This is a complete guide on how to get more ratings and reviews on your eCommerce store.
In this new guide, you’ll learn:
- The importance of reviews and social proof
- How to structure and design your ratings section
- Why it’s essential to include images in product reviews
- 5 tactics to get more customer ratings
So if you want to optimize your eCommerce store and increase revenue, this guide is for you.
Let’s get right into it.
Why Are Product Reviews and Ratings Important?
Product reviews are essential for all eCommerce stores. This is because of how much competition there is in the current online shopping environment. For this reason, customers always look towards product reviews.
Online consumers are also more cautious and research-driven when buying something from an eCommerce store for the first time.
Around 90% of global consumers make an effort to read reviews before buying products.
Think about your own online shopping experiences. What’s the first thing you do when you find a product you like? You’re probably scrolling straight down to the reviews.
So let’s discuss the five main reasons why eCommerce products reviews are so vital.
Build Trust
There are probably dozens or even hundreds of different stores selling the same or similar products as you. How will customers distinguish who to trust and buy from?
Customer reviews allow your store to build immediate trust with first-time visitors. If the product the visitors want has multiple high-quality reviews, they have no reason to doubt your store or the product.
Ultimately, product reviews are a form of social proof that builds the legitimacy of your store. We’re wired to believe and follow what other people say as humans. If somebody else enjoys the product, we assume we’ll get the same satisfaction too.
Take a look at this product reviews section from Allbirds:
With 2,799 total ratings at 4.8/5 stars, I’m more than willing to blindly trust this company even if it’s my first time here.
Answer Important Questions
Your product descriptions may not have enough information to answer all the potential questions a visitor has. In this case, you can count on customer reviews to provide the answer to their question.
Take a look at this product review section from Lush.
Visitors can sort the reviews based on hair type, hair goals, age range, and much more. This makes it easy for potential customers to find the answer to their questions.
It’s common for eCommerce stores to provide a Q&A section in their customer reviews as well. This means that any visitor can ask a question about the product, and anybody else can answer it. Whether you or another customer answers their question, it’s essential to give them the information they need.
I’ll show you exactly what this looks like further below.
Display Product Detail
One thing we recommend is to enable images in all your product reviews. This means you should give your customers the option to upload an image along with their written reviews.
Online shoppers love to see the product they’re interested in from an organic standpoint. A previous customer posing happily with a product can bring a lot of positive emotions to the visitor.
Improve SEO
With the competitive eCommerce marketing landscape, it’s important to utilize SEO. This is when your main keywords rank high in the Google search engine. However, building out a successful SEO campaign is difficult and expensive.
Luckily, product reviews can organically improve your SEO efforts. Google uses a variety of signals to determine if your website is worthy of good rankings. When a customer leaves a positive review, it shows Google that your business is legitimate and trustworthy.
Increase Revenue
Consumers are likely to spend 31% more on a business with outstanding reviews. This means that great reviews will enable more sales as well as a higher average order value (AOV).
This is a win-win situation for everybody involved. Your customers have more confidence that they’re making a good purchasing decision, and your store earns more revenue.
So, let’s discuss five ways to get more ratings and reviews on your eCommerce store.
5 Tactics To Receive More eCommerce Reviews and Ratings
Although customer reviews should come naturally over time, you can’t expect every customer to come back and leave a review. This is why you need to be proactive when it comes to building social proof for your eCommerce business.
Here are five strategies you can deploy to gain reviews on your eCommerce store today.
1. Ask for a Review Through Email
Mahatma Gandhi once said, “If you don’t ask, you don’t get”.
This is especially true when it comes to eCommerce reviews and ratings. The number of distractions in modern life makes it almost impossible for people to remember to write a review, even if the product is incredible.
This is why I recommend sending an email to your customers 2-3 days after the product arrives. The email should kindly ask the customer to leave a product review with a picture.
Most product review applications allow you to automize this process. This means that you can send automatic emails 2-3 days after a customer receives a product. You’ll need to design a beautiful email template and set up the email drip campaign through the application.
Here’s an example of how Asos sends out their customer review inquiries:
Asos is clever in how they approached this email. Instead of directing every customer to the review page, they have a thumbs up or thumbs down button.
If a customer presses the thumbs up, they are redirected to the product page and can write a review. If the customer presses thumbs down, they are brought to an external survey page asking them what was wrong with their purchase.
This survey page isn’t linked to the product reviews section and isn’t publicly visible. Instead of capturing both positive and negative reviews, Asos filters out the negative reviews. This means that mostly positive reviews will be shown on the product page.
Here’s a less sophisticated example from Rozetka:
Although this email isn’t clever like Asos’, it gets the job done. It’s simple, effective, and better than not asking your customers at all. Regardless of how you want to design and structure your product review email, make sure to create one no matter what.
This is THE best way to increase your eCommerce store’s reviews and ratings.
