Reviews: One of the Most Important Pieces of Your E-Commerce Business
When running a successful and profitable e-commerce business, customer reviews are often the unsung heroes of your success. Although most website owners understand the importance of positive customer feedback, only some realize how powerful it can be for their business. From helping to boost your credibility and reputation amongst prospects to directly affecting sales numbers through organic online search rankings - reviews play an integral role in driving people towards making a purchase decision on almost any product or service. In this blog post, we'll dive deep into why customer reviews are among today's most critical pieces of great e-commerce strategies. We’ll cover how they help with marketing campaigns; optimize your SEO efforts; develop better customer relationships; and ultimately contribute more to driving profits than traditional methods, such as spending big on advertising budgets alone. So let's get started!
1. The importance of reviews and product feedback for e-commerce businesses
Reviews are vital for any e-commerce business, providing valuable insight into the credibility and quality of products or services sold online. Having customers leave feedback on their experiences is essential to establishing credibility, building a positive reputation, and boosting trust in prospects' eyes, especially if you are facing two sellers with similar products and prices, but one has a 4-star rating and tons of positive reviews. On the other hand, while the products are not necessarily receiving negative feedback, they aren’t receiving any feedback. Which would you be more inclined to buy?
Moreover, having good reviews can also boost organic search rankings, which can, in turn, lead to increased sales numbers and revenue. If you’re not already taking product feedback seriously, as a business owner, you need to be! It also provides valuable insight and a road map to improve your brand, business transactions, and product. Pay close attention!
2. How to get more reviews and product feedback from your customers
Asking for reviews and customer feedback is an effective way of receiving valuable insights into your product or service's perception. The reviews can improve your business and provide potential customers with information to help inform their decision-making process. You get it, we’ve established that reviews are important, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the customer knows the importance of reviews for your brand, nor should they. Furthermore, it’s challenging to convince internet users to take the extra step and come back to your website to do so. To ensure success, you have to use a variety of strategies.
You can spend all the money in the world on a clever and beautifully-made branding campaign, but you can’t beat proof of your real product in the hands of real people, especially if they love your product! To get reviews and feedback from your customers, you could offer incentives in exchange for reviews or feedback; small discounts, promotional coupons, or bonus items are all excellent options. It’s also a good idea to incentivize customers if they include user-generated content, such as photos and videos of your products.
3. Why you should respond to reviews and product feedback
YES, you should absolutely respond to reviews and product feedback. While ultimately humanizing your brand, it works as a feedback loop– responding to reviews and providing excellent customer support maximizes the chances of more people seeing the activity, checking out your business, and past customers even feeling prompted to leave a review. In fact, according to the Search Engine Journal, 91% of consumers acknowledged positive reviews made them more likely to support a business.
4. Tips for using reviews and product feedback to improve your business
Before we let you loose, here are a few tips to keep in your back pocket.
For one, collect your customers’ email addresses– in more ways than one, it will save you down the road. Especially regarding reviews, it’s much easier to incentivize your past customers if you can contact them directly. Make it a usual practice to send a follow-up email after a set period of time after a customer’s purchase. Many point-of-sale systems allow you to automate the process, and that’s one less thing on your list.
Include a message on the invoice and packing slip that goes with the customer’s order, encouraging and incentivizing them to review. When they see your beautiful product, along with a reminder to review it, they’ll be so excited to share it with you and the world! Using blank space in your invoicing and marketing materials is also a good idea.
If you mainly use your website to interact with customers rather than a physical storefront, use pop-ups and embeds that allow customers to leave reviews easily!
Last but not least, you must follow through on any incentivization you promise to your customers. It’s probably not a great idea to incentivize customers to leave positive reviews, as that can affect your search engine results, so if someone leaves a bad review in exchange for something, you must follow up with that promise. Otherwise, you fuel the fire and give that customer a legitimate reason not to revisit your shop. In your responses to reviews, be courteous and kind, and put on your best customer service face (even a digital one.)
Go forth with your e-commerce business armed with this knowledge; reviews are essential to the health and success of all your hard work, and listening to your customers pays off.
