We all know that getting great customer reviews helps to give your business credibility (and give you a well-earned pat on the back!), but how do you encourage more of your customers to leave positive reviews, and do you really know how much a lack of reviews can affect your business growth?

As customers ourselves, we all rely on word-of-mouth recommendations when making any purchase, especially those bigger purchases like new appliances, a new car, or a monthly subscription. Multiple studies and surveys repeatedly back-up this notion, with one such survey showing that 91% of consumers feel that reviews (especially local or verified) impact their overall perceptions of big brands in some way, while a separate study showed that the average number of reviews read by consumers before trusting a business was 10.

This all makes sense, given that the modern age of the Internet is rife with “fake” reviews, false information, and malicious sites claiming to sell a product or service that turns-out to be a scam (I once purchased a gadget and received a toy plastic ring!).

This is why reviews are so incredibly valuable to businesses and consumers. Consumers want to know that the business they’re thinking about purchasing from is legitimate and that the product is good quality, while businesses want consumers to trust them and to boost their brand reputation; it’s a symbiotic relationship!

Why are customer reviews important?

There are four key factors that perfectly encapsulate the importance of customer reviews:

  • They help new and prospective customers find you
  • They boost trust and credibility in your brand
  • They highlight any areas where your business may be falling short
  • They increase sales!

Let’s take a deeper look at each of these…

 

They help new and prospective customers find you

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) favours businesses and brands that have a strong online presence and credibility, and what better way to show credibility than having a plethora of genuine customer reviews attached to your Google Business profile? You can read more about SEO and what it entails here.

Receiving reviews regularly and responding to each of them demonstrates to search engines that you are an active business and provide engaging content, and those search engines will subsequently reward you with higher search ranking placements!

 

They boost trust and credibility in your brand

It can be quite a daunting prospect making your brand completely open to reviews, whether they’re positive or negative reviews. However, it is that same willingness to be open and transparent that will really help your business to grow. 

By inviting customers to provide feedback, you are showing that you care about their latest and future experiences, as you’re looking to gain an insight into exactly how they feel about your product, website, communications, or any other facet of your business. And by responding to each of these reviews directly (including addressing the negative ones!), you are further-demonstrating that ability to empathise with your customer base and go that extra mile to provide them with a high quality experience.

 

They highlight any areas where your business may be falling short

Whilst receiving average or negative reviews can be disheartening, it should be seen as a great opportunity to learn and to boost your business profile, potentially winning-back the trust of any customers who may have had an unexpectedly negative experience! A customer may have highlighted a glitch or error on your website which impacted the checkout pathway, there could be incorrect information on a product, or maybe they felt a particular customer service advisor could have gone a little further. All of these things can be quickly and easily addressed as soon as you receive this feedback, and by responding to that original review, it will reflect very well to new customers by demonstrating a willingness to listen, and will help rebuild any lost trust and better-help to retain that customer for future. 

 

They increase sales!

This is the most significant point which encompasses all of the above points. Getting reviews provides you and your business with 100% FREE word-of-mouth marketing! Reviews show authenticity of the brand, they give new customers confidence that they’re making the right decision, and it just looks good to have an overall 5-star rating on the likes of Google and Trustpilot. 

This helps you to gain more customers, and more customers means more potential reviews, more reviews leads to even more credibility and even more customers, and so on. As long as what you’re selling is of high quality and the service you provide is exceptional, those positive reviews will keep rolling in and you won’t even have spent a penny in accumulating them!

 

The key ingredients of customer reviews

You may be thinking, “How can there be ‘ingredients’ for customer reviews?”. Customer reviews cannot be simply made-up, created by AI, or paid-for (well, they all technically can be, but this can lead to negative impacts on SEO and customer perception of the brand). Each review needs to be of quality and substance. The points below go into more detail on what we mean by this:

    1. Honesty and Authenticity – reviews need to be genuine and honest, which is why you need to get reviews from actual customers. You can easily acquire these through follow-up emails to customers after a purchase.
    2. Variety – You should collect a variety of different reviews. Whether it’s one-liners or entire paragraphs, a variety of reviews gives more weight behind the perception of your business being authentic. Even a study by BrightLocal found that people read an average of 7-10 reviews before trusting a business.
    3. Quality over Quantity – Whilst it would be great to have 1000 5-star reviews, if the majority of those reviews are just one-sentence or one-word answers, it may come across as very disingenuous. Having real, in-depth, and substantive reviews will help to convince potential customers of your authenticity. Even a study by Northwestern University in 2015 found that the perfect number of reviews a shopper needs depends on the length of said reviews.
    4. Negative Reviews – Yes, you read that right. Not all reviews should be overwhelmingly positive, as this can sometimes come across as less authentic. That same study by Northwestern University also found that customers are more-likely to buy a product that has a 4.2-4.5 star rating vs a product that has only 5-star ratings. Embrace those negative reviews, and like we mentioned earlier in this article, those negative reviews can help your business improve even further!

 

Tools and Tips to get more customer reviews

There are many tools and methods that you can use to acquire more customer reviews, and one of the best is post-purchase emails. Do you remember that study we mentioned earlier by Northwestern University? That same study also found that up to 80% of company and product reviews originate from post-purchase emails.

So with that in mind, what tools can we use to help gather these reviews?

  • Automation tools – Whilst there are various automation tools such as Make, Zapier, and Relay, all of these essentially do the same thing of linking multiple systems to automatically send perfectly-timed emails to maximise their impact. Afterall, you don’t want to ask a customer for a review before they’ve even received their item!
  • Freebies and Competitions – If you’re selling a physical product, why not include a small card with a QR code in the package asking for the review in exchange for a discount on the customer’s next purchase? Alternatively, you could offer to enter any new reviews into a competition to win a prize each month. Providing an incentive like this is a very popular method of getting more reviews.

Review widgets – Adding a Google or Trustpilot review widget to your website can make it very easy for customers to see previous reviews and encourage new ones. There are several tools out there that provide code-free solutions to add easily to your website.