How to Get More Online Reviews for Your Business
No one is getting away from online reviews in this digital landscape. More than 70% of modern consumers say that they pay attention to reviews before making final buying decisions. We find them on business websites, search engines, social media, mobile apps, and online review platforms.
People rely on reviews to decide which products to buy, the best tech solutions to spend money on, and the best restaurants to eat meals. That is the reason why getting positive online reviews for your business is more important than ever before, not only to sell more but to build trust and credibility.
How Important are Online Reviews to Your Business?
No matter how strong and successful your marketing strategy is, your customers are more likely to trust their peers and the word of mouth they share about your brand or products. Positive online reviews do more than build trust and affinity. They impact sales and boost revenues as well.
In this competitive business landscape, gaining and displaying customer reviews should be a priority for brands of all types. They help consumers filter out brands and companies with a rotten reputation for making purchases from reliable ones. This means online reviews are particularly important for eCommerce stores and service providers.
Ways to Get More Online Reviews for Your Business
This blog post will discuss the best ways to get more online reviews for your business or brand to help you get the most out of your efforts.
Set Up Your Profiles and Claim Ownership
To start effectively, set up your social profiles and claim ownership of popular review sites in your industry or niche. It will help you attract dedicated users to review your business, make your business appear in search results, and make sense of your brand or industry.
After creating profiles on appropriate review sites and platforms, optimize them with accurate and authentic business details to help customers find you easily. Not claiming ownership on review sites can lead your brand to missed opportunities and inaccuracies that can harm your online presence. If you are not doing so, someone else does so, maybe because of something negative.
Send Follow-up Emails
When someone completes a purchase transaction from your business, send them post-purchase emails with thank-you notes and requests to leave honest reviews. Sending such emails can have a great impact on your strategy and help you get more online reviews across your different digital properties. Make sure to send personalized follow-up emails within a week to increase the chances of getting reviewed in a timely manner.
Reward your Customers
Recognize the time your customers spend on leaving reviews about your business or products by giving them exciting rewards. A simple and small reward can encourage valued customers to leave honest reviews. You can run campaigns like giving a $10 free voucher to the first 20 people who review your business. It will amazingly boost the number of online reviews for your business. We are not telling you to incentivize all your customer who writes the review, but you can run periodic campaigns to keep customers engaged while getting more reviews.
Make Things Easier
Customers are always in a hurry and don’t have much time to go through the complex processes of leaving reviews. That’s why I try to make things easier and help them leave reviews effortlessly. The more complicated the review writing process is, the more customers will avoid reviewing your products or brand. So, guide them properly with step-by-step guides to encourage them to leave reviews. As a result, you will be getting more online reviews for your brand across different digital channels and profiles.
Show Gratitude and Display Reviews Online
When someone writes a review, he/she puts his own reputation on the line for potential consumers, especially for their connections who might see their reviews. That is the reason you should show your gratitude by responding to the reviews gently. Reply to them publically and appreciate their efforts. Displaying online reviews on your digital assets like websites or social profiles is another best way to recognize and appreciate the efforts of your customers. In this way, you will have more user-generated content for your digital marketing efforts. It will also encourage and influence other customers to review your business or products to secure a visible place on your social profiles or official website.
Concluding Thoughts
Businesses must actively seek reviews to build a strong reputation. Use relevant review platforms to claim profiles and get more reviews. Offer prizes for reviews and send tailored emails. Simplify the review procedure to encourage participation and publicly thank customers. Online reviews recognize efforts and provide valuable user-generated content for marketing. Online reviews boost a business’s reputation and build trust and credibility with today’s discriminating customers in this competitive market.
Common eCommerce Mistakes to Avoid in 2024
Numerous e-commerce store owners have difficulty establishing online stores. Sellers must improve their strategies according to changing trends and customer behaviours. Minor mistakes in your e-commerce store could decrease its online visibility in search results, so you must be careful when managing your online business.
To stay ahead of the curve and keep your online store thriving, it is important to identify and avoid common mistakes. This guide contains the most common eCommerce mistakes to avoid in 2024 for better growth.
