For Shopify newbies, the first steps of starting a successful online store might not be very clear. To help Shopify merchants like you in this challenging journey, we came up with a list of top 5 tips on setting up product reviews on your website.
According to statistics, 95% of customers read reviews before making a purchase. Therefore, reviews are undoubtedly essential for any business to build customer trust and drive sales.
In today’s article, we will cover customer review essentials: what’s their importance, how to set them up on Shopify, and what tools will help you to convert better.
Let’s get started!
What are Reviews
A customer review is a product or service review provided by a customer who has purchased it, used it, and provided the feedback depending on their experience with it. In simple words, customer reviews are usually honest opinions about a product or service. Reviews help future potential customers as they give a fair reflection of product quality, shipping, brand credibility, and so on.
Moreover, by displaying highly rated products, you can increase your conversion rates by 380%.
Therefore, there is no doubt that customer reviews are crucial in building trust and social proof for your brand.
The Importance of Reviews
Besides brand credibility and trust, reviews are playing another significant role:
- Unbiased feedback: Sometimes, as a business owner, you might oversee some of the product or service flaws. Customer reviews help you figure out whether there is something wrong that needs to be fixed or improved.
- Customer engagement: With the reviews feature, you allow your customers to interact with your business and see reviews from other customers. This makes the overall experience with your brand more engaging and memorable.
- Brand loyalty: Reviews can help you build loyalty with your repeat customers and provide a community and connection with your brand, instead of only getting a product.
Types of Reviews
- Product reviews – the reviews that customers leave on a specific product.
- Site reviews – the reviews left on the website, referring to the overall brand image.
- Q&A – questions asked by customers on product pages regarding the specific product. These questions can be answered by you or verified buyers.
- Replies – similar to Q&A, you can respond to customers’ feedback with replies and, as a result, strengthen the relationship with them.
How to Set up Reviews on Your Shopify Store
- First, to set up reviews on your website you will need to download a dedicated app from the Shopify App store. Look up for a “Reviews App” collection and choose the one that fits your needs the most from the list.
- Then download it and integrate it into your Shopify store. The integration process is usually automated, and you should be able to access the app’s admin panel shortly. However, some apps, such as Shopify’s Product Reviews, may require manual code changes in your Shopify admin panel.
How to Drive More Sales with Reviews
Now that you are all set with reviews on your website, you can try out these tactics to drive more sales to your Shopify store with reviews:
1. Make it easy to leave reviews
If a customer had a good experience with your product or service, they definitely would leave a positive review. Also, customers who had a bad experience are likely to share their negative experiences with others. Customers that had a bad experience are 2 to 3 times more likely to leave a negative review. Therefore, to maintain the balance, you need to get more positive reviews from your satisfied customers.
How to get a customer who had an excellent experience to leave a review? The answer is easy: make it as easy as possible. For instance, you can have a link or section on your website where customers can leave their reviews. The key is to have as few steps in the review process as possible. You can also send out product review email requests, which we will discuss in the next section.
2. Set up a product review reminder email
Even though your customer had a great experience with your product or service, they do not always remember to leave a positive review. Only one in ten customers that had a great experience leaves a review. Here come product review reminder emails to encourage your customers to share feedback on their experience. If you directly ask your customers to review your product or service, they are more likely to do it.
You may ask how do I send review reminders? The emails can be sent either manually or via an app, which will automatically deliver review requests for you. The additional advantage is that the app will allow customers to leave the review in the email itself, making them more likely to reply.
To give your customers an incentive to respond to your email or review the product, you may offer them a discount in return. It can be done manually or through an app, which will generate a discount code.
3. Google Rich Snippet Optimization
Rich Snippets are normal Google search results with an extra piece of information displayed on top of the list. Typically, this extra data is derived from Structured Data contained in the page’s HTML. The most common Rich Snippets are reviews, recipes, and events. Rich Snippets are more eye-catching than regular search results and result in higher organic CTR. Additionally, snippets can help your potential customers to learn more about your product and understand whether it will suit them.
So how to optimize your listings for Rich Snippets? It will help if you implement the Aggregate Rating markup. In simple words, you have to show Google the structure of your website’s data. You can do so by selecting your rating and inserting it into each page on your website in the HTML. Alternatively, you can use plugins and apps that will do that for you.
4. Reply to All Customer Reviews
Whether your brand gets bashed or praised in reviews, it is crucial to respond to this feedback. You have to maintain a good brand image and solid communication with all of your customers, no matter of positive or negative reviews. This way, you can strengthen the relationship with your customers. Moreover, responding to your customers' reviews can increase your website's SEO. You can use a third-party Shopify app as a communication tool with your customers to avoid any setback in customer service.
Additionally, negative reviews look way more authentic in the customers' eyes as they may reflect common problems with the product that may occur. Your shoppers can judge your brand's credibility by the way you handle critical situations. If your unsatisfied customer gets their issues resolved fast, your potential customers can see that you care about their experience. Never delete or ask a customer to remove negative reviews as it may turn out bad for your brand. The information spreads quickly nowadays, especially with the popularity of social media.
Respond to negative reviews in the most empathetic way as you can. Customers hate receiving generic customer service replies from companies. Therefore, make sure that you give personalized responses and resolve their problems as soon as possible. Even black PR is still PR; therefore, potential shoppers will trust your brand more by seeing your responsiveness to such situations.
5. Google Shopping Integration
Google Shopping is a service provided by Google that lets you feature your product listings when customers search for this product. Similar to Rich Snippets, Google Shopping displays your listings with ratings and product photos in the page preview. The main difference between Google Shopping is that your products will be shown as sponsored ads. Google announced that organic Google Shopping is now free worldwide.
So how to integrate your products with Google Shopping? It would help if you imported your product reviews into Google Shopping using an XML Schema to display your product in the Google Shopping search results. It can be done on your own, such as by following a step-by-step guide, or if your Reviews app supports Google Shopping integration, you can automate the whole process with their help.
Wrapping Up
Kudos to you that you made it to the end! Indeed, there was a lot to cover in this article. Hopefully, you became a pro in setting up reviews for your Shopify store!
Some key points for a recap:
- Make sure that your customers can quickly leave reviews
- Ask your customers to review your products and offer them incentives in return
- Reply to all reviews and engage with your customers
- Optimize your product listings for Rich Snippets and Google Shopping
About an Author
Polina Kulikova is a marketing specialist at Growave. She is passionate about writing engaging content for Shopify merchants and Shopify partners. Her goal is to create helpful resources and educate others on e-commerce topics.
About Growave:
Growave is the all-in-one marketing platform that helps Shopify brands to reach, engage and convert their customers with ease. It offers comprehensive e-commerce solutions designed with your audience in mind, such as Reviews, Wishlists, Loyalty programs, Social Login, Instagram galleries and much more - all under one dashboard and for a great price. Growave is best for growing Shopify businesses who are looking to build engagement, invest in word-of-mouth marketing tools and increase customer retention.