Everything You Need to Know About Online Customer Reviews

What is a customer review?

A customer review is a feedback provided by a consumer about their experience with a product or service. It typically includes an evaluation of quality, performance, and overall customer satisfaction. They can be found on various platforms such as ecommerce websites, social media, and review sites.

They help potential customers make informed decisions and provide businesses with valuable insights to improve their offerings.

Collecting and managing reviews

Collecting and managing online customer reviews is essential for building trust and improving your business. Reviews influence your online reputation and offer insights for enhancing your products and services. Here are the best methods to earn reviews through great service and customer experience, and effective ways to request them.

Best methods to earn online customer reviews

✨ Deliver outstanding customer experience: Ensure that your products and services meet or exceed customer expectations. And when you succeed— encourage satisfied customers to leave honest reviews.

✨ Enhance ecommerce customer experience: Create a seamless and enjoyable customer journey from browsing to post-purchase. A great experience encourages positive feedback.

Check the ecommerce checkout survey template ⤵️

Use this template

✨ Simplify the review process: Provide clear instructions and direct links to review platforms to make it easy for customers to give feedback.

✨ Engage on social media: Interact with your audience on social media and encourage them to share their experiences.

✨ Offer incentives: Provide small rewards like discounts or coupons for customers who leave reviews while ensuring compliance with review platform guidelines.

How to Request Online Customer Reviews

🙏 Use customer satisfaction surveys: Take advantage of your other occasions when your customers provide feedback. You can add an invitation to leave a review to your NPS or CSAT surveys.

➡️ Read how Pranamat uses NPS surveys to boost their social proof on Facebook 🧘‍♀️

🙏 Personalized emails: Send customized emails to customers after a purchase, asking them to share their experience. Mention the specific product or service to make the request more relevant.

🙏 Thank you pages: Redirect customers to a thank you page after a purchase that includes a request for a review.

🙏 Receipts and invoices: Add a review request with a direct link to the review site on receipts and invoices.

🙏 Customer Support interactions: Train your support team to ask for reviews during interactions with satisfied customers.

🙏 Website pop-ups: Use subtle pop-ups on your website to request reviews from customers who have completed a purchase.

How to make use of your customer reviews

Using positive reviews in your business can boost your brand reputation and attract new customers. This means showcasing testimonials and incorporating those online customer reviews into your marketing.

Showcase testimonials

Display customer reviews as testimonials on your website and marketing materials. This way, you can highlight specific positive experiences to build credibility and attract new customers.

Use visual elements like customer photos or videos to make testimonials more impactful. Embed good reviews on the homepage and product pages, or create a testimonials page. Use quotes to prominently feature standout comments.

Share positive reviews on your platforms

Share glowing reviews on your social media channels, email newsletters, and other communication platforms. This will showcase customer satisfaction and encourage others to leave feedback.

Respond to all reviews

Respond to both positive and negative reviews promptly. Thank customers for their feedback and address any concerns raised. This shows that you value their input and are committed to improving their experience.

Treat online reviews as customer feedback

Use online reviews as a source of customer feedback. Analyze the open-text reviews to identify common themes and areas for improvement.

How do customer reviews impact your online store?

97% of your prospective customers read online reviews before purchasing

We intuitively know that a lot of people read positive and negative reviews before grabbing credit. However, you may not see the magnitude of that number. Just 3% of consumers say they 'never' read online reviews before making purchase decisions. The numbers vary depending on what you’re selling.

The average number of third-party review sites a person reads before trusting a local business. Source

For an ecommerce site owner, that means tracking customer reviews, both on your own website and external platforms such as Google reviews, Trustpilot, and others.

If you’re not collecting reviews on your own ecommerce platform, now is a good time to get started. No matter if you’re using Shopify, BigCommerce, or something else, there are countless plugins that you can grab to collect online reviews.

In other industries, such as hospitality, customers will be more inclined to look up quality reviews on websites like Yelp, Google, or Facebook. However, in e-commerce, you can have a leg up and host positive online reviews on your very own online store.

The more reviews you get, the better

The best time to start collecting online reviews? Probably yesterday.

You don’t want to just collect the positive reviews. Their number also matters. Having a 5-star average rating doesn’t matter much if you got that average from just a few reviews.

An example of Duolingo's App Store reviews

And if you’re wondering how many online customer reviews are enough, there’s a pretty good estimate. You’ll need an average of 20 reviews on a product for them to be credible. So, if you don’t already have an initiative for collecting ecommerce reviews, it’s a good idea to get moving.

