12 Ways to Get Great Customer Reviews On Your Online Store

If you have an online business and seriously want your products to be noticed among so many others, then getting more and more customer reviews for your product and services is something that must be your immediate concern. For the internet savvy customer of today, reviews are as important and crucial as word of mouth marketing. It has been found that a majority of customers consider product reviews as a key factor influencing their choice, making all other factors quite secondary. The significance of product reviews:

• Reviews for your products are real-time guidance to new shoppers. Since these reviews are hands-on comments, people use this matrix to figure out the actual competency of the products and services as how it can serve their utility.
• These reviews enhance the rate of conversion/purchase.
• Products with positive reviews get more relevance in the search engines.

Let’s look at some methods which, when consciously applied have proven to generate more reviews:

1. Develop Product and Service Quality:- Business whether online or offline has one universal truth, that every customer looks for quality products at the most affordable prices possible. In business, there is no shortcut or substitute for quality. Customers will only be interested in giving reviews if they are happy with your service.If customers are really happy getting a positive feedback is not hard; many customers readily agree to give reviews, in fact, even appreciate that their opinion is valued. You can gauge the quality of your service by measuring your customer satisfaction.

2. Build “Personal” touch:- ‘’Treat your customers as kings’’ says the old English quote. For establishing a successfulA business, it is important to establish a good, trustworthy relation with your customers. You have to make them believe that you actually ‘care’ for them and buying products from you shall result not only in few extra pounds in your pocket but also a smile on their face with content in the heart of both.Factors which count in building a trustful relationship with customers are:

1. Quality after sale services.
2. Products delivered as promised.
3. Your availability, approachability and accessibility in case of urgency.
4. Regular discounts and cashbacks for loyal customers.

  3. Ask: The way to get more reviews is by simply asking your customers to give reviews. Once a good relationship is established with customers, you can ask them to write reviews for your products. Its important to convince them that their reviews are important and will help provide the best quality products and address their queries and complaints by implementing their suggestions. After the customer has started using that product, within a week you can email or call your customers in personal requesting for reviews on your website/social networks.
A tool like Yotpo can be easily integrated to your Ecommerce website and is very useful in collecting reviews and recommendations.

4. Rewarding Customers and Sharing the Fame Through Contests:   If you care for customers then don’t forget to incentivize them. Suppose you sell organic soaps, then you can extend offers like free samples to customers who give good and regular reviews. Say you’re a retailer of organic produce. Every month, you can send your top customers a cookbook of organic recipes from a famous chef.

This bottom line benefits your customer and they shall benefit you. You can have a contest around inviting customers to generate video reviews and use that video for promoting and marketing of your product. Or just a simple trendy selfie contest where the person with best selfie wins and you can again use that picture on your website or on delivery boxes etc. to give your customer the share of fame.

5. Customer Surveys:- The age old technique of getting reviews is doing a survey. You can easily find people on the net who are interested in buying the kind of products that you sell. You can ask them to use your product and give reviews. (Did You Know? You can setup a tool called Webengage which allows you to create hyper targeted customer surveys on your store)

This will not only get you more reviews, but also build a potential list of future customers. One needs to be precise and polite here. No one likes lengthy emails everyone loves a short to the point mail. You can also offer them to buy the product after some time only if they like the product. Check out this insane product review email.

6. Follow ups:- Once you have started getting the review, take out some time and follow up the reviews of your customers. Never fail to express your gratitude towards them, always answer their queries and address their complaints. This shall result in increasing the trust and reputation of your company and shall establish you as a customer caring company in the horizon of customers’ thinking.New visitors shall be effortlessly influenced and will readily trust you.

7. Avoid paid reviews:- It is always easy to find people who can fake up a review for a few pounds. However, it is really simple for any buyer with an ounce of common sense to distinguish between a paid review and a genuine one. Blatant positive reviews are not trusted by customers and balanced reviews highlighting pros and cons are always influencial in helping make the buying decision.

8. Take Negative Feedback as an Opportunity:- If you get negative feedbacks don’t get fret, welcome them on the contrary. It is important to convey to your customers that you are open not only for the compliments but also to criticism from customers. This shall increase the number of conversation and will strengthen the trust in the heart of honest customers. Negative feedbacks are also great opportunitities to give great customer service. Here is an example:

9. Be present on product review sites:- With e-commerce getting bigger and bigger each year, product review sites and website review sites which help the customers to choose what they want are gaining immense importance. It is essential that you use this online tool available like yepme.com, yellow pages and other sites relevant to your product category. Provide a link on your website which will direct your customers to your page on such websites.

10. Reviews on Social networks:- You must have many friends on Facebook, but all of them are not acquainted with each other. Similarly, your friends also have friends whom you don’t know and there is a possibility of finding customers there. You can ask your friends on social networking to review your product. Recommendations from friends are always more trustworthy than from an unknown influencer trying to tell you what is the latest mind blowing product they used.Check out how Handmade Junction makes great use of the review feature on Facebook!

11. Focus on the product and aesthetics:- “The First impression is the last one”. Take few efforts to make your product more appealing, more attractive, a little sexier. Suppose you sell shoes it is very important that they appeal to customers. Once a customer looks at it, he must be flashed with a burning desire to own it. This will surely increase reviews.

12. Bloggers and video reviewers:- There are bloggers and video reviewers who have the large number of followers who can be your customer. You can request such bloggers and video reviewers to review your product. They are also in perennial search of products to recommend to their readers. If you are selling shampoos find bloggers or video reviewers who write or review hair care products and approach them to review your product.Taking care of these points will surely result in a good trustworthy and long buyer-seller relationship. Thus, binding your customers to be with you in the future too. So what are the techniques you use to get more customer reviews? We would love to hear from you in the comments!

About the Author: Ashu Kudalkar has been writing professionally for more than 10 years. She is a content freelancer, blogger and has written extensively on various articles, niche, press releases, blogs. Her topics of choice are largely focused on technology, product description, reviews, health, travel and tourism.

This post was originally published on the Zepo Blog : The Ecommerce Blog for Small and Medium Businesses.