How often do you check for customer reviews before you purchase a product? Customer reviews are becoming increasingly important as they help us realize if a particular product is a right choice for us or not. With online reviews, customers can easily and more frequently make well-informed purchasing decisions. So, not only do customer reviews bring your business more closed deals, but they also increase customer satisfaction in general.
That’s why you should focus on collecting customer reviews on your website if you want to have satisfied customers. Providing your customers with a place where they can share their experience can be useful for your business in so many ways. However, it can be really challenging to collect these reviews on your site as not all customers are eager to spend their time writing a review about a product they’ve recently purchased.
What can you do to motivate your customers to leave a review on your website? In this article, we bring you useful tips on how to encourage customers to review your product and your business.
Customer survey
The easiest way to collect customer reviews is through a simple customer survey. To ensure you grab the attention of all your website visitors, embed your survey in a popup so it is visible to everyone who enters your website, regardless of their intentions. This way, your customers won’t have to go through your website and waste their time by searching for the survey. Moreover, you will be able to engage those customers who didn’t know you’ve conducted a customer survey. Keep in mind customers don’t like surveys with a lot of questions. Keep it short by including up to three vital questions if you want a good response rate. All your questions should be open-ended so you can get more in-depth answers that could serve you as a review.
Feedback button
A Feedback button will not take a lot of space on your website and it can be very effective. All buttons on your website are inviting your customers and prospects to take action, but this one will directly ask for their opinion. The simplicity of this method is what makes it very successful because your website visitors just need to click on the button and leave a review. The feedback button should be placed somewhere where everyone will see it. Make sure it stands out with its design, especially colours. The simpler you make the process of leaving reviews, the more positive reviews you will have on your website.
Offering an incentive
For some customers, it will not be enough if you just place your survey or feedback button on your website. They will need to be motivated in the form of an incentive to leave a review. Think of the incentive as rewarding your customers for taking the time to write a review of your products or your business. In exchange for answering just a few of your survey questions, your customers can get a free gift – coupon, free guide or eBook, money, etc. You can even create an email campaign where you invite your customers to leave a review and win, for instance, a Visa $100 gift card. That way, you can continue engaging with your customers even after the purchase to ensure they don’t start purchasing products from your competitors.
Customer service
Your customer service agents are always interacting with your customers. They are there to answer all questions and help people successfully solve the issues they are facing. When talking on the phone or exchanging emails, your agents could ask your customers to leave a review. This will help you increase the number of positive reviews since agents will do their best to first provide the customer with everything he needs and then ask for feedback.
Social media
If you’re not on social media, is your business active? Not only will your prospects check your website, but they will also check your social media accounts to get an idea about your business. According to Adweek, 54% of customers prefer messaging channels on social media over phone calls or emails. So, why not engage them that way and invite them to leave a review on your website? If the majority of your customers are active on Facebook, reach out to them through Facebook Messenger. If they are most active on Instagram, send them a Direct Message on that platform. Simple as that!
Contests
Contests are similar to incentives, but they don’t need to include a free gift for your customers. For instance, you can organize a contest for the best review and reward a customer with participation in your upcoming promotional video. The goal of these contests is to create hype and collect as many reviews as possible. You can have contests every month and choose the best review of the month which will be promoted on your social media accounts and in your email and newsletter campaigns. All of this will encourage your customers to leave a review, especially if your online business sells B2B products. Having the name of your customer’s business in your promotional campaign will have significant benefits for them.
Conclusion
As the number of reviews on your website grows, the number of new customers will grow as well. Focus more on building your authenticity by collecting customer reviews on your website. This way, you will more efficiently engage your existing customers and attract new ones.
