How to Make the Most of Your Ecommerce Customer Reviews?

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Online customer reviews are beneficial and vital for both online stores and customers. In today’s technologically advanced age, where the market is subjected to hyper-competition, over 90% of consumers are considering online reviews to base their purchase decisions on. Irrespective of whether the e-commerce customer reviews are positive or negative, they can have a lasting impact on consumers and the company image as well.

This article is aimed at making you understand the importance of customer reviews and how can you make the most of these reviews. By the end of this article you will have a clear understanding as to what steps should be taken to draw actionable insights from your customer reviews, and how can you implement a review strategy. So, without further delay, let us begin this journey.

Importance of Online Customer Reviews

Online reviews of customers have a huge part to play in the journey of your customers. If you receive positive reviews, you can amplify them via your website and social media channels to gain new customers and increase your visibility. If the reviews are negative, you need to be quick in the resolution of the issues mentioned in the review. This is important, because the person who wrote the review is concerned regarding the issue, and needs a resolution. Similar to any other business, e-commerce organizations also have to maintain an impeccable reputation to gain their customers’ trust and loyalty, as well as to gain a new customer base.

Online Reviews Can Optimize your SEO Initiatives

Online reviews of customers have a huge impact on your SEO ranking as well. Since customers prefer to base their decisions on online reviews, search engines also take these reviews into account while showing consumers relevant results. The algorithms of search engines such as Google are entirely focused on providing customer satisfaction. Hence, online reviews need to be taken seriously by e-commerce business owners.

How to Deal with Positive and Negative Reviews?

Positive reviews for your business will attract more customers. They will also assist in informing search engines that customers are satisfied with your business and hence, your business deserves to rank among the top results.

There are various other ways in which you can make the most of online customer reviews. So, of these are as follows:

• Online customer reviews are an amazing source of the content generated by people, and the search engines love this. Relevant and fresh content in the form of reviews, informs the search engine that your business is valuable and active.
• The reviews posted by customers have unique long-tail keywords and are similar to the ones used by other customers to research your product or services
• Online reviews by customers also activate the Google star rating for your business, which further assists in attracting more customers
• They are an amazing source of feedback for your business
• These reviews can also be beneficial when it comes to UX/ UI and website improvement

If you receive a few negative reviews, do not be disheartened. Constructively take these reviews, and try to improve your offerings and services. Online reviews will assist you to drive your offerings towards what consumers desire. And if this is done appropriately, it can help your increase your sales significantly. The feedback received from customers will assist you in identifying which are your most popular products, which products require improvisations, and which need to be advertised.

The mental process which goes into reading an online review and making a decision whether to purchase a product or not is really small. For any upcoming business, online reputation assists greatly to enhance its sales performance, since a majority of the people indulged in online shopping, base their purchase decisions on online customer reviews.

Online reviews by the customer have a huge part to play in customer psychology owing to the effect of ‘Social Proof’. This is a very powerful effect, but you need to enhance and improve your products and services before the effect can work for you. This effect makes people wonder, “If everyone else likes this business and its products & services, then it has to be safe for me to like it too”.

How to Encourage Customers to Write a Review?

If you wish to make the most of online reviews, bear in mind that more than 50% of online shoppers believe that reviews written within the last one month will be helpful to them. Hence, you must regularly keep urging people to write reviews regarding your offerings and services. This is the main reason, why you need to be proactive and ask your customers for feedback in the form of online reviews.

• Formulate a strategy to acquire reviews — A majority of the people like to express their opinion, so, start by asking your customers to share their views and experience about your business. Many of the customers will be more than happy to take out the time and share their views. However, you have to keep in mind that to ask this timing is very important.
• To gain a greater number of reviews, you should request your consumers at the moment they are the most pleased with your offerings — There are numerous ways in which you can ask the customer to post a review for your offerings. You can choose to ask them via the confirmation email sent for their purchase, on the receipt of their purchase or even via follow-up emails, after the purchase has been completed.
• Setup your review section — A majority of the customers prefer to shop on websites which have customer reviews. Hence, setting up a review section for your own business can prove highly beneficial in increasing your sales.

Platforms to Acquire Reviews

• The star rating — This system of rating has been one of the most famous, and gives a quick overview of a certain business or a product. This review system efficiently evaluates the worth of a business and depicts if the business is trustworthy.
• Google reviews — Recent research studies have depicted that consumers spend over 30% more on online business if they have great reviews. Apart from your website, customers have various other platforms where they can share their views related to your business offerings. On such a platform is Google. Google is the world’s largest search engine, and a major chunk of your customers are like to utilize Google for researching your products. Studies have also shown that businesses which have a full Google business page with all the details filled in have 30% more customer traffic as compared to businesses which do not. Google reviews when coupled with this business page, can work wonders for upcoming business, since Google algorithm considers the reviews while showing relevant results to users.
• Other review platforms — There are numerous other platforms which can be employed to generate more customer reviews. You need to conduct thorough research for this aspect, and also gauge what platforms your competitors are employing. Conducting in-depth research will help you to zero-in on the best platform to generate more reviews, and to allow customers to express their views.

Conclusion

Gauging the online customer reviews to improve your offerings in extremely important in today’s hyper-competitive marketplace. This will assist your e-commerce business to perform well by offering better services, and at the same time gaining new customers. The more concerned you are with online customer reviews, the more you will be perceived as a reference in your industry. Hence, take some time out to care for your customers, and you will be amazed at the returns this small gesture will provide.