manage reviews

How To Manage Reviews To Increase Conversions?

Small Business 5 Mins Read February 15, 2023 Posted by Soumava Goswami

Last Updated on: November 16th, 2024

Reviews are one of the factors that greatly influence the decision of new buyers to contact the company for the first time.

In this article, you will learn all the useful experiences for managing reviews:

  • What work reviews should be?
  • How to collect them correctly?
  • What to do with negative ones?
  • What should you avoid when increasing the number of reviews? 

With this knowledge, you can easily layer other useful information and techniques for working with reviews.

However, you must remember that these recommendations suit small and medium-sized companies that engage in trade or services. For large companies and manufacturers of branded products, the task is broader. They need to work with reputation, and this is already a separate area of marketing

How To Manage Reviews? – Steps To Follow

How to Manage Reviews

The following are the steps you need to follow if you want to manage reviews on your website:

1. Research and Understand the Needs and Demands of Your Customers

When users are looking for a place to buy a product or order a service, they first evaluate the most suitable offers in the market. Out of these, they choose the most profitable.

Even if the offers are the same, the distinguishing features of the companies influence the buying behavior of customers.

The two factors that determine these include:

  1. Service (what the company can provide in addition to the main product) and
  2. Recommendations (social proof).

Generally, reviews significantly affect the conversion and first sales. This is the point where your prospective customer does not know you yet and orders for the first time. Basically, most buyers are likely to go to places where there are positive reviews.

However, if you give a little effort to increase the volume of reviews, you will stand out from the competition. This will help you win over most of the first sales in the market.

2. Learn Where You Need to Post Reviews

Under ideal conditions, the site should accumulate reviews from independent sites. They inspire more trust and help increase reach. Moreover, there are always more people who show interest in your type of service on independent sites than on your site.

Hence, if you concentrate all your reviews on one site, it is easier to place a widget on the site. For example, you can use the Elfsight widget to embed business reviews from Google into your site.

Of course, there are several topics whose target audience does not ?live? on sites with reviews. For example, you can consider B2B or specific services. 

In this case, the site contains the review posts of customers while observing the following criteria:

  1. Content.
  2. Trust factor that the review is real.

3. Decide on the Type of Reviews You Want on Your Website

Reviews only work if:

  1. They are informative: they have specifics and facts.
  2. They inspire confidence and the feeling that a real client writes them.
  3. There are enough of them.

If the reviews fulfill at least one of three points, they do not work. In the era of digital communication, all Internet users have a ?bullshit filter? for ?nonsense? texts.

Therefore, if you want to increase the volume of reviews, it is extremely important to monitor their content. Also, you must show the presence of markers of trust in the reality of the review.

Manage Reviews To Increase The Number Of Quality Reviews

Manage Reviews to Increase the Number of Quality Reviews

As a rule, you can feel negative emotions more acutely than positive ones. For instance, even a little negativity is enough for the buyer to sit down to write a negative review.

For a user, to write positively, something extremely positive must happen. Therefore, to get reviews, you need to either develop a super service or motivate customers.

Hence, you must always remind your customers of you. Sometime after the purchase, send a message asking you to leave a review about your product/service.

Basically, the time, method of communication, and form of requesting feedback depend on 2 factors:

  • If your customers are older people, it makes no sense to send them an email; better call;
  • If your customers are young people, then they most likely do not like voice communication. Hence, it is better for them to send an email, SMS (we gave examples of SMS mailings in an article on this topic), or messages on social media / instant messengers.

The form of the request affects how detailed the feedback you receive is. For example, if you just write ?Leave a review,? the buyer is unlikely to leave it. This is because the request is too general. However, if you ask specific questions, you are more likely to get feedback with answers to them.

Moreover, the questions depend on the type of product. Is it important for you that the buyer appreciates a certain item? So, ask about it.

Motivate Your Buyers To Review You

Motivate buyers to leave a review. Stimulation with a reminder gives a uniform, but slow increase in reviews.

However, if you need to grow a significant volume of reviews in a short period of time, motivate people to leave their opinions for a monetary reward or a discount. Here, you must ensure that the benefit is tangible, so a 3% or $2 discount won?t work.

Also, remember that you can use a discount (even a big one) as an incentive if your type of goods/services involves regular purchases.

For example, if you sell pet products, then yes, a good discount will be an incentive. But if you sell stoves for a bath, a discount on the next purchase will not be an incentive, because the stove is a one-time purchase.

How To Manage Reviews In Case Of Negative Feedback?

How to Manage Reviews in Case of Negative Feedback

Negative feedback is left regardless of stimulation. As we said above, writing a negative depends on negative emotions. People write negative reviews publicly not because they want to make a fuss, but because they are left alone with their problems.

So, somewhere the client was not helped and was ignored. A large volume of negative reviews is a reason to restructure processes within the company.

When stimulating reviews, there will be a few negative ones among them. Moreover, the presence of negative reviews among the mass of positive ones will be beneficial for you ? when there is no negative at all, it seems that good reviews are screwed up.

You don?t have to be afraid of the negative. It needs to be answered publicly. Your smart and tactful responses will show that you are a problem solver and thus increase customer loyalty to your brand.

Do you have more suggestions to offer on how to manage reviews? Consider sharing your ideas and opinions in the comments section below.

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Inspired by The Social Network, Soumava loves to find ways to make small businesses successful – he spends most of his time analyzing case studies of successful small businesses. With 5+ years of experience in flourishing with a small MarTech company, he knows countless tricks that work in favor of small businesses. His keen interest in finance is what fuels his passion for giving the best advice for small business operations. He loves to invest his time familiarizing himself with the latest business trends and brainstorming ways to apply them. From handling customer feedback to making the right business decisions, you’ll find all the answers with him!

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