Why and How to Collect Them: 92% of People Care About Reviews:
Customer reviews – this is one of the most effective marketing tools. Almost all visitors to online stores carefully study them before making a purchase. Even negative reviews can do less harm to the site than the complete absence of reviews.
None of your audience wants to spend money or valuable time on something that does not live up to expectations. This article will be assessing what are customer reviews, why it is needed, and how to collect it most effectively.
Vital statistics about Customer reviews
• 92% of buyers read online reviews;
• More than 88% of online shoppers are guided by them, making a purchase decision;
• The star rating is the top factor by which users judge a business;
• 44% of those surveyed say that they consider only reviews written no more than a month ago to be relevant;
• 43% of users look for reviews at least once a month;
• 73% of users form their opinion after reading up to 6 reviews;
• Only 12% of people are willing to read more than 10 reviews (so be sure to be the first to come across the most informative and useful);
• 26% of users consider it essential that the local business respond to reviews about themselves;
• 88% of people trust reviews as well as personal recommendations.
What is Customer Review Important?
Buyers trust reviews, and, as seen from the statistics above, customers are more ready for purchases if they see some social proof. Here are some benefits of customer review.
1. Improved SEO:Having a strong presence on the Internet, be it a large organisation or a small business, is the best way to maximise search engines visibility. One of the main factors of search engines in their ranking algorithms is how optimized your content is. Using customer reviews as content will undoubtedly boost your SEO and traffic.
2. Product improvement: What is the best way to get an idea of problem areas with your service or product? That’s right, ask the customers themselves about this. Testimonials often give an incredible view of what works well and what needs to be changed.
3. Attracting and retaining customers:Customer reviews give your brand the ability to communicate with potential customers. If customers have positive feedback about your business, then do not forget to thank them for this.
Advice! Use a moderation system such as Trustpilot and Bazaar Voice to prevent the display of uninformative comments, spam, or off-topic reviews.
How to collect reviews?
Even though 92% of people read the reviews, they leave them plus or minus 6% of buyers. It could be bigger, right?
Few things will help you get more feedback and a couple of tips on how to encourage customers to express their opinions. Let’s figure it out.
1. Make reviews easy to leave
The simpler the action, the higher the chance of people completing it. Make it as easy as possible for customers to share their impressions of a product, service, or company.
X Make one separate page of reviews on the site.
✔ Add the ability to leave reviews on the page of each product/service.
X Only enable commenting function.
✔ Put a rating scale of stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐with the comment section.
X Collect only text reviews.
✔ Add the facility to send photos and videos.
2. Set up email after purchase
It’s easy to do this by setting up an automatic mailing. Many online stores even remind about this repeatedly. But this must be done unobtrusively, in no case to demand. You need to convince the customer that his opinion about the product and service is critical to you, and their review will help you to improve the online store.
3. Stimulate leaving reviews
Incentives will help increase the number of reviews:
• Bonus points on the card;
• Coupons and promotional codes;
• Discounts for the next order;
• Prizes and gifts directly for feedback;
Effectively use such incentives not only to obtain feedback but also to encourage repeat purchases.
4. Use feedback collection and management tools
Tools for more convenient work with reviews exist for each CMS: this is Amazon review (for Amazon e-store), Trustpilot, and Product Reviews from CMS Shopify and Bazaar Voice.
Do not forget about other sites; for example, TripAdvisor offers its tools for the restaurant and hotel business.
5. Pay attention to negative reviews.
Most people think that you can do only two things with negative review: delete them or ignore them. We don’t advise any of these suggestions.
What to do with bad reviews:
• Apologise if the situation is your fault;
• Offer assistance. If possible, replace the product, give a discount on the next order, or provide free service;
• Thank them and explain how this helped you;
• If it’s not completely clear, ask for more details about the situation in the comments.
A study conducted by TrustRadius found that 65% of buyers specifically look for negative reviews as a way to assess whether a company’s response has been balanced and reliable.
Using negative feedback as an opportunity to chat with customers, you not only show these customers that they are not indifferent to you, but also take the steps necessary to improve the situation.
In the End
Keeping in touch with your real and potential customers is an integral part of your online business development strategy and an indicator of the seller’s attention to customers.
The reviews say that the online store is ready to maintain a dialogue with its visitor, and that, in turn, can count on the solution of specific problems. Quickly and adequately responding to any comments, you can count on the growth of both sales and customer loyalty.
If you’d like to know more why not speak to us directly, call us on +442034416513 or visit our website on www.cxportal.com and we’ll help you in any way we can.
Sonja Pischedda
CXPORTAL is your award-winning AI, ML, SAP Commerce Cloud and eCommerce digital transformation solutions provider, CXPORTAL is specialised in Innovating business strategy, design and development of digital products, digital platforms engineering and data science solutions. CXPORTAL Leverage Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning Algorithms, Deep Learning Models, and big data Analytics to unlock and scale your business data, and optimising the operating model for exponential business impact.











