Everybody knows how critical reviews are, especially when it comes to recruiting new visitors, new leads, and new business. There are tons of review websites online, but the major problem is that most of them are set up to display the reviews on one another. In other words, to allow customers to get a full picture of your business, they’d have to visit all the sites with posted reviews.
Whether your business is a healthcare practice, retail store, auto shop, or hotel, you can significantly benefit from collecting and sharing customer reviews. While online reviews are a precious commodity for any business, requesting reviews from customers can be a delicate courtship. In this post, we’ll look at how to get people to review your website.
Why do customer reviews Matter?
Multiple surveys and studies have shown that almost all potential shoppers and clients use reviews as the principal factor in determining what businesses will most likely get their money. People use reviews because it helps them build trust and filter out businesses with a bad reputation. Customer-generated review websites have made it possible to get reviews in many places, and customers trust those reviews as much as they trust reviews from a friend or family member.
How can a business get more reviews from customers?
There are different methods a website can employ to ask for reviews, including asking them to leave reviews by emailing consumers manually or using review generation software to automate the review process, or perhaps utilizing a nudging strategy on receipts, i.e: asking for a review on the receipt.
However, if the success of your website or business depends on online reviews, encouraging reviews from customers is a skill you’ll have to master. Here are tips to help you get people to leave reviews in places that matter.
Create a place where customers can review your website
There needs to be a place where visitors can post reviews if you want to generate online reviews. It’s especially crucial because taking this step will allow your online reviews to be shown in search engines. Once you’ve created a place where you want your reviews, make sure that you create a link to that location. You’ll then be able to provide that link when requesting a customer review.
For instance Google has a link that you can use that provides direct access to a review prompt, so that when a customer clicks on that link it immediately opens a box for them to leave a review for you.
You can use the Place ID Lookup Tool to find the review link for your business on Google maps.
Keep them coming back
It’s best to get your visitors to subscribe for updates from you instead of always relying on other sources of traffic. When sending a welcome email to new subscribers, direct them to your social media page so they can connect with you. Try positioning email sign-up boxes in different places. You can change words, button label, call to action and offers to see what works best over time.
Don’t ignore the negative reviews
You’ll likely encounter a bad review but they are not always a business-killer, so it’s best to know how to handle the negative situation. Listen and address the negative reviews; if you’re doing all you can to create a remarkable experience for your visitors, you may have a chance to turn an unhappy visitor into a brand advocate.
Make your content irresistible
Everything you do online has to start with creating something incredible. Genuinely incredible content, products or services can be your best marketing tool. Write something valuable that people are compelled to share, or put your words in a different format, (podcast, eBook, etc). Irresistible content is really about understanding and listening to your customers and visitors. I like to call it feedback. When you understand who your customers are, then you can create information that will be valuable and informative for them.
You can find great information on how to develop informative content that your customers will value here: Creating content for your customers
Make your website more functional
Design your site with the end goal in mind. What do you want your website to achieve? You want it to hook your visitors and keep them coming back. Make it easy for people to share your content by adding social media share tags which you can implement through plug-ins and other means.
For instance, if you look at the bottom of this blog that you’re reading, you’ll see social media functionalities that will allow you to share it on various social media platforms very easily. If you have a crappy looking website design, you’re missing out because your visitors will leave before they read your content. And what is a crappy website? A crappy website is a website that doesn’t have the actual customer in mind.
Think about yourself using your website as a customer, is it answering the questions that the customer is going to have, is it intuitive, is it functional for the customer. Think about these things, or hire me to professionally develop your presentation 🙂
Conclusion
Reviews are essential, and when used effectively they can help you boost sales. People are looking at online reviews and putting trust in them, so it’s time to take an active role in the process, send out surveys and ask customers to share a review today.