It’s well-known that unhappy customers are mostly willing to leave a review, while happy customers aren’t inclined to do so. If you have no authentic customer reviews at all, make a conscious effort to reach out to all customers and ask for a review—just so you can get to 40 more quickly.

Bad ratings can literally kill your business

If you think that customers will let you slide if your products have a few bad reviews, think again. Of course, disgruntled customers are more likely to leave negative feedback but if you let them pile up, your revenue is bound to plummet.

The stats say that only 2% of customers would be willing to purchase from a business with an average rating of two stars or less.

While keeping an eye on many products in an ecommerce store can be a bit more challenging, you should track your worst performers. As soon as you see the average rating drop, it’s a good time to investigate and see what can be improved and how.‍

Potential customers trust your existing reviews as if they came from family or a friend

As we explained above, there’s a good reason why today’s consumers are skeptical about messages coming from businesses. If you claim that your hiking boots are 20% more durable than the competition, it’s a bold claim but one that won’t move any mountains. A genuine review from a customer who bought them already - a completely different story.

The statistics differ from source to source and platform to platform, but the overwhelming majority trust reviews before making a purchase. According to BrightLocal, in the 18-34 age group, 91% of customers trust an online review the same way they would trust a family member or a friend.

The secret to achieving these kinds of results is making your reviews authentic. While there are fake reviews out there (an estimated 30% and more), you can make yours look authentic so that they become your ultimate salesperson.

The best place to get started is to let customers add their own videos and images. If you can take one lesson from giants like Amazon, let this be it - potential customers love browsing through user-generated content.

In fact, if a review has authentic product images and videos, your customers are 65% more likely to trust that it’s genuine.

Besides your customers’ reviews, potential buyers read your responses too

When considering customer reviews in e-commerce, most businesses focus on the reviews themselves, which is natural. However, it’s also a great practice to respond to customer reviews.

How many of them? Well, probably as many as possible. 89% of customers are highly likely to purchase from an ecommerce website that responds to all of their customer inputs, even a negative review.

And if you’re not convinced by the number above, here’s another one: 57% of the surveyed customers (from the research above) stated that they would be unlikely to shop from a business that doesn’t respond to customer reviews.

While you may be tempted to respond only to authentic reviews that are putting you in a negative light, it’s a good practice to set aside some time each week to respond to all incoming reviews publicly. It’s a small task that can have a huge return on investment on your overall online store performance.

How to verify your ecommerce reviews

Ensuring authentic and verified online reviews is key to building trust and making informed purchasing decisions. That means spotting fake reviews and using third-party verification services.

Spotting fake reviews

It will help you avoid misinformation. Look at time stamps; a bunch of very positive reviews posted at the same time may be too good to be true. Look for generic language or over-the-top praise with no specific details about the product or service.

Another red flag is the number of reviews from new or inactive accounts. Fakes often come from accounts with little or no activity. Look for verified purchase badges, as these indicate the reviewer actually bought the product.

Read through multiple positive and negative reviews to see if there are common themes. Reviews with poor grammar or repetitive language can be suspect.

Third-party verification services

Third-party verification services can add an extra layer of authenticity to your social proof. Platforms use various verification methods, such as purchase verification and identity checks. For example, some services use blockchain technology to create an immutable record of reviews, making it harder for sellers to manipulate feedback.

These services help build consumer trust by only showing genuine feedback. They also help businesses by highlighting areas for improvement based on real customer experiences.

How Survicate can help you collect and analyze customer reviews

Although you might not have a direct influence on online customer reviews, you can actively encourage your customers to share their opinions on Google reviews, Facebook, or other third-party review sites.

Using Survicate's satisfaction surveys as a hook can help you in two ways. You'll be able to directly reach your customers with the request and initially categorize them with survey logic. This way, you'll only invite customers who showed a high level of satisfaction with their experience.

As much weight as they have on purchasing decisions, reviews are also valuable pieces of qualitative feedback for your e-commerce website. Now, we know how tedious reading reviews can be. To make it easier, you can try out our new product, Insights Hub, which centralizes feedback from all your connected sources (as well as .csv files) and turns it into actionable insights automatically in no time.

Worth having a look, isn't it? So, why don't you sign up for our 10-day free trial? We unlock all of Survicate's Best Plan features for you to help you make the decision.Try Survicate now.