E-Commerce Seller Financing   •   November 4, 2019

Various factors help customers determine whether they should buy your e-commerce store’s product or choose a competitor instead.

While the quality of your product will ultimately determine whether your customers are satisfied or not, you need to first persuade them to buy from you to learn how good, unique, durable, or useful it actually is.

Many customers base their decisions on previous customer reviews. As many as 60% of consumers believe that online reviews are either trustworthy or very trustworthy. There are various reasons why customer reviews matter, and they all confirm that it is important for e-commerce sellers to have them.

Let’s take a look at how your e-commerce store can get more positive customer reviews.

6 Ways to Get More Customer Reviews

1. Create Avenues for Customers to Leave Reviews

First and foremost, customers won’t be able to leave any reviews if you do not provide them with spaces to do so. There are several ways you can approach it:

• Product reviews on your site. If you have a website, make sure to offer a space where your customers can leave their reviews.
• Facebook. If you have set up your e-commerce store’s social media profiles, then this can be a place for you to gather customer reviews. Facebook is believed by many to be a trustworthy source of reviews.
• Amazon. If your product is on Amazon, that also can serve as a hub for you to gather reviews.
• Google. If your e-commerce store also has a physical location, Google My Business allows you to set up a profile and collect reviews. Similarly to Facebook, Google is believed to be one of the most trustworthy places to find reviews.
• Yelp. This is another place to gather reviews if you have a physical location. Along with Google and Facebook, Yelp is one of the three most trusted sources for customer reviews.

Depending on your CRM, you most likely will be able to control what customer reviews go on your site. However, other places such as Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Yelp do not. Therefore, it is a good idea to get more reviews on multiple spaces as they provide potential customers with a more objective view of your business.

2. Offer Incentives

Everyone is busy, and writing a review takes time. Data also shows that customers are a lot more likely to share their negative experiences with a brand than a positive one.

Therefore, many customers actually offer incentives in exchange for reviews. You can get creative here and offer a discount or promo code, entry into a giveaway or contest, or more. Make sure to have or ask for the means of verifying the review before you actually provide them with the incentive.

3. Ask for a Review

Don’t be afraid to ask for a review. Your customers may not remember to leave one after some time has already passed. However, your chances of getting customer reviews are more likely to increase if you remind them of your brand and ask them to leave you a review.

4. Ask at the Right Time

Depending on what your product is, your customers may not be ready to leave a review right away. Perhaps they have not used it yet. Or, they need to use it for some time first to have a solid opinion on what they think of your product.

Think about it. If you buy a book on Amazon, it will take you some time to read it. So, if a vendor asks you to leave a review a day later, you likely will not have read it. However, if that is a month later, then the likelihood of you having read it and formed an opinion is much higher.

So, think of what your own experience with your product would be and when the best time to ask for a review would be.

5. Ask Open-Ended Questions

Not all reviews are helpful, and sometimes, your customers may have no idea what they should write. However, it can be much easier if you ask them open-ended questions about their experience with your product.

So, try questions such as:

• What did you most like about our product?
• How has your experience with our product been?
• Why would you recommend our product to other buyers?
• What would you tell others about our product?

The answers to these questions would provide a more thorough and insightful reviews that will provide more value to future buyers than simple 5-star reviews or reviews such as “Good product.”

6. Share Other Positive Customer Reviews

A rare person wants to be the first. So, to get more customer reviews, give your existing customers a little help. You can do that in multiple ways, for example:

• Send an e-mail with a few positive reviews from prior buyers,
• Share social media posts with positive reviews in them, or
• Share reviews in your social media stories.

Seeing other positive reviews will not only help your customers follow the crowd but will also provide ideas for what they should write in their review.

Have you used any of these strategies to get more customer reviews? Which has been the most effective for your e-commerce business? And which will you try next?