Why look for customer reviews?
The web is wide. You face a lot of challenges and competition. Once you manage to have a potential customer on your website, you must convince him to buy your product or service. Since he might not know you or could not have any recommendations from his entourage, you need to prove that you can answer his needs. We all know that there are people with malicious intent on the internet. It is then normal that your potential customers can be suspicious. Customer reviews, testimonials, and evaluations are used ways to show your professionalism.
What do you do before booking a hotel? You look for reviews. What do you do before buying a new car? You look for evaluations on the internet or in magazines. What do you do before making an appointment with a new hairdresser? You look for customer comments on her social media pages. In many articles, we told you that you simply did not exist if you were not online. Now that you have a website, you must stand out from the others, and customer reviews can help you with that. Of course, you can filter the reviews you decide you put on your site to leave only the good ones; however, you must take only authentic testimonials from real customers! You might have to ask permission before publishing reviews on your website too.
How to get customer reviews?
There are many ways to get reviews from your customers. It should also be one of your priorities when you start since these comments are precious and can help you get other customers. First, take a look at Google and Facebook. These two digital giants can help you get your first reviews. Google provides a tool called Google My Business. It is the business sheet that appears on the right of the results when someone looks for your business on this search engine. On its side, when you open a Facebook page, your customers can leave comments and recommendations there too.
Why would you not take this opportunity to ask your customers directly to leave a review? If you have an online store, you could send a newsletter a few days after their purchase to verify if your product did meet their expectations and, if so, to leave a testimonial. If you provide services, you can contact your clients the same way. You also could add a contact form or a comment section directly on your website or subscribe to sites where you can find customer reviews. The best example here is TripAdvisor if you own a hotel or bed and breakfast, for instance.
Where can you put customer reviews on your website?
There is more than one place where you can put customer reviews on your website; however, we will focus on the homepage and the product page in this article. First, we wish to remind you that the homepage is the most important page of your website. It is your site’s front door, and you only have a few seconds to convince your visitors to stay and check the other pages. If these people do not know you, what can you do to get their trust and encourage them to buy your products? Your website must be credible! To succeed, you can have an SSL certificate, a domain name that is simple and relevant, an online presence, a professional design, but also many customer reviews on your site. Consequently, do not hesitate to add a section with testimonials directly on the homepage. It is what we decided to do on WebSelf’s homepage; we wanted to show that we were a trustworthy company. Many companies do that with their websites.
Let us pass now to the product page. Whether it is for your online store or on the page where you talk about your products or services, you will get more credibility if you add customer reviews. It can make the difference between a sale or not. You need to get your visitors’ trust in only a few seconds, especially if you offer services. Therefore, after adding a description and pictures of your products or services, leave a place where you can put testimonials from satisfied customers. This will encourage your visitors to make a purchase or contact you for a quote.
Learn how to improve the product page of your online store.
In conclusion, we know that it is difficult to find your first customers. Consequently, you must provide excellent service, so they want to recommend you to others. With time, you might receive negative feedback on a social media page, for example. Do you know what to do if it happens? Start by taking a deep breath, stay calm, and remain professional even if it is not easy.