Positive online reviews are one of the signals about the reliability of the brand, the quality of its products or services, and the trust of the audience. However, one should not be too categorical about black and white here: a positive picture in the reviews section can also be harmful. Anyway, you still might want to embed business reviews from Google to your website if you still haven’t.
The question of whether positive reviews are needed or not is still a hot topic in many companies. Therefore, on many sites, nothing can be commented on. Let’s take a look at how you can use positive reviews to your advantage and not go too far.
How do reviews affect a company’s revenue?
When buyers write a lot of positive reviews about your products, sales grow following such comments. This is confirmed by a number of studies.
For example, ‎Invesp found that shoppers are willing to spend 31% more on business products with great reviews, and 72% of users will only make a purchase after they read a positive review. Therefore, good reviews for your brand’s services and products are one of the most reliable ways to increase sales.
Okay, we figured out how reputation and sales are connected. What’s next? The benefits of favorable comments are not limited to a direct impact on profitability – there are other beneficial actions:
- Increase in user loyalty. Trust is like the old quote: hard to find and easy to lose. That’s why credible reviews from satisfied customers are so valuable.
- Direct feedback. Customers themselves write reviews for free and thus give the brand a vector on how to improve the product.
- SEO bonuses. Fresh reviews are new, unique content that search engines love. The higher the user activity, the more attention the crawlers pay to the page and the better it ranks.
Some companies do not allow comments on their websites. Most often, this is because they do not want to face and deal with the negative (which is actually not so terrible). However, closing from negative reviews, the brand loses positive ones, and along with them a lot of useful advantages.
Why respond to positive reviews?
A brand’s response to a satisfied customer’s review helps build and grow a loyal customer base. It also demonstrates the brand’s attitude towards customers and encourages them to continue writing positive reviews.
How to respond to a positive customer review? Here are the basic rules:
- Addressing by name, thank the client for the feedback and choice of your product.
- Tune in to their tone: for example, if the client uses a lot of writing, emotionally, with emoji, then you match this style.
- Offer to come back again: write that you are always welcome and wait for them to shop again in your store.
Try to imagine that your customer is not online but offline and praises your products and services: how would you react? Use your imagination, figuring out how to respond to a good customer review.
Are negative reviews necessary?
This may seem strange, but yes. Womply’s research proves that ratio is key here. ‎Companies with 15-20% negative reviews earn 13% more per year than businesses with 5-10% negative reviews.
Many users purposefully skip good reviews in order to find a few bad ones. If they are not, the brand runs the risk of falling into the category of suspicious. It doesn’t happen that everyone always likes everything, which means that you can suspect the company of buying positive reviews.
Therefore, you don’t need to clean out all the negativity – focus on balance and keep the percentage of bad reviews in the 10-25% range.
Ways to get customer feedback
Best of all, buyers are motivated by bonuses and gifts. In second place, by a small margin, is a sincere inner urge. The company can influence this only indirectly – through the high quality of goods. In third place is a simple request from the company: 20% of customers respond to this and leave comments.
However, the rest 80% are just too lazy to follow some links, fill out some forms, or write detailed answers. How can the brand act in this case, if it is impossible to offer any goodies?
You can try the following options:
- Send an email asking for feedback after the user completes an order.
- Show other buyers’ comments on the same products and services. This can spur the client’s desire to argue with others about something or, on the contrary, admiringly agree.
- Simplify the process as much as possible. Make a simple form on a fast-loading page without unnecessary embellishments.
- Send another thank you email after a customer has written a detailed review.
