppers for their reviews but giving them the freedom to spend those rewards how & where they prefer, we’re creating a symbiotic relationship between merchants and shoppers.