2. Make It Easy for Customers To Leave a Review
It’s also vital to make your review section well-designed and easy to use. This may seem obvious, but many eCommerce stores suffer from a poor user experience.
You won’t get much feedback if your customers have to jump through several hoops to leave a review. A great example to look at is Amazon. Amazon has the most well-known review platform on the internet. This is because there are so many similar items and sellers.
Amazon displays the star rating and how many total ratings there are on every product page.
If you click on ‘105,448 ratings’, you are immediately taken to the bottom of the page where the review section lives.
From there, you will see a comprehensive review section that includes images and sorting capabilities.
Amazon’s review section is functional, clean, and easy to use. You can also write a review by clicking ‘Write a customer review’ on the bottom left-hand side of the page.
Amazon goes even one step further by including a Q&A section above their product reviews section.
This is another way to get more customer reviews. Since potential customers get their questions answered, they are more likely to purchase the product. Therefore, more buyers give you a higher chance of getting product reviews.
It’s also essential to make your product reviews section mobile-friendly. Ecommerce store owners often forget to optimize their websites for mobile use. Mobile-friendliness is something you can’t ignore in this day and age.
With a sizeable portion of product reviews coming from mobile devices, ensure your mobile experience for product reviews is flawless.
3. Incentivize Customer Reviews
Another effective way of capturing more customer reviews is by offering incentives. For example, you can offer a 10% off discount once a customer completes a review.
These incentives are delivered through the post-delivery product review email I discussed in tactic #1.
Here’s an example of how Gorjana offers an incentive for a product review:
As you can see, this email:
- Has a friendly tone
- Includes a 15% off discount on the customer’s next purchase
- Shows the product the customer bought
- Is interactive with the star ratings
Once a customer clicks a star rating, they are immediately redirected to the product page and can fill out the review form.
Offering an incentive is more clever than you think.
First of all, customers who were satisfied with their product have a higher chance of completing the review for the discount. This means there’s a high chance that the review is positive. Furthermore, you increase your store’s revenue and customer lifetime value if they make another purchase.
Even if they use a discount code, an additional purchase is better than no additional purchase at all.
Here’s another example of how Derma E offers their customers incentives:
This is a flyer that’s included in the physical package a customer receives. The customer can scan the QR code with their phone to leave a review. Derma E’s use of containing promotions in their packaging is unique and effective.
By including a discount code on the flyer, there’s a lower chance that the customer throws it away. This means that there’s a higher chance the customer ends up leaving a product review.
If the product is good, they’ll want to use the discount code to purchase another one.
4. Provide Excellent Customer Service and Delivery Times
There’s nothing more important than an excellent customer service team and fast delivery times in eCommerce. Consumers are more impatient than ever before. This leads to frustrated emails from customers that want to know where their products are.
I recommend being as transparent as possible when it comes to delivery times. If customers know when to expect their product, they are less prone to complaining and anger.
You may be wondering, “How do customer service and delivery times relate to product reviews?”.
Customer service is part of your eCommerce store’s customer experience and product satisfaction. If customers are treated respectfully and kindly in their communication with your brand, they are more likely to provide excellent feedback.
A positive experience with your brand will psychologically convince a customer to leave a product review if they enjoy the product.
For example, let’s say a customer wrote an angry email that asks where their product is.
Your customer service team should be trained to:
- De-escalate the situation by being friendly and respectful
- Provide a shipping link and relevant shipping information
- Offer a discount if the package is delayed or won’t arrive on time
- Make sure customer is reassured their package is arriving soon
Every step of the eCommerce funnel ties together. You should provide excellent customer service, transparency, great products, and fast delivery times.
This way, your brand will stand out in the minds of your customers.
5. Sell Outstanding Products
Simply put, you need to provide incredible products to receive fantastic customer reviews.
This is a process that involves:
- Receive feedback on your product
- Modify your product based on the feedback
- Brainstorm ways to innovate your product
The better your product is, the more likely a customer will naturally come back to your store to leave a review. Furthermore, great products spread around through word-of-mouth like wildfire.
This means that you can organically boost your store’s revenue by having stellar products.
However, it can be challenging to improve and innovate certain products. In this case, there are other strategies you can employ.
I recommend improving the packaging that your product comes in. Well-designed and high-quality packaging can go a long way in terms of consumer sentiment and brand equity.
So think outside the box on how you can provide a better product experience for your customers.
Conclusion
I hope you enjoyed part 1 of how to get more ratings and reviews on your eCommerce store. Part 2 is coming soon, and I will discuss 6 more strategies for getting customer reviews.
Check out part 2 now: 6 NEW Ways To Get More Reviews On Your eCommerce Store.
Now I’d love to hear your thoughts:
Which method from today’s guide are you going to implement first?
What product review application are you using for your eCommerce store?
Either way, let me know by leaving a quick comment below.