How to Grow Your Customer Reviews
Whether you’re selling goods or services, in B2B or B2C sectors, customer reviews are equally important. Read on to find out why reviews are key to growing your business, how to grow the reviews on your website, and how to deal with inevitable negative reviews.
Why are customer reviews important?
Reduce barriers to purchase
When consumers are trying a product for the first time, there is risk involved; risk that the product might not be high quality, the service might not do what it says it will do, or perhaps a product has an unwanted side effect. Reviews can help to allay these fears by providing real-world experiences of the use of your products.
Customer reviews build trust
A company can write all they want about their products, but at the end of the day, consumers place much more trust in impartial, honest information like reviews. For customers new to your brand, reviews are vital in gaining trust to get that first sale.
Gain valuable product feedback
Customer reviews can be a great source of feedback on your products or services. Five-star reviews will often be glowing recommendations only. However, take a look at the 3- and 4-star reviews. This is often where customers have had an overall positive experience, but they might have a small issue that has taken the shine off the experience. Here, they will often flag these problems, which can be addressed in customer service, on your website (for example, in FAQs) or in future product development.
Choosing a review platform
Before starting to gather customer reviews, consider which platform you’d like to build your reviews with. There are a few options to choose from:
Google Reviews
Google Reviews is a free reviews platform that lets you get reviews for products that consumers have purchased from you. These reviews can help to boost click through on your organic search results and paid ads in Google Shopping and Google Search.
You can also get customers to review your business. These business reviews will show up on your Google Business Listing. Business reviews are great to boost local SEO, so they’re perfect for small businesses with a physical store front. Google Business Reviews are also integrated with Google Maps and Google Business Listings, so they can be a great way to drive consumers to you.
Customer review platforms
Another option for customer reviews are paid platforms like Reviews.io, Yotpo or Trustpilot. These review platforms offer the benefits of being able to be seamlessly integrated into your website’s branding, and also integrating directly with eCommerce systems and email marketing platforms. This integration helps to customise email campaigns that request customer reviews, personalised to the products that a consumer has purchased.
When selecting a review platform, ensure that it has the capability to feed your own customer reviews into Google, so that they can be displayed with your Google Shopping listings. Having star ratings next to your paid listings can help to drive click through and build trust in the highly competitive Google Shopping marketplace.
Where to display reviews on your website
There are many places to display reviews and star ratings on your website, including:
In a banner at the top of the homepage, displaying your overall star rating from reviews
A feed of all reviews on your homepage, to build social proof that lots of customers are purchasing your products
On product pages. Here, only display the reviews for the product that is being sold.
How to grow customer reviews
So, you’ve chosen your review platform. How do you go about gaining more of these valuable to display on your website?
Asking for customer reviews
Unless a customer is super satisfied or extremely unhappy, it’s highly unlikely that they’ll leave a review without being prompted to do so. This is where it’s important to ask for the customer to review their purchase. A great way to do this is via email, at a suitable time interval after the purchase has been completed. These emails can be automated as part of your email program. Be sure to set them up to allow adequate time for product delivery and usage of the product, so the consumer has time to experience the product and form a full opinion before leaving a review.
Incentivising customer reviews
If your product is brand new, you might want to generate some customer reviews before the official launch of the product so you have some reviews on the product pages for new customers to reference.
Gifting products to consumers to provide their honest opinion on your website is a strategy employed by many product-based brands. Part of this strategy that can’t be ignored is that these reviews must be flagged as the reviewer having received a free gift in exchange for their honest review. This is required so consumers can be aware of any potential bias with the review.
Don’t write fake customer reviews
Don’t do it. Ever. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) imposes large fines on brands being found to write fake customer reviews, as this is misleading to consumers.
Dealing with negative reviews
There will always be someone who doesn’t have a great experience with your product or service. This might be due to a product fault, or something completely out of your control, like a parcel going missing in the post. Here’s how to address negative reviews when they come up:
Firstly, respond to the review on the platform that the customer left it on. Do this as quickly as possible, so the customer and other readers know that you take customer satisfaction seriously. Mention that you will be in touch with the customer by email or other private channel
Message the customer on the private channel to resolve their complaint
Once the complaint is resolved and the customer is happy, you can ask them to amend their initial review. This can lead to a positive review, and potentially a mention of your great customer service, which can be a positive influence for new and returning customers.
Negative reviews as a signal of a wider issue
If you receive multiple negative reviews on the same issue, this could be the sign of a more widespread problem. Take note of the issue and raise it with your wider team to resolve the problems as soon as possible.
Need some help with a customer review strategy?
Get in touch! We can help you pick the best strategy for your business, so you can get back to running your business (a five-star rated business!).