Don’t underestimate the power of customer reviews
You may be a small business owner or shop owner, but you’re also human – and that means you go out to eat, shop for clothes, purchase goods and other services. As consumer, you’ve probably read a few online reviews in your years on the internet. In fact, you most likely relied on those review to make your decision to go ahead or not.
According to Search Engine Land, a whopping 88% of consumers now trust product reviews as much as advice from friends and family, putting online reviews nearly on par with the age-old reliable word-of-mouth marketing. A recent study shows that Google is the first place consumers go to research a purchase they plan to make, whether online or in-store.
Data from the PowerReviews report Mapping the Path to Purchase discovered 35% of consumers begin their purchasing journey on a search engine. And if you’re not within the first few positions of the results pages, you’re missing out on incredibly qualified traffic. That’s where product reviews come in. Google actually indexes product reviews, which means their algorithm reads your product’s reviews and makes them searchable or visible on search. So by getting more product reviews, you increase the number of keywords where your products ranks on Google.
To further boost the power of reviews Google is now introducing user-generated images in product reviews on Google Shopping as shoppers are increasingly becoming inspired by images, with 50% of digital shoppers saying images helped them decide what to buy. Retailers can now include user-generated images in product review feeds, which creates an opportunity to show future customers pictures of products taken by existing customers. This experience is currently available on mobile in the US, with plans to expand across more Google properties and countries over the coming months.
Here are some tips to help you increase your product reviews
- Encourage Customers to Write Reviews With Post-Purchase Emails – just simply ask them.
- Make it easy to add a review
- Provide incentives to customers to Write Reviews
- Design and Share Reviews on Social channels
- Use a trusted ratings and review platform
- Optimise for mobile – make it easier for people that use a phone to write a review.
What some of our customers are doing?
Google Review Widget – some our customers have invested by purchasing a premium plugin that displays a badge showing their Google Review rating which also merges with other review platforms such as Facebook. The great thing about this plugin you can have a badge appearing on your site which automatically starts to give your visitors more confidence (providing you have good reviews).
Ecommerce – some of our customer s have implemented email campaigns to remind people to give reviews on their recent purchases. These customer have linked their shop with Mailchimp to share data on their purchases and setup auto-responders to send reminders.
If you are interested in exploring ways to increase reviews or add that to your system just give us a call.