4 Quick Tips for Landing More Positive Reviews for Your Business

Today, the world has more e-commerce websites than ever before. And, that number is increasing faster than ever. With such tough competition, it can get difficult for an online store to keep growing, expand business and see greater sales.

There are quite a few marketing and outreach approaches available that businesses rely on to keep growing. Take social media marketing for example, it has overtaken all other forms of marketing in terms of ad spend and businesses are continuing to spend even more on it.

While social media marketing is great at building brand image and reaching maximum number of people, the marketing approach that has proven to be one of the most effective is social proofing.

What’s social proof? 

Today, most brands and businesses rely on platforms like social media, electronic media, and print media and physical marketing means to promote their products and services. The issue is that when businesses are promoting their products, they most often talk about them from their own point of view.

Why would a consumer trust a company that is saying great things about its own products? Consumers know that for businesses, maximizing sales is the number one priority and, for that, they are obviously going to make their products appear really great and extraordinary.

To help make the consumers trust a particular brand’s products and services, that brand can rely on positive reviews of their products, which they can then market. When consumers read great product reviews coming from verified customers, they feel much more inclined to trust that company.

The main reason behind this is that consumers know that the people posting those positive reviews do not have any vested interests in the success or failure of the products. Consumers view past customers as a neutral third-party that is much more likely to speak truthfully about the quality of products than the brand itself.

Hence, when consumers come across positive product reviews from verified customers, they are much more likely to take a leap of faith and place their first order with the company. This is what social proof is and how it helps businesses score more sales.

But, if a business wants to tap into the benefits offered by informational social influence, they will have to make sure that positive reviews for their products and services keep coming in at a reliable pace. This is something that’s easier said than done.

In this day and age, there are more reasons than ever before to launch an online store but, when it comes to getting their customers to leave a product review, many e-commerce websites end up struggling.

So, to help our readers earn more positive product reviews from their customers, we have compiled four easy to follow methods.

1. EXCEED YOUR CUSTOMERS’ EXPECTATIONS

The thing about average, serviceable customer experience is that it is too normal to force the customer to go online and leave a glowing review. If you want your customers to leave a great product review on your website once they receive their order, you will need to offer an experience that they can’t find anywhere else.

Offering customer experience that leaves a mark means your service must exceed the customers’ expectations. From visiting the website and placing the order to receiving their order at their doorstep, every single part of the process must work as smoothly as possible.

Of course, the other way to leave a mark is by offering exceptionally bad customer service. According to a survey conducted by Review Trackers, customers are 21% more likely to go online and leave a product review after a bad customer experience than they would after a good experience.

And, we have already seen how powerful social proof can be. So, if you want your customers to leave more product reviews, you will need to excel in all parts of the ecommerce process.

2. ENGAGE WITH YOUR CUSTOMERS

Once the product reviews start coming in, you must pay attention to another important part of the process; quickly responding to each and every single product review that you get.

This practice will let your audiences know that you actually read the reviews and care about the customers’ feedback. This observation will result in two things; your customers will start writing more detailed reviews and secondly, it will encourage even more people to write reviews.

Even Google recommends that you engage with your customers when they post reviews as this practice helps increase your business’ visibility on the search engine. You can also get an SEO boost through this process which will help increase your sales further.

An important aspect of product reviews is the negative feedback. A lot of businesses make the mistake of hiding or completely ignoring negative reviews, hoping they won’t have much effect. But, it has been shown that publicly responding to a negative review, along with some private customer care, can actually improve your stats.

Studies have shown that nearly two-thirds of negative reviews were either deleted or changed after the business decided to directly address the issues faced by those customers.

According to a study conducted by HubSpot, 88% of customers trust online product reviews just as much as they trust recommendations coming from close friends and family.

Excelling at customer experience is only a part of the process. If you want to maximize the number of positive reviews you’re getting from your customers, then you must also pay attention to engaging with them in a proactive and productive manner.

3. RELY ON AN AUTOMATED WAY OF ASKING FOR A REVIEW

Unlike mobile apps, that ask for a review immediately after you download it, with ecommerce sites, immediate reviews are not possible after the customer places an order. Hence, ecommerce sites must reach out to the customer after they have received their product.

One way of doing this is to use an automated email assistant that sends out 2-3 emails over one-week period, requesting the customer to review the product. The “2-3” range of emails helps ensure that even the busiest of customers will find time to post a review.

Another way to automate the request is by sending 2-3 reminder text messages to your customers over a one-week period.

4. FOCUS ON OTHER PLATFORMS AS WELL

Most people actually Google a product before buying it. And, during their research, they are more than likely to read the reviews people have posted about your products on Google. The huge dominance of Google in the search engine market is undeniable.

Obviously, due to these reasons, Google remains the top priority for most ecommerce sites. But, while focusing on Google My Business, a lot of businesses make the mistake of not focusing on other platforms.

What a lot of people need to keep in mind is that platforms like Facebook, Amazon, Yelp and Quora are hugely popular and product reviews on such sites are taken seriously by everyone. Hence, a negative review on any of these sites can have an impact on your business.

Focusing on all major platforms shows that the brand cares about its customers and is trying to engage them through all necessary means. This helps build trust and encourages customers to post product reviews.

Author Bio

Jamal writes about the influence of social media on modern-day business activities. He’s best known for designing social media strategies for some of the well-known global brands. His recent interests are in helping a local footwear brand elevate their Peshawari Chappal sales using the power of social.