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How To Properly Manage Reviews On Your Website To Increase Conversions
Reviews are one of the factors that greatly influence the decision of new buyers to contact the company for the first time. In this article, we have collected all the useful experiences of working with reviews: what working reviews should be, how to collect them correctly, what to do with negative ones, and what to avoid when increasing the number of reviews. On this knowledge base, you can easily layer other useful information and techniques for working with reviews.
Keep in mind that these recommendations are suitable for small and medium-sized companies engaged in trade or services. For large companies and manufacturers of branded products, the task is broader – working with reputation, and this is already a separate area of ??marketing
Why Are Reviews Needed?
When users are looking for a place to buy a product or order a service, they first evaluate all the suitable offers that are there on the market. Of these, they choose the most profitable. If the offers are about the same, then the choice is influenced by what distinguishes the companies from each other: service (what the company can provide, in addition to the main product) and recommendations (social proof).
Reviews significantly affect the conversion and first sales – when the client does not know you yet and orders for the first time. 90% of buyers are more likely to go to places where there are positive reviews.
With a little effort to increase the volume of reviews, you will stand out from the competition and win over most of the first sales in the market.
Where To Post Reviews
Under ideal conditions, the site should accumulate reviews from independent sites. They inspire more trust, and also help increase reach – there are always more people who are interested in your type of service on independent sites than on your site.
If all reviews are concentrated on one site, it is easier to place a widget on the site. For example, you can use the Elfsight widget to embed business reviews from Google into your site.
Of course, there are a number of topics whose target audience does not ?live? on sites with reviews (for example, B2B or specific services). In this case, reviews are posted on the site, while observing the following criteria:
- Content.
- Trust factor that the review is real.
What Should The Reviews Be Like?
Reviews only work if:
- They are informative: they have specifics and facts.
- They inspire confidence and the feeling that they are written by a real client.
- There are enough of them.
If at least one of three points is not fulfilled, the reviews do not work. In the era of digital communication, all Internet users have a ?bullshit filter? for ?nonsense? texts. Therefore, when increasing the volume of reviews, it is extremely important to monitor their content and the presence of markers of trust in the reality of the review.
Read Also: 7 Tips To Carry Out An Impactful Lead Nurturing Campaign
How To Increase The Number Of Quality Reviews?
Negative emotions, as a rule, are felt more acutely than positive ones: even a little negativity is enough for the buyer to sit down to write a negative review. For him to write positively, something extremely positive must happen. Therefore, in order to get reviews, you need to either develop a super service or motivate customers.
Remind your customers of you. Sometime after the purchase, send a message asking you to leave a review about your product/service.
The time, method of communication, and form of requesting feedback depend on 2 factors:
- if your customers are older people, it makes no sense to send them an email; better call;
- If your customers are young people, then they most likely do not like voice communication; it is better for them to send an email, SMS (we gave examples of SMS mailings in an article on this topic), or messages on social media / instant messengers.
The form of the request affects how detailed the feedback you receive is. If you just write “Leave a review”, the buyer is unlikely to leave it, because the request is too general. If you ask specific questions, you are more likely to get feedback with answers to them.
The questions depend on the type of your product. Is it important for you that the buyer appreciates a certain item? So ask about it.
Motivate buyers to leave a review. Stimulation with a reminder gives a uniform, but slow increase in reviews. If you need to grow a significant volume of reviews in a short period of time, motivate people to leave their opinion for a monetary reward or a discount. The benefit must be tangible, so a 3% or $2 discount won’t work.
Also, keep in mind that a discount (even a big one) can only be used as an incentive if your type of goods/services involves regular purchases. For example, if you sell pet products, then yes, a good discount will be an incentive. But if you sell stoves for a bath, a discount on the next purchase will not be an incentive, because the stove is a one-time purchase.
What If They Leave Negative Feedback?
Negative feedback is left regardless of stimulation. As we said above, writing a negative review is inspired by negative emotions. People write negative reviews publicly not because they want to make a fuss, but because they are left alone with their problems. So, somewhere the client was not helped and was ignored. A large volume of negative reviews is a reason to restructure processes within the company.
When stimulating reviews, there will be a few negative ones among them. Moreover, the presence of negative reviews among the mass of positive ones will be beneficial for you – when there is no negative at all, it seems that good reviews are screwed up.
You don’t have to be afraid of the negative. It needs to be answered publicly. Your smart and tactful responses will show that you are a problem solver and thus increase customer loyalty to your brand.
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