Torben Baumdick is the Founder & CEO of BAUMDICK GmbH.
There are numerous reviews for most products on Amazon. Online store owners can only dream of such high numbers. What they do have, however, is the opportunity to generate reviews on Google. This potential is hardly ever exploited. Yet customers want reviews and tend to order elsewhere if none are available to them. Here’s how to get customers to review your business on Google and other online sites:
1. Set up automated e-mails.
The simplest option is to set up an automatic email dispatch so that the customer is reminded of the rating about a week after receiving their product. This e-mail can contain a link that opens a form in the event of dissatisfaction, in which the reasons for this can be entered. As a store owner, you can react quickly and perhaps offer the customer a voucher. A second link is used for satisfaction and leads directly to the rating on Google.
2. Ask for a rating upon delivery of the product.
Another option is a card that you put in the package with the goods. On both sides of the card, include a QR code. One stands for satisfaction, the other for dissatisfaction. In the case of dissatisfaction, the QR code again leads to a form, while satisfaction takes you directly to Google. The sides of the card can be green and red for better recognition.
3. Have your products tested.
If you want to get really good and detailed customer reviews, you can send products for free to the target group for testing. This comes at a cost but can be well worth the effort. You can ask your own customers who have already bought a similar product, or you can turn to groups with common interests on the Internet. If you run a tool store, for example, you could offer a Facebook group of do-it-yourselfers the latest cordless screwdriver for testing.
4. Call the customer.
A very direct way to convince customers of a rating is a phone call. In the beginning, you should choose customers who have already ordered several times and are obviously satisfied with your store. I recommend a short conversation in which you inquire about whether everything was OK with the goods and shipping. At the end, you can casually ask if the customer has already given a rating on Google. In my experience, customers are usually positively surprised by such calls.
5. Don’t buy ratings.
I do not recommend that online store owners resort to purchased reviews. Apart from the fact that it is hardly morally justifiable, you will only receive some generic texts from random people. Purchased reviews are usually vague and sound formulaic. For this reason, they are easy to recognize as fake. Customers today are educated about reviews. If they seem glossed over, they will avoid the online store. Once mistrust is established, the operator suffers permanent damage.
Online store owners should remember that they don’t need thousands of five-star reviews to be successful. In my experience, the magic limit at which the conversion rate increases is just 50 reviews. This should be manageable with your own customers.
In summary, there are different ways to collect customer reviews as an online store owner. On the one hand, your customers will likely be pleasantly surprised by your additional interest in their satisfaction, and on the other hand, the reviews spread trust for potential customers in the future. You can call it a win-win situation.
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