Customer reviews and opinions are crucial components for organizations to identify issues that need to be prioritized and explore untapped areas. But it doesn’t end here, reviews are also a very effective marketing strategy to attract visitors, generate leads and convert them into customers.
Many consumers rely on the internet for product reviews in an e-commerce-driven world where buyers cannot physically inspect things before purchasing.
Why Are Reviews Important for E-commerce Business?
The number of small enterprises in the US is over 31 million, giving customers a huge range of options. While many businesses focus on their e-commerce development process, finding strategies to differentiate your brand from rivals is another vital aspect for businesses.
Engaging visitors and getting positive feedback from them is vital as they review products and services based on customer experience. These reviews may be private or public and are gathered by the business or third-party review websites.
1. Learning opportunity
Reviews that are unfavorable or neutral provide your business the chance to grow and learn. By removing barriers in the customer journey, you may identify exactly where your company is falling short of satisfying customer needs.
2. Marketing and sales tools
Reviews can be used as customer referrals when generating leads and can help you add more contacts to your existing customer list.
3. Brand awareness
With positive customer reviews you can generate publicity for your brand and increase traffic. Online reviews, in other words, are the new word of mouth.
4. Purchasing decisions
Over 95% of buyers read online reviews before making a purchase, therefore reviews have a direct impact on choices. They enable customers to make more informed decisions.
5. Trust
Prospective customers rely on reviews and opinions of happy customers to trust your brand. The more positive reviews the more they are likely to do business with you.
Research shows that 73% of customers do not look at reviews that are more than 30 days old. This indicates that you should actively seek out evaluations at every chance you have.
How To Get Reviews From Customers?
Customer reviews develop organically over time. But having said that, you can certainly hasten the process by getting more clients to leave reviews online and by using strategies to get them to do so.
1. Request a review
Asking for a review whether on your checkout page as a pop-up after purchase or as an email request after an item delivery has been confirmed, can make a significant difference. Businesses can request reviews and opinions by sending follow-up emails to customers or can go one step further by including QR codes, links to review sites or fill out forms.
2. Easy review-writing process
Visitors are more inclined to leave reviews if you make it simple for them to do so. The best place to start is to make sure you provide as much information as you can about your company, which will make it easier for users to find and recognize your page. Your company name, cover photo, logo, textual description, site address, contact information and business profile are some of the most crucial components.
3. Responding to customer reviews
Building a sense of community and customer loyalty around your company involves being responsive and engaging. Each time you receive a new review, acknowledge it and appreciate their support. The more activity on your profile, the more likely it is for other people to join the conversation as well.
4. Automate reviews
You can use tools to create and automate the process of asking for reviews. This makes it easier to scale your review process and guarantees review requests are handled consistently and swiftly.
How To Handle a Negative Review?
Positive feedback undoubtedly contributes to building a reputable brand that customers are more inclined to use. Nevertheless, how you respond to unfavorable evaluations reveals a lot about your company.
Negative reviews should never be ignored, instead, they should be carefully considered and responded to, to show that you’ll take action to address the issues raised. Prospective consumers may be reading the reviews and your responses on the customer review sites and may base their decision to visit or use your company on how you handle unhappy customers.
Below are some tips to handle negative reviews effectively.
- A dissatisfied customer will most probably post a negative review rather quickly and anticipate a prompt response. In addition to this, it’s important to value all reviews including the negative ones. Along with being quick and thoughtful you also need to be honest. Customers generally prefer an honest answer and an assurance that their complaint will be treated fairly and with sincerity.
- Taking communication offline as soon as possible is a recommended approach for responding to negative reviews. Get their contact information and the best time and method of communication to express your regret.
- Depending on the issue and the impact you can decide on offering a credit, compensation or a gift card to be used at your business.
- Take into consideration every review, especially the unpleasant ones and look for commonalities that help you improve your business.
- Never hesitate to get in touch with reviewers who left you a bad review and always follow up with them. Ensure the problem(s) they were experiencing are resolved and that they end up being a happy customer.
- You may request the customer to take down the negative review, once the problem is addressed. Although it won’t always happen, it’s more likely that someone will delete a negative review if they believe they received fair treatment and resolution.
- Reporting fake reviews is equally important as there may be reviews that are both unfair and unjustified. It’s likely that a rival or a troll is simply attacking you without cause. You can report it to the review site if you can prove that the particular “consumer” never really made a purchase from you or visited your establishment.
Sites To Earn More Customer Reviews
Whether you run a B2C or B2B organization, customer reviews can help build your credibility with customers and draw in new clients. You don’t have to restrict yourself to a single or a few review sites; rather you can use the ones that are most compatible with the services you provide and your target market.
Review sites give customers a platform to research businesses before dealing with them.
Some B2C review sites include:
- Amazon
- AngelList
- Consumer Reports
- TripAdvisor
- Yelp
- Google Customer Reviews
- Yellow Pages reviews
- Manta
- ConsumerAffairs
- Yahoo! Local Listings
Some B2B review sites include:
- FinancesOnline
- CompareCamp
- G2 Crowd
- TrustRadius
- GoodFirms
- Capterra
- Glassdoor
- SoftwareWorld
- GetApp
By concentrating your marketing efforts on obtaining reviews, you can expand your business without spending on paid advertisements. Online reviews are an effective word-of-mouth marketing strategy in the digital era since they provide neutral comments on products and services.
While positive ratings can increase sales and establish a company’s credibility, poor reviews or a lack of reviews can have the opposite effect.
