In this aggressive e-commerce age filled with flowery product descriptions and images that blur the line between reality and consumer fantasy, nothing drives a customer’s buying decision more than unbiased product reviews.
Today, similar to reviews, user-generated content seems to outweigh the impact of brands making claims about their products. That’s why if you’re running an online store, you should never ignore all comments, good and bad. Keep reading below for more on the importance of product reviews.
Improve Your Product
Product reviews don’t just help potential customers on their buying journey. It also enables you to improve your products in the shop. Customer insights, particularly recurring complaints, will allow you to address issues immediately by reevaluating your current items and releasing something better.
Get Credible Social Proof
E-commerce businesses often have more difficulty building trust than brick-and-mortar stores for any product. Giving your customers a voice by welcoming their reviews is one way to create confidence in your business. Allowing them to leave honest feedback means you’re not hiding from what your customers have to say. It also helps humanize your online business by breaking a communication barrier and opening a platform where you can reach your customers.
Boost Store Conversion
Gaining positive reviews is a tremendous advantage in creating trust with existing and potential customers. Shoppers always look for product reviews of their desired items before making a purchase. Seeing positive reviews from strangers can help do just that.
Additionally, product reviews provide information customers don’t often see on a brand’s website or social media page. For instance, customers may cite factors like size, performance, and durability in their feedback, which can significantly help potential buyers decide. They can also direct you to possible marketing points for your future campaigns.
Finally, having good reviews means what you’re claiming about your products is accurate and backed by others who voluntarily provide insights about your brand.
Increase Online Visibility
Allowing your customers to leave reviews also helps boost your visibility online. Google considers user-generated content when ranking your site, especially if the comments are filled with relevant keywords for your brand. The more you earn high ratings, the better your chances of climbing the search engine results page (SERP). That means you can appear right on top every time your potential customers search for similar products as yours.
Encouraging your customers to comment on your products, particularly on various online review platforms or websites, helps extend your brand visibility. People often look at these external sites for more unbiased information about your products to make a concrete decision. Additionally, Google collects data from these sites when creating its ranking of products and brands in your category.
Build an Excellent Customer Service
Analyzing comments, good and bad, enables you to improve your customer service efforts. Knowing all issues in your process, whether before or after sales, allows you to make the necessary changes for retained customers and new ones.
It helps if you utilize programs that analyze customer reviews to save time from reviewing every customer’s message and comment.
Responding to Negative Reviews
Negative reviews can affect a customer’s buying decision significantly. Ignoring such comments will push your potential buyers to the edge and look for other brands with better ratings. So, it’s best to accept the feedback and respond accordingly and immediately, portraying you as a caring business that puts customer satisfaction first by addressing any issues quickly.
Always offer to fix the problem in your response. Assure your customer that you will get to it as soon as possible. Once you’ve addressed the issue, find a way to message the customer directly to follow up on the resolution, whether a replacement or repair, so you don’t lose connection with them.
Use Your Customer’s Voice to Your Advantage
Telling your customers what you want them to hear about your product is not enough to convince them to buy. Now, potential buyers look for other buyers’ reviews to make an informed decision and purchase. That’s why it’s essential to encourage your customers to leave reviews and address them, good or bad, to help improve your products and services and convert more people into buying.