Benefits of Reviews for Online Business
Ratings and reviews are valuable for online and in-store sales, web engagement, SEO, customer service, reducing returns, merchandising, marketing, and product development. Reviews and testimonials help customers validate their purchase decisions.
There are two sorts of reviews found on websites.
- Organic reviews – These are ratings and reviews that the company has collected itself from its customers, probably with the help of tools, such as ShopperApproved, Trustpilot, Yotpo, etc. Companies can get reviews from customers by incentivized requests, post-checkout web surveys, sampling and requesting reviews via social media channels or post-interaction email (PIE), and soliciting reviews via website banners.
- Syndicated reviews- These reviews are collected on different sites and or by other companies. These could be reviews that were posted on one retailer website and then reposted to another sister site in the same group that sells the same products. Review Syndication happens when one website authorizes or automatically feeds its existing reviews to display on other sites.
Example of Review Syndication
Shop Direct’s Littlewoods.com has customer reviews syndicated from its sister website Very.co.uk. Customer reviews from L’Oreal’s website lorealparisusa.com are syndicated to other retailer websites like ULTA and Walgreens.
Merchant reviews can also be distributed through syndication networks such as Yelp, Google My Business Reviews, Facebook Reviews, etc. If your business is new and it is still in the process of sourcing direct reviews from customers, it is advisable to show syndicated reviews on its website. Syndicated reviews help boost conversions and SEO efforts when done correctly.
How to Use Reviews for Business Growth
***Pro Tip- Use Cheerleader Effect on Your Testimonial Page
Create a ‘Customer Reviews’ or ‘Testimonials’ page and display all your merchant reviews collected from your merchant review platform. On the same page, you can display banners linking to Google My Business, Facebook, Yelp, and other review aggregators of your choice and ask visitors to read more business reviews and give their feedback.
When a potential customer would search for your business name, your page would appear in the search result. Instead of getting redirected to other websites, the user would come to your website and can read all the reviews you have on your reviews or testimonial page.
Reviews are important for business and can increase conversions and customer loyalty due to the Cheerleader Effect.
People tend to rely on a group of people than an isolated individual. The review page where a group of people (about 10 to 20 reviews on the page) has said favorable things about your business makes it appear more attractive and credible.
Display groups of testimonials on the homepage and other critical pages with a link to read more reviews that redirect to your review page. Apart from merchant reviews, try to collect as many product reviews as possible. Make it easy for customers to leave product reviews by displaying the option to leave product reviews prominently. Overall, product and merchant reviews make your business look attractive in search engine results, make your business more reliable and give a boost to your SEO efforts. You can also add your reviews in Google Ads and PPC campaigns on various advertising platforms.