Common eCommerce Mistakes to Avoid In 2024
Here are the most common eCommerce mistakes to avoid in 2024 to grow online stores effectively:
1. Not Targeting the Right Audience
One of the common eCommerce mistakes is that new sellers do not develop the right sales strategy. They must understand the audience to which they are selling their product. Sellers cannot be able to build ad campaigns to target the right audience without executing comprehensive customer research. They can start analyzing multiple factors of their audience, such as age, gender, location, etc. They can use social media platforms and build brand profiles to effectively engage with users and respond directly to them. This will help sellers to build brand’s credibility and trust among potential customers.
2. Wrong Selection Of eCommerce Platform
An e-commerce platform allows you to manage your online store and products to boost your marketing efforts and product sales. Many e-commerce platforms, such as Shopify, BigCommerce, Adobe Commerce, etc., offer multiple features to users. You have to evaluate which platform is best for your e-commerce business by analyzing its multiple offerings and string management tools.
Shopify and WooCommerce are best for small businesses, while Magento and big commerce are best for enterprises to easily manage their high volume of sales. You can try free demos of these platforms to decide when one is best for your online store. Most businesses prefer WooCommerce, as it is a better option for those retailers who want to sell their products via WordPress. You can integrate it effectively via WordPress and offers a lot of robust store-managing features and marketing tools.
Read Also: 11 Free eCommerce Tools to Boost Your Online Store
3. Poor Marketing Plan
Every online business needs to adopt multiple marketing strategies in their advertising campaigns, to remain competitive in online marketplaces. You need to make changes in your marketing plan according to the current trends and customer behavior shifts to drive more sales. You must create a strong marketing plan and implement it in your ecommerce store, to attract new potential customers. The main objective of a marketing plan is to increase the brand’s customer base and maximize profits. You might have experienced many brands around you achieving more success, and it is difficult for others to compete. This is because these brands are implementing robust marketing strategies in their marketing plan.
4. Bad Product Pages
Having bad product pages is one of the most common ecommerce mistakes that results in low conversion rates, and loss of customer trust. An ideal product page must give all the information that is required to customers for purchasing decisions. These mistakes include having bad-quality images and inappropriate product descriptions and specifications which result in gaining bad customer reviews and ratings. Some product pages have slow loading speeds and are not designed for mobile devices, which causes users to have difficulties navigating the product page. Brands must adopt visually appealing product pages, that are more informative with clear call-to-action buttons. This will help brands increase customer engagement, build trust, and drive more sales.
5. Not Adopting SEO Strategy
It does not matter how your e-commerce store looks if you have not implemented SEO. You must optimize your online store search engine and add relevant keywords to gain organic traffic from search engines. It helps you increase your store’s online visibility and ranking in search results. Those customers looking for a specific product on search engines are the potential customers looking to buy. You need to adopt these high-intent selling keywords in your product pages, to make your online store more visible on search engines. You can also read our blog post about Ecommerce SEO Tips to optimize your online store for higher ranks.
6. Not Enough Payment Options
There are multiple online shops that have limited payment options, and users can only pay for a product by using their credit and debit cards. This disappoints customers if they want to pay using another payment method that your store does not offer. There are many online wallets available these days that most users are asking it. You must add modern and multiple payment methods from which customers can pay for a product easily. Many customers move to that store and never come back, when they face difficulty in their checkout process. You need to adopt new payment methods and make your checkout system more effective to remain competitive among other online stores.
7. Not Implementing Competitive Pricing
It is essential for online store owners to know their target audience and decide the price of products according to their worth, which is considered among customers. They need to analyze competitor’s product prices and implement the price of products accordingly. Many sellers do not research the product pricing available for customers in the market. If the research elaborates that customers will not be willing to pay the price you have determined, you need to change according to the competitor’s prices.
Bottom Line
It is difficult for brands to manage e-commerce business online, but they can remain competitive by avoiding the common mistakes that sellers make in online stores. They need to implement modern marketing strategies and add effective keywords to their product page. This will help brands to increase their online visibility, and gain a large volume of organic traffic from multiple search engines. Your business can achieve more success in multiple online marketplaces, via implementing the right marketing strategies and preventing stores from these common mistakes.