Online reviews are the key to building brand trust and loyalty. Here’s how to encourage shoppers to share their experiences and where you should display reviews.
Encourages recommendations: Eighty-four percent of shoppers trust business reviews as much as word-of-mouth marketing and personal recommendations, which can also increase your online presence.
Supercharges your content library: Spent ages tweaking your launch email to get it “just right”? Reviews are trusted more than other marketing materials, making them an integral part of the buying process.
Boosts credibility: Forty-nine percent of shoppers say they trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.
Improves customer perception: The better quality reviews you have, the more value shoppers assign to your brand and its products.
Enhances SEO efforts: Google’s algorithm gives pages with consumer reviews higher rankings on search engines, plus the added word count means there’s more opportunity for relevant keywords.
Creates personalized customer experiences: Provide different product perspectives and give shoppers an insight into how customers who are the same size, shape, or skin type as them found a product.
Identifies relevant keywords: Reviews give you an insight into the actual keywords your customers use.
Improves product development: Use the experiences and opinions of your customers to get feedback and improve your products.
You don’t need tons of reviews to reap these benefits. While you don’t need a review from every single customer, the more you can secure, the better.
The easiest way to do this is to send a well-timed email or SMS message that encourages them to leave a review. But make sure you give them enough time to actually use your product—81% of shoppers are more likely to leave a review after they’ve used the product more than once.
Casper sends a simple review request email with an on-brand message to past buyers, inviting them to share their thoughts.
Walk shoppers through the process, give them guidance at every step, and eliminate any potential friction by:
Your ecommerce platform likely has tools available to make getting reviews easier. Shopify, for example, has many different apps you can use to get more reviews, such as Product Reviews by Shopify, Judge.me, and Loox.
For example, Camera Ready Cosmetics offers shoppers a percentage off their next purchase.
Starting a dialogue with customers who have taken the time to share their experience secures trust and credibility, but it also gives you a chance to win back shoppers who might have had a less-than-stellar experience.
Respond in a calm and neutral manner to negative reviews, and consider a two-step review process where shoppers first give a star rating and then provide feedback.
Be very careful not to alter negative reviews or delete them, or you might end up in a sticky situation. Prospective customers expect there to be a healthy mix of reviews, and only having glowing five-star experiences can raise alarm bells.
Once you’ve started collecting customer reviews, what do you do with them?
Product pages: Add reviews to their relevant product pages alongside each product description so customers can browse perspectives from people with the same attributes as them.
Social media: Some 76% of consumers buy products they see in social media posts. Show off your reviews in feed posts and Stories to build trust and interest in your products.
Social ads: Reviews add authenticity and social proof to your ads and digital marketing efforts.
Dedicated review pages: Give shoppers a dedicated place they can go to read all the customer reviews they want.
Abandoned cart emails: Nearly 70% of shoppers leave their carts without making it to checkout. Adding reviews to abandoned cart emails can lure them back and remind them why they added an item to their cart in the first place.
Reviews are an integral part of the purchase-making decision for most online buyers. As an online business owner, it’s critical to collect and display them at different touchpoints.
To ensure that your reviews reach your customers effectively, leveraging Enalito's automated omnichannel campaigning feature can be highly beneficial. Enalito can automate the process of collecting and displaying reviews across various platforms, ensuring that your customers see the right reviews at the right time, whether they're browsing your website, checking their email, or scrolling through social media.
Here's how Enalito can be integral to this process and your overall growth:
Start by sending out well-timed review request emails and adding an incentive to increase the chances of a customer leaving a review. Don’t forget to respond and deal with negative reviews in an honest fashion.
Once you’ve secured a decent number of customer reviews, you can start populating your ecommerce site, ads, and social media channels with them to boost trust, drive sales, create happy customers, and improve your brand’s online reputation.
Incorporating Enalito’s automated omnichannel campaigning feature will not only streamline this process but also ensure that you reach your customers more effectively, ultimately driving growth and enhancing your ecommerce business.
