Why Are Customer Reviews Important?
Why are customer reviews so important?
Customer reviews can be an invaluable way to increase sales, understand and engage your customer more, and improve your search engine ranking. They are particularly important in increasing your ecommerce websales.
Why do customer reviews increase your sales?
A customer review will give your web visitors unbiased feedback on a product or service that was bought from you. This information can then be used to influence a new customer to trust you, and have confidence in the product or service that they are thinking of buying. People are always more likely to purchase a product or service that has been recommended by others. A survey from BrightLocal shows that 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation.
How do customer reviews HELP you to understand your customers?
Customer reviews can help you to better understand how your customer thinks about your business. You can use the feedback to identify problems that need to be improved. For example, reviews of customer service can help you to identify if you have an issue, and comments on products or services will help you to determine how something is being received by your customers. If a product is receiving positive feedback then it can be featured more prominently, if not then you can then choose to remove the product for sale.
How Can reviews improve customer loyalty and engagement?
When customers leave reviews, they are engaging with you, and the sooner that they are given the opportunity to respond, the better the feedback. By responding to reviews then it shows that you are a business that cares about opinions, which in turn builds loyalty as your customer will feel valued, and that your brand can be trusted. Building a successful brand will mean having a good online reputation that mirrors customers' wants and needs, and using reviews as a vehicle to engage actively with your customers will help to build that.
How do Customer Reviews help with search engine ranking
Each new review on your website is another piece of unique content. Search engines love unique content. Your website will be seen as having more authority and relevance in comparison to other ecommerce websites that don't use reviews.
How to encourage reviews
Having reviews on your website is easy enough to do, but actually getting your customers to leave them is the hard part. Here are some ways that you can encourage them:
Asking your customers to leave reviews
This seems so simple yet many ecommerce businesses forget to do it, or don't have the facility on their ecommerce website to do this. Ideally you would want an automatic personalised email sent to all people who recently bought a product/service from you, asking them to leave a review.
Some ecommerce businesses use incentives in their emails to get their customers to leave a review, e.g. a 10% discount code or free shipping in their next order. Social media is another great way to ask for reviews. Send a message to your followers letting them know that they can get a discount on their next purchase by leaving a review.
Make it easy for your customers to leave a review
Making it easy for your customers to leave a review has to be a priority. Use calls to actions and include a scoring system, as well as the option for written comments, to encourage feedback.
Publish all reviews
It may seem like a good idea to only publish the positive reviews that you get. However, it is important to publish the negative reviews too. This will build loyalty by showing your customers that you take all feedback seriously. And by answering negative comments, and addressing issues, you will build your customer's confidence and engender trust.
How can we help?
At iPages we offer the ability to add reviews as part of our ecommerce solution. They are simple to set up and your customers will be automatically emailed at a time set by you. If you'd like to find out more please feel free to contact us and we'll get back to you as soon as possible.