In today’s digital world, reviews are the best way to show your potential customers that your product is worthwhile. Many studies have shows that positive customer reviews are the primary factor in whether or not someone will purchase. Think about before you go to a new restaurant for lunch, you probably google them and see what people have to say. Whether it's Google's own reviews or a site like Yelp!, it’s the same concept for an online store. Getting reviews is easier than you think. Here are a few ways to increase the amount of reviews you get from your customers.

Follow up with an email

When a customer makes a purchase from your online store, you already have their email address. Setup a simple automation that sends a follow up email a couple days after their order has been delivered. Be direct with your email, say something like: “Hey, thanks shopping with us! Please consider leaving a review of your experience by clicking the link below!” Keep it simple and to the point. Don’t make the review process too long either. Give them an option of 1-5 stars and an option to explain why they picked that number.

We recommend using Yotpo to collect reviews via email. Yotpo is a kick-ass application that integrates directly to your website. Yotpo is awesome because it allows customers to leave the review directly in the body of the email so they don’t have to take any additional steps and decide they don’t want to do it. Yotpo also has additional features other than generating reviews for your site such as acquiring user generated content and creating custom questions to ask different customers.

Make It Easy

Don’t make your customers work harder than needed in order to leave a review. If someone has to take multiple steps and venture through different apps to do it, that creates more opportunities to abort the review process. Add review options to your emails, make them available on your website, and add link to review from your social medias.

Incentivize, But Don’t Buy

There is a difference between offering an incentive to leave a review and buying a good review. Don’t specifically offer any of your customers something for leaving a review. Instead, create a program that offers a reward randomly to one lucky reviewer. You want to make sure your reviews are honest and properly represent your customers' experiences.

Ask On Your Website

As mentioned above, using your website as a tool to get reviews is a no-brainer. You can put a review option on your homepage and your product pages. A simple “Write A Review” button can be extremely effective. You can also provide the option for your customers to leave reviews during the checkout process. If these are repeat customers they are likely to have had a good experience in the past if they are choosing to purchase from you again.

Thank them

Always thank your customers for leaving a review. You can send them an email, or thank them directly after they hit submit. You can also provide a little gift to your reviews via email after they have left the review. This is a great way to turn a one time customer into a long-term loyal patron.

What To Do With Your Reviews

You’ve got all these reviews, now what do you do with them? Display them proudly! Add them to your homepage to reduce your bounce rate and create an immediate trust with your visitor. You can add the reviews to individual products to show how previous buyers have liked them. Create some content around your reviews, such as social posts and emails. You can use them in your abandon cart series to help sway a potential customer to pull the trigger and buy the product.

Conclusion

Reviews are incredibly important for your business. Never underestimate your customers; as impulsive as they may seem, they are smart and do their research before making a purchase. Be upfront and ask your customers to review their experience. Make it easy for them to do so by sending them an email. Use your website as a hub to share them. Place reviews in a few different spots on your page and make it easy to leverage the weight they carry in influence.