Business die or thrive based on customer reviews
Customer reviews are a powerful weapon in the battle to win conversions. An estimated 61% of online shoppers read reviews before making that essential decision to buy or not.
Peer reviews left by customers are trusted by others nearly 12 times more than anything written by a marketeer. According to PowerReviews, going from zero reviews to one good review on a product can improve conversion rates by 20%.
But an increase in conversion rates isn’t the only reason you should be seeking feedback from your shoppers. Reviews can also have a positive impact on your SEO. Search engines love fresh content and by encouraging customer reviews, you are generating new copy without any great effort and your search ranking will thank you for it.
Feedback on products also adds to the richness of your product descriptions. They can help the same old product chat stand out from the crowd by adding insight into customer experiences after purchase.
Increasingly people are searching reviews for products as well as the products themselves. According to research by Lightspeed Research, 70% of people go to search engines to find reviews of products. If you make sure all of your products have these reviews, they will pick up that additional traffic also.
Just in case you’re afraid of getting the occasional bad review – don’t be. These aren’t all bad news. If people see a bit of bad feedback thrown into the mix it will increase their trust that the good reviews are genuine.
You can also turn bad reviews around to your favour by using them to show customers how you deal with complaints. Respond to the poor reviews with a solution. Offer free returns or if that’s not applicable, offer a discount on their next purchase.
Keep in mind however that too many bad reviews will have a negative effect. Lightspeed Research found that for the majority of people, 39%, three bad reviews would be enough to put them off buying something.
So how do you get these reviews?
There are a number of ways that you can make sure your products get reviewed.
1. Offer incentives to be the first
You can set a message as a default on products with no reviews that they first person to leave a review will gain some sort of benefit. You could offer loyalty points, small discounts or offers to get that all important first review though the door.
2. Send email follow ups
The chances are if someone has bought something from you, you have their email. Why not follow up the delivery of the product with a request for a review? Make sure you give them enough time to have received and used the product before you ask otherwise they are likely to ignore the email and won’t go back to it once they have formed an opinion.
3. Use a review provider
It may seem like cheating but it’s not. These companies syndicate reviews on products from other sites which means they are genuine. It guarantees getting reviews in super quick time but of course there will be a cost involved in using a third-party.
4. Link to reviews on blogs
If you search the internet for reviews made by bloggers on their own sites and link to them, not only are you gaining reviews on your site, you are also making the bloggers pretty happy to be mentioned and might encourage other to write about your products.
5. Make the review process simple
The easier it is for people to leave feedback the more likely they are to do so. It might be a good idea to offer a quick rating out of ten rather than a full-blown written description.
