Customer reviews can be a great tool for businesses. They can provide your business with the much needed social proof. Which in turn, will increase your sales. In fact, 89% of consumers consult reviews before making a purchase. With this in mind, it is easy to understand why social proof is so important. In this article, we will discuss how to encourage customers to write reviews on your e-commerce website.
Here are the 6 tips you can use to get more customer testimonials:
- Make it easy to leave reviews
- Utilize social media to get reviews
- Offer incentives for your potential reviewers
- Engage with already existing reviews
- Request reviews with timed emails
- Personalize the request
1. Make It Easy To Write Reviews
The process to leave a review should be frictionless for your customers. Most customers see the act of leaving a positive testimonial as a favour they do for a business they like. If the process to write it is long or takes several steps your customers might be discouraged to provide social proof. The same is true if your comment section is hard to find.
To encourage your customers to leave a review you should design the process to be hassle-free. The review section should be easy to spot. And it should take only a few steps to navigate to the section. You will get more testimonials if the process is especially easy.
Make your reviewing process as accessible as possible. You can ensure this by asking for a review at strategic points during a customer’s journey. Adding checkout comments can be a great way of doing this.
In short, don’t make your customers search for the review field. Instead, always keep it easily accessible to them.
2. Utilize Social Media To Get Reviews
Using social media can give your business a variety of benefits. And one of them is the ability to ask for reviews!
Social media can increase the number of reviews you get. The simplest method is to share posts to encourage your followers to write reviews!
Well designed social media posts asking for testimonials can encourage people to leave reviews. Or even asking for comments under a post or video can work. Positive social media comments are testimonials too!
3. Offer Incentives For Your Potential Reviewers
One surefire way to increase the number of reviews is to offer incentives!
Customers who enjoy the process of writing reviews will probably do so without any added input from you. Some customers might just need you to ask. And others might need some incentives to spend their time writing reviews. Offering rewards will ensure that more people will leave reviews.
There are different incentives you can provide. The simplest way is to offer your customers a discount coupon for writing reviews. This choice is very effective, but can also get expensive.
Making charitable donations for reviews is also a great way to encourage your customers. When asking for a review, you can offer to make a donation to a charity on behalf of the customer.
When providing rewards for testimonials, don’t forget to streamline the process! If you are giving incentives to every single review, people might try to exploit it. So only offer the incentive option once per purchase. Or even once per customer.
4. Engage With Already Existing Reviews
One way to liven up your reviews section is to engage with already existing reviews.
Your customers might feel ignored if you don’t engage with their comments and reviews. And nobody likes being ignored!
Thank people for the positive reviews. Provide answers to questions, and join in if there is a constructive discussion going.
You can also create an automated system to send thank you messages. Still, constructive feedback might require you to handle matters yourself. But sometimes there is nothing more to write other than a sincere “thank you”.
If you answer reviews timely, you might even create an environment where other customers also join in the conversation. This might give you a chance to create a community for your customers. Comment section dialogues can go a long way in increasing customer loyalty…
Related Article: What is Community Management?
5. Request Testimonials With Timed Emails
Sending emails to ask for testimonials is one of the best ways to get them. Especially if you send those emails at the right times!
There are key points during a customers’ journey where asking for a review might be more successful. Determining those specific points and sending an email request is a great strategy.
As a rule of thumb, asking for a testimonial right after a purchase, preferably at the thank you page is a good starting point. This testimonial will be about the purchasing experience and not the product. After the consumer received the product, you can ask for another review via email. Lastly, you can send a review request a week after the purchase to ask for in-depth feedback about the product.
If you were wondering how to encourage customers to write reviews, using email marketing is one of the best options you have.
6. Personalize The Review Request
Personalization is one of the e-commerce trends. As the e-commerce industry is evolving, personalized experiences are getting more important. This statement also holds when asking for testimonials.
Sending the timed emails we have discussed before is a great first step to starting your personalization procedure. Mentioning the customer’s name, their specific purchase, and their previous interactions during the ask is also a great touch to increase the amount of personalization you can provide for your customers.
Final Remarks
Like all things in e-commerce, the best way to get a review from the customer is by providing a good service. All the topics we have discussed above will only help you generate positive reviews if you are making your customers happy. So before you try the strategies above, make sure you are satisfying your customers!
We hope that we were able to answer the question of how to encourage your customers to write reviews.
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