How to Encourage Online Business Reviews in 2020?

I have sensitive skin and it goes haywire if I apply something it doesn’t approve of. In the endeavor of keeping healthy skin in this dry winter, I recently purchased a moisturizing cream that was referred to me by a friend of a friend. The cream is excellent, and I am happy with it. I purchased it because I trust my friend and his friend had given a positive review of the product.

Do you know that 92% of the online consumers read online reviews before buying a product from a brand?

If you have a new eCommerce store, a few positive reviews can impact the buying decision of the customers.  To boost your sales, you must focus on gaining the trust of the customers.

There are a ton of ways in which you can encourage the customer to leave a positive review. But if you are planning to grow your business fast, it is better that you create such a fantastic experience that customers rush back to your website to leave a positive review.

Here are five ideas that will help your brand to impact your consumer marketing initiatives.

Online Review Widgets

On a good day, if you Google, ‘Online Review Widgets,” you’ll see around 206 million search results. Most of these widgets are WordPress-based designed to work with WordPress websites.

These WordPress widgets are simple, easily installed, and offer superior user experience and allow you to integrate the reviews from Facebook, Google into your website. 

When you give customers an option to leave their feedback in one place, you’ll create a sense of transparency on the website. When actual customers leave a review, it will be a chance to showcase these reviews to visitors.

Whether the customer will leave a review on Yelp, Google, or Rize, it will help you to get a positive response from people.

Collaborate with Local Bloggers

The easiest way to generate traffic on your website is to get positive reviews from local bloggers. Send these bloggers a free sample and ask them to leave a review on the site.

Of course, every review is critical, but a single review from an influencer can leave a significant impact on your potential customers.

To begin your search for a local blogger, you can use tools like Right Relevance or GroupHigh and pinpoint influencers that may be interested in your products and services.

For some influencers, you need to start a conversation before they take any interest in your product. Once a relationship is built, it will be easy to ask them for a product review.

Just like everything else, this, too have a downside. The review will be posted on your website or even your social media page. So, if there is even a single unsatisfied review, it will take ages to recover from negative traction gathered through the review.

The key here is to keep improving your product/service so that even if you get a negative review, other reviews might cover that up.

Lastly, keep a check on your primary customer audience. For instance, if the audience is 45, do not send a 23-year-old blogger to represent your product.

Social media advertising

Social media is a powerful platform to get genuine reviews from customers.

Platforms like Twitter and Facebook have a massive amount of data on customer buying psychology. The customers are already there in groups, on pages where they are looking for products that overcome their need.

When you take advantage of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, it will be easy for your products to reach the potential market of your customers. You can install social tracking pixels on your website so that you get a better idea of your target audience.

Check-in & Win

Apps like Wikets, Foursquare, and iPoints award points to customers, which can then be converted into points and get discounts.

You can add a check-in option in your mobile app/website where the consumer can get rewards, points, and even custom discounts when they check-in your store.

You can also add an option to leave a review and get coupons that you can then avail in the next order.

Ask!

In the end, it is okay to keep life simple and ask the customers for the reviews.

Just like Google Maps, who sends push notifications when people visit a certain place. You can always ask new customers to leave a review on your website. Make the feedback mechanism intuitive to make the feedback process easy. When it comes to repeat customers, they’re usually more than happy to share feedback without feeling uncomfortable.

Don’t forget to support your family and friends who run a business. It might sound a bit cheesy when your grandpa leaves a review and share how proud he is for you. But this might start good steam of reviews from your family and your closest supporters.

Final Word

Don’t force customers to leave a review for your brand. Make the website experience so enriching that they come back to leave a promising review for your brand. Don’t tell the customer how you are different, show them with your service and with your product.