Why are customer reviews important?

Conversion rate increase

93% of surveyed customers said they actively seek out reviews of a product or brand before making a purchase. Reviews are a type of social proof, which gives customers the confidence to buy. So collecting and displaying reviews is a necessity, or you'll miss out on a possible increase of your conversion rate.

Better SEO

Customer reviews also help with your site's authority and SEO in general. You can also boost SEO by creating a separate page with all reviews listed, or by integrating your store reviews with Google review snippets.

Customers will then see your product reviews and ratings right away in the search results, so you'll convince them to buy before they even come to your store. At the same time, this will be one more reason for Google to show your page higher in the rankings. According to moz, reviews have a significant share in the SERPs and contribute to Google's greater trust towards your store.

Greater customer retention

Product reviews are also a great way to identify your most satisfied customers and retain them. Send these customers gave you an authentic thank you, offer a discount on their next order or let them know in advance about new products. These customers will then fall in love with your brand all the more and won't leave that easily.

Another advantage of this approach is that these customers will then become "advocates" for your brand by word of mouth.

Product insights

Where else can you get honest ideas for a new product or feedback to an existing product than from customers themselves?

Go through your reviews and note down the answers to the following points:

• What did customers enjoy most about your product?
• How did customers find out your product?
• Conversely, what angered/confused customers the most?
• How customers miss most in your product?

These points will save you time and give you authentic insight into the minds of your customers. Then start incorporating these points gradually and success will not pass you by.

You can also take content from reviews and use it for your copy. If you see, for example, that the "made with organic material" benefit was repeated in the reviews the most, try to display it as much as possible in all the various touch points on your store. Then simply replace it with benefits that did not appear in the reviews. This will better target both new and returning customers, and show them more relevant product benefits.

How to collect reviews?

Personalized email

This is the most successful method for getting high-quality reviews. Send your customers a personalized email asking them about their experience in a more informal way, which will let them know that you care about their experience with your product. 

The problem with this method is scalability. This type of email can be sent when starting out and when your store only has a few customers a day. With dozens or hundreds of orders a day, this method is pretty much impossible. Therefore, we recommend using this method mainly at the start of your e-commerce journey.

Automated email 

The most scalable method is to automatically request a review after an order is created. If you are processing hundreds of orders per day, you need to send a review request automatically. We recommend giving this email special care. Design, copywriting, and brand elements all play a big role in the email's open rates and conversions.

Automated requests are a great way to ensure a regular flow of new reviews, but the quality of reviews and conversions of the email itself will be significantly lower (compared to a personalized email).

Review widget

Add the ability to write a review directly on your product pages, or create a separate page just for reviews. This way, the customer can return to your store at any time to write a review. 

This method is a great addition to email requests. For example, you can catch customers who have received your request as spam or who don't monitor their inbox as much.

Reply to reviews

Responding to reviews directly is a very effective method that serves 2 purposes:

• Visitors browsing the reviews will see that you care about your customers and their needs. This can indirectly increase conversions, awareness and most importantly, encourage customers to leave their own review because of the possible interaction with your brand.
• It can increase customer retention and strengthen the bond they have established with your brand.
  

Where to show my reviews?

Product page

Displaying reviews on a product page is ideal, as this is where one of the most important steps in the purchase funnel occurs. Convince potential customers with reviews here and half the battle is done.

Google snippets

As we've mentioned, displaying ratings directly in Google results is a great boost to your search snippet. Reviews separate you in the results from competitors, so more organic traffic can come to your store. 

If you want to show ratings in the snippet, you need to find the right review app that offers this functionality. For Shopify, we recommend Loox and Judge.me among others. Compare their features and prices in our list of the best product review apps.

Homepage

Adding a review directly to your homepage is great for several reasons:

• It gives social proof to your brand right from the start. 
• You immediately raise visitors' curiosity about your products.
• If you use your homepage as a landing page for some of your ads, reviews will boost conversions.

Paid ads

You can use reviews as user-generated content for all your marketing activities! You can boost their success rate while spending almost no time on content creation. Reviews as content for paid ads is a tested method and definitely worth trying out. 

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We hope this post has helped you sort out your thoughts on reviews and passed on some new strategies for reviews.