Nothing can make a consumer feel much more important than having a seller that values his/her thoughts and feelings. It is a direct hack through their minds when a company finds a way to make them feel special and well treated.
Most retail owners might think that promos and freebies are the only way to the costumers’ heart and mind. Most of them are also not aware of a big puzzle-piece that they are missing, the power of ‘Costumer Reviews.’
Why it is Important to Retailers like You?
With the advent of the internet and social media, people developed their love on giving opinions, suggestions and even random thoughts about almost everything. This can be super beneficial to a business. Maintaining interest and encouraging loyalty to current buyers while attracting new ones, in short, hitting two birds with one shiny stone.
Many businesses have utilized providing their customers the ability to write reviews. Even simple experiences on the market about their products which seemed to be nonsense at first have created a huge impact to their sales. This is where the concept of “social proof” comes along where these reviews can be used to back you up and establish your credibility with these feedbacks.
A consumer review survey agrees with this claim that customer reviews do really have impact to sales. In fact, according to this survey, almost 90% of people trust online reviews and considers it just like a personal recommendation. While almost 60% of people are convinced to visit a company’s website after reading positive reviews. 80% of these people are also proven to trust local businesses more after reading the positive reviews towards them and another 60% of people believe on the star rating system and considers it the most important metric to them.
So given this very important discovery that can be a key to the breakthrough and success to your business, here are now some steps that can help you optimize and take advantage of having customer reviews:
Make your products easier to review
Technology is all around and you’re always free to have a system for reviews within your site. You can also make use of the other retailer’s online stores to see how they set up and manage their reviews, but of course, always consider including a star-rating system for consumers feel that’s the most important measure.
One of the customer review system may be set as the standard for retailers include the star system along with all written reviews as well as a search functionality to allow other customers to read various types of reviews.
After this, it’s up to you to back it up with emails where you will include your call-to-action or all you tricks with rhetoric.
But overall, the point of this is to make sure that your reviews will be friendly and accessible for your customers.
THERE IS POWER ONLINE: In short, make use of social media.
With a lot of social media sites that use you can use, it would be easier for your shoppers if they can leave reviews in more places than just your very own website. Of course, you also want to assure that these happy customers will remain happy because they can easily share their positive experiences with your brand.
There are a lot of sites that can play as third-party to encourage positive consumer reviews. One good example is Facebook.
You can also use specific directories relevant to your business.
TRICK OF TREATS
Rewarding your customers was never out of style. You can effectively encourage them by offering them rewards by writing reviews. This can also provide add to their happy and positive experience with your brand. You can offer them discount codes or coupons that can encourage them to share their experiences publicly and be excited to have transactions with you. What a double hit!
In terms of ethics, it is actually not bad to reward customers after giving their reviews. However, paying GOOD reviews is a totally different and is actually a big turn-off. Offering them simply for their review is okay. But writing with the angle you wanted is a no-no.
Meet ‘em in personal and Let them speak out
Among everything else, personal interaction is actually still the best strategy that you can do. Though it cannot promise the same results as the others and may seem to require more effort, it can actually be a turn-on to put places or booths where they can personally write their reviews. It can also assure that the reviews are from the heart as they were on the spot. Of course, this will require extra creativeness as well.
With all these, you can now be ready to reap the benefits being enshrined by customer reviews and have a wonderful customer-retailer experience.