Social proof is one of the most important factors in modern consumers’ buying decisions. One of the best ways of providing such social proof is to add customer reviews to your website. These will help boost your sales by convincing consumers of the quality of your offering as well as conveying key information to help them make an informed decision.
Customer reviews can be a real game-changer. They not only provide tangible evidence of the quality of your products or services but also connect with potential buyers at an emotional level that is going to make them more willing to buy. This is especially useful for e-commerce businesses that sell products online, as customers are not able to physically sample the product before purchase. Reviews help to provide reassurance against that. Additionally, adding customer reviews to your website can help improve your search engine optimization (SEO) rankings.
How to implement
- Ask for reviews: Reach out to your customers via email and ask them to write a review of your products or services on a service like Google Reviews or Trustpilot. You can also reach out on social media or even in-person if more appropriate. If you have the resources to do so, you can offer an incentive for leaving a review such an Amazon gift voucher, although this can come across as insincere if executed badly.
- Choose a prominent place to feature the reviews: Reviews should be positioned in prominent places across your website; exactly where is up to you, but essential pages should include the homepage, product pages (with specific reviews for each product if available), and at the checkout page as a final nudge.
- Add the reviews: Adding the reviews to the website can often be done via a plugin or widget provided by the reviews site in the case of sites like Trustpilot or Google Reviews. Otherwise just ask your web developer to add them.
- Promote your reviews: Don’t just leave them on the website, use your reviews throughout your marketing material such as email marketing campaigns, social posts, and so on.
- Keep them fresh: Monitor the reviews and make sure to keep adding and updating them to keep them fresh. If using a plugin from a site like Trustpilot this is a little easier.