Over 80% of online purchases and sign-ups are made after reading customer reviews.
After encountering negative reviews, more than 90% of online users change their purchase intention.
When choosing a restaurant or buying a product online, I never act without checking customer reviews, and how about you? Customer reviews are powerful influencers that must be considered in your online business strategy. In this article, you will learn (1) why reviews are crucial for your site, (2) the most popular platforms to quickly collect verified reviews from your customers.
1. Why are customer reviews important on the internet?
If you want your business to succeed online, there are many ways to achieve this, but high-quality content is one of the most important. It's also a good idea to have a positive reputation surrounding what you do, which can be accomplished by regularly providing reliable customer feedback.
1.1 Building Trust for Your Brand Online
The internet is rapidly evolving, and scams are significantly less common. However, if your brand is not well-known to the general public, or if the customer has never made a purchase on your site, they will need reassurance to take action (contact you or buy your product).
Adding user comments with verified and humanized text is a powerful way to build trust for your online brand.
1.2 Improving Your Google SEO
Yet another underestimated yet incredibly powerful lever.... customer reviews are taken into account by Google for your organic search ranking! YES! When Google ranks your site on search engines, reading satisfied customer reviews about your product or service reassures them (and you) that you are effectively meeting a specific need.
We recommend using 2 to 3 review collection platforms to optimize your presence on search engines by associating your business with your customers' reviews. Pro tip? Respond to your customer comments using keywords 🎁
1.3 Enhancing User Experience
By giving your online users a sense of assurance when making a purchase, you effectively reduce their stress levels regarding the transaction. With the right placement of positive reviews, you shorten the time they spend wondering whether what they are buying is good or not. As long as you provide them with multiple reasons to feel reassured and do everything in your power to make it easier for them by giving a taste of what awaits them around this product or service, you have contributed to enhancing their overall e-commerce experience—and their trust in it will also be stronger!
2. Platforms for Obtaining Customer Reviews
Now that you understand why customer reviews are essential, let's delve into the technical details and discuss how you can gather these reviews to boost your online business results.
2.1 General Platforms
Trustpilot
Trustpilot is a rating and review platform that helps businesses gather feedback from their customers. Customers can rate your business using a 1 to 5-star system and write constructive and honest comments about their experience with your brand. The advantage of using Trustpilot is that the platform offers a free version that undergoes thorough verification to ensure the authenticity of each review. This adds credibility to your ratings on Trustpilot by mentioning your business.
However, to share a Trustpilot embed on a social network, a paid plan will be necessary.
Verified Reviews.com
Verified Reviews is a useful platform that offers customers several ways to provide feedback and reviews about their experiences with businesses. The platform allows you to publish reviews across all your social media sites, including Facebook, or to integrate the reviews directly into your website. (Paid)
The famous Google reviews. The yellow 5-star ratings are something everyone knows, and it's the star rating system used by Google on Google My Business. It's easy to create a Google My Business account to gather customer reviews about your business. The only downside to this solution is that customers need a Gmail address to leave their reviews on Google.
2.2 Sector-Specific Platforms
Some review collection platforms have chosen to specialize in specific sectors, here are a few examples:
Sortlist (Digital Agency)
Coursereport (Training)
Switch up (Training)
Conclusion: Best Practices for Reviews on the Web
- Respond to all reviews (good or bad)
- Integrate your e-reputation into your workflow
- Publish your customers' satisfaction across media
- Do not post fake reviews
- Use trusted solutions (verified review platforms)
In conclusion, customer reviews are an excellent way to build trust with your customers and visitors. By doing so, you strengthen your online reputation (e-reputation), which indirectly enhances your web presence, your search engine ranking, and thus your overall sales. Keep in mind that honest feedback is much more effective than a biased opinion. There are many ways to showcase customer reviews or testimonials on your showcase or e-commerce website. If you are using Webflow, we have a tip for you right after.
Manage Your Customer Reviews on Webflow
With Webflow, you can quickly create a CMS display of new customer ratings by copying this Trustpilot Slider template (offered for free by Digidop) and connecting it to your CMS for dynamic content feeding.
Gift 🎁 If you have a question about its integration, feel free to reach out to us!
