6 Tips to get more out of product reviews
Most organizations now know that product reviews have a clear added value. Various e-commerce sites, blog posts, and newsletters have already written extensively about the added value of product reviews. Large Dutch webshops such as Bol.com and Wehkamp.nl have already fully integrated the product reviews into the e-commerce process and they know how to encourage the customer to post reviews in the right way.
However, not all webshops are at the level of Bol.com or Wehkamp.nl. In this article, you will find a number of tips to not only encourage more customers to write high-quality product reviews but also how you can use these reviews to promote your sales.
Table of Content
1. Make posting reviews easy (but not too easy)
How do you ensure that the threshold is low, so that many customers write reviews, but that the quality of the reviews is guaranteed? It seems like an obvious tip, but for many organizations, it is difficult to find the balance.
Some companies want as many product reviews as possible, so quantity is important. Bart Smit makes placing product reviews easy and that fits well with such an objective. Bart Smit customers can rate products with one click of the mouse. The customer can give one or more stars per product, where 5 is the maximum number of stars.
If you want to show qualitative reviews, you may be able to apply one of the following solutions.
– Give the reviewer the space to substantiate his or her assessment: This is a lot more informative than just a number of stars.
– Make it personal: Sometimes posting a product review is anonymous, but you can make the review more personal by explicitly mentioning the authors of the reviews. For example, also show how many reviews a writer has previously given. A good example is Amazon. This allows readers to determine for themselves whether a writer is credible. Or let a reviewer classify themselves in a category. At Booking.com you can choose from a family, young couple, an older couple and solo traveler. Reviews from like-minded people are valued more than reviews written by people who have completely different needs.
2. Send a follow-up email after an order has been delivered
You can encourage customers to write a review in various ways. One of the most effective ways is to send a follow-up email. A few weeks after the delivery of the product, you send an email to the customer asking if he or she would like to assess the product.
Two things are important to guarantee a good response to a follow-up email. First, you need to make sure that the benefit to the customer is clear. For example, you can give the customer a voucher for a subsequent order. This also allows you to directly eaffectloyalty. The second point is in line with the tip above. It must be easy to write a review by email. You can lower the threshold by giving customers the option to rate the product in the mail or by placing a direct link to the website, where the product can then be assessed.
3. Reward the assessor
As said before, it must be clear what the benefit is for the customer. You can reward customers in various ways. For example, pdashop.nl has developed a good method. They clearly indicate that money can be made by evaluating products. The large number of reviews of the pdashop.nl suggests that this is a good way to encourage customers to rate products.
4. Organize a competition
Visitors may question the motives of the review writer. In that case, it might be better to only reward the qualitative product reviews. One possible way is to organize a competition. However, this is also about the objective, so first check whether quantity or quality is important for your product reviews.
Bol.com has added such a competition element. Bol.com has “the review of the month”, whereby the writer of the best review receives a voucher. In addition, there are even smaller prices for other good reviews. Undoubtedly, this has a positive impact on the sales of that particular book.
5. Indicate what will be done with the reviews
As mentioned in the previous tips, it is important to indicate what the benefit is for the customer. This can be in the form of a reward or a prize, but also by clearly indicating what will happen with the reviews.
Research published by Bazaar voice shows that 90% of the reviewers find it important to help others with their purchase decision with their review. About 70% of the reviewers indicate that they want to help the company with their services.
6. Make someone responsible for the reviews
With the help of the above tips, customers are encouraged to write quality product reviews, but to get the maximum benefit this must also be managed internally.
At many of the small and medium-sized web stores, product reviews are not actively managed within the organization. Having customer reviews, expert reviews, and testimonials written is a time-consuming activity. The quality of the reviews must be sufficient to encourage other visitors to buy the product. In case of bad reviews about the service, it is also important that someone within the organization picks up this and ensures that the necessary improvements are implemented. Therefore, make sure that someone within the organization has sufficient time available for this. In addition, it is important to develop a clear strategy with interim objectives, so that the desired return can be achieved.
The importance of product reviews
It is important to determine in advance what the objective of your company is with regard to the product reviews. Are reviews part of your online value proposition, because you want to be known as the information site, for example? Then you use reviews in a completely different way than when reviews are ‘one of the social media tools. Do you want a lot of reactions or a lot of information and depth? Quantity is mainly achieved by rewarding all product reviews, while quality is mainly stimulated by rewarding the best reviews.
In addition to tips to increase the number and quality of product reviews, some tips have also been given to use product reviews to increase sales. The follow-up email is an example of this. You send an email, after the product has been delivered, with the request to review the product and you give a coupon for the next order as a reward. Competition can also be used to increase turnover. By promoting the winning review, you stimulate sales of the product in question.
Are product reviews still a neglected child in your organization? Time to take a closer look at the strategy surrounding this tool. Provided you handle it in the right way, product reviews can have very good added value for your webshop.
Also Read: Increase the Productivity of your Organization in 5 Steps