Growing your business without spending more on marketing sounds like a “too good to be true” scenario, but it’s a lot easier than you think with Trustpilot reviews!
Whether you’re a complete novice or a seasoned Trustpilot veteran, we’ll be giving you an overview of what Trustpilot is, how it works, and 9 steps to getting your account up-and-running and encouraging customer reviews.
An Introduction to Trustpilot – What is it and how does it work?
Trustpilot is a free online platform that allows consumers (i.e. the public) to review their interactions with businesses and post those reviews to the Trustpilot website. These reviews are accompanied by a star rating system which allows the user to score a business from 1 to 5 stars. If you’ve built-up enough reviews, Trustpilot will calculate an overall “TrustScore”, which is an overall average of all reviews combined, along with taking into account the timespan between reviews and the frequency of those reviews.
Your TrustScore is recalculated at different intervals depending on the total number of reviews that you have. For example, if you have fewer than 10,000 reviews, your TrustScore is recalculated immediately, whereas if you have more than 10,000 reviews, your score is updated daily.
Additionally, your business profile on Trustpilot also displays how you rank in your particular category (e.g. Food, Electronics, Music, etc.) if you’re actively asking for reviews and have received 25 or more over a 12 month period.
How reliable are Trustpilot reviews?
To ensure the validity of its reviews, Trustpilot is designed to allow for reviews from people who have had a “genuine buying experience”. There are three main features that Trustpilot utilises and we will look at these in more detail below:
- Verified Trustpilot UK Reviews
- Verified Business Profiles and Reviewers
- Fraud Detection and Flagging Options
Verified Trustpilot UK Reviews
If you have ever seen a Trustpilot review page you may have noticed some reviews marked as “Verified”. This “Verified” tag confirms that the user has been sent an invitation to provide a review directly from the seller and that the reviewer has provided documentation to show their experience (e.g. sales receipt).
Verified Business Profiles and Reviewers
Businesses can also have a “Verified” badge on their profile to demonstrate their legitimacy. Users are able to filter their searches for “Verified” or “Claimed” companies only, so it is definitely worth it to apply for the verified badge!
In order to be granted a Verified badge, the business owner needs to provide one of the following forms of identification via Trustpilot:
- Photographic ID (e.g. driving licence, passport)
- Contact details (e.g. business email address, telephone, etc).
- Proof of domain ownership
- Business bank account registration details
Fraud Detection and Flagging Options
In rare instances, a business may receive a fraudulent or “fake” negative review, which ca
n impact your overall Trustpilot score. Additionally, sometimes you may see a business’ Trustpilot profile that has a straight 5-star score and all the reviews look suspiciously copied and pasted! Either way, Trustpilot has a tool available in which you can flag these reviews to Trustpilot to have them re
moved. In these instances, the person reporting can be asked to provide evidence to show that a reviewer has not purchased from you. Of course, if it does turn out to be a genuine review, then this will be marked as “Verified”.
How to get Trustpilot Reviews:
The following is our step-by-step guide on setting-up your Trustpilot account and some tips on how to start getting reviews for your business!
1. Setting-up your Trustpilot account
To get the ball rolling, you will first need to setup a Trustpilot account. It’s best to do this with your business email address (if you have one), as this will make the verification steps much easier, although you can also upload information about your business website during this stage as well. You can sign-up for a Trustpilot account here.
2. Selecting your business category
To ensure your business receives as much visibility as possible, you need to choose the right category that most-closely matches your business area. Don’t worry if your business doesn’t fit “perfectly” into one category, as you can select multiple categories. For example, a caterer could select both “Lunch & Catering” and “Beverages & Liquor” from the “Food, Beverages & Tobacco” category.
3. Customising your profile
This is important not just for describing what your business is about, but also for appearing in Google search results, as one of the first results potential customers will see (when searching for your business) is the link to your Trustpilot profile. You need to write at least 200 words, so make sure you talk about the background of the business, what it is you do, and definitely make sure to include your business’ contact details!
4. Market research: who are your competitors?
Once you’ve created your business profile on Trustpilot you can read reviews of your competitors to get a sense of what they provide, what their strengths and weaknesses are, what their customers like and dislike, etc. It’s a great way to gauge where you can offer a better service than them, e.g. if there’s a lot of negative reviews for a competitor relating to their checkout process, you can look to improve your own checkout process to eliminate this potential pain point. There are plenty of articles about competitor analysis including providing templates which you can find here.
5. Asking your customers for reviews
One of the best and easiest ways to get more reviews is by just asking your customers directly! You can send up to 50 review invitations per month using their free plan, but you will need to upgrade to their “Plus” plan to get up to 200 monthly invitations.
There are many other ways of asking people for reviews, however. This can be via Mailchimp mailers, QR code leaflets if you sell a physical product, automated emails setup via your e-commerce provider, and more.
6. Responding to reviews
By responding to reviews you’re not only thanking your loyal customers and showing appreciation for positive reviews, but you’re also addressing people’s concerns if they’ve left a negative review, which can help to improve your business’ systems and practices. Responding to customer reviews also has the added bonus of demonstrating to potential new customers that you actually care about your customers, increasing the likelihood of convincing people to make their first purchase!
7. Making Trustpilot visible on your website
Another great way to ask for reviews and to demonstrate your high Trustpilot rating is to add a “Trustbox” to your website. This widget allows customers to click and visit your Trustpilot page directly and leave a review, and if you’ve got an overall very high Trustpilot rating, why not show it off to the world?
8. Invitation Automation
Trustpilot has an automatic feedback service which enables you to automatically send-out review invites with any transactional email (e.g. order confirmation email, delivery notification, etc.). This does have the previously mentioned limitation of 50 invitations per month on the free plan, but it can be easily set up by adding your unique Trustpilot email address into the BCC area in your transactional email settings. Visit this page for a full walkthrough guide on how to get this up and running for your business.
9. Display your Trustpilot logo everywhere!
New and existing customers will always need friendly reminders that they can find you on Trustpilot. Add the Trustpilot logo to your website, email marketing campaigns, social media pages, and you can even include a card/notice on any product packaging to encourage customers to review once they’ve received their delivery.
