Customer reviews: how to make them work for your business

Online reviews can really enhance your power of persuasion. If you can showcase lots of honest, positive reviews about your product or service then other people are essentially doing your marketing and persuasion for you, sounds like a win to me! However, for this to happen, you need to make sure that the product or service that you’re selling is of high quality and that your customer service is excellent, and this is about continuously managing your customer’s expectations. Once you’ve built trust and credibility through the genuine quality of your product or service then you’re on to a winner. Some interesting statistics about online reviews:

• 70% of customers consult reviews or ratings before making a final purchase decision.
• 75% of reviews posted on review websites are positive.
• 79% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.
• 74%; customer reviews can create a 74% increase in product conversion.

Certain industries have their own review sites such as tripadvisor and checkatrade. If this is the case for you, make sure that your business features on there as an official business and that you monitor your reviews, make time to respond to them as well as read them. Facebook business pages also have a review area for customers so make sure you do the same for this feature. If you’re selling a product and are on Amazon, eBay or another sales site then there are review options here too.

If you do get some negative feedback and it’s constructive, act on it. If there’s something you could be doing better, your customers are the best people to tell you about it. To encourage reviews you can include a link in the confirmation/receipt of sale or follow up with a friendly email to get their opinion and encourage them to review your product or service. You can also integrate a review or testimonial feature into your site. Get in touch at hello@webfwd.co.uk if you need some help with this.