Consumers trust peer reviews more than anything else when they’re deciding whether or not to make a purchase. Having high-quality reviews and ratings is crucial for any business that wants to increase sales and grow its customer base.
However, it can be difficult to maintain the right balance of quality and consistency. If you’re not willing to invest time, energy, and resources into improving your company’s user experience, you may as well give up on having great customer service from the get-go.
However, if you take action now by implementing some basic user experience tips in your eCommerce shop, you can grow your business and acquire more loyal customers over time. Are you convinced? Here are five good reasons why you should care about your review and rating policies.
Quick Background
What Are Online Ratings?
Online ratings and reviews are like a customer’s personal, written feedback about your brand. They’re often used alongside the product images and information but are usually displayed on the same page.
Whether you display them on your product pages or your store’s homepage, you’ll want to make sure that your ratings and reviews are easy for your customers to find. Additionally, you can also use them as an opportunity to solicit more detailed feedback from your customers.
By asking questions, allowing for multiple answers, and allowing for comments, you can get more detailed information about your product and your company. This can also be used to collect feedback on how your company is doing overall and what you can improve on.
History of Online Ratings
Online ratings and reviews are a relatively new phenomenon. Time-honored forms of customer feedback, such as word-of-mouth, were sufficient enough to get most businesses by. However, the internet has changed the way that consumers interact with brands.
People want to be able to see, feel, and try the products that they buy before they decide to purchase. With online ratings and reviews now a common practice, you might also be wondering when they first appeared.
Online ratings and reviews date back to the early days of the internet, when dial-up was the standard and bandwidth was not as abundant as it is today. Online ratings and reviews have been around for a majority of the internet’s existence, though it wasn’t until the late ’90s and early ’00s that they became a more popular practice.
What are Online Reviews
Online reviews are probably the most familiar type of customer feedback. They’re often displayed at the top of a product page, along with product images, attributes, and other details. Online reviews are written by actual customers who have tried the product and are either satisfied or unsatisfied with the outcome.
This can be a great way for consumers to share their experience with other shoppers, boosting your product’s sales and improving your overall ratings and reviews.
History of Online Reviews
Online reviews are the modern-day version of customer feedback, with one major difference: they’re written by actual customers, rather than just friends and family. With online reviews, you want to make sure that the reviews that you’re displaying are genuine and representative of your overall level of service.
You can check for this by looking at your reviews, checking reviews from competitors, and even asking customers for their reviews on your product page. If you see reviews from customers who have purchased from your competitors, or who have asked to be removed from your list, this is a clear sign that you need to fix something.
If you have genuine, helpful reviews from your customers, make sure you display them on your product pages.
6 Good Reasons To Care
1. Good Ratings And Reviews Are Rare
One of the best ways to increase sales and grow your online presence is by using social media platforms to drive traffic to your eCommerce website. However, the only way you’ll succeed in doing this is if potential customers can find you.
One of the most important ways to do this is by sharing reviews and ratings on various platforms like Google and Facebook. If you find that your ratings and reviews are low, this could be a sign that you aren’t leveraging the appropriate channels to drive traffic to your store.
2. Build Trust
Trust is one of the most important factors that influence whether or not a consumer will purchase a product or service. Having high ratings and reviews not only improves the user experience of your eCommerce store but can also increase your trust level with potential customers.
3. Protect Consumers From Fraud
One of the most important reasons why you should care about your rating and review policies is that they protect consumers from fraudulent businesses. It’s important to remember that most eCommerce businesses will have a handful of low-rated reviews or one-star reviews and five-star reviews.
With so many different types of reviews and ratings, it can be easy to miss the general trends and patterns of what’s happening online. If you find that most of your high-rated reviews are from a very small minority of customers, it could be a sign that your business isn’t holding up to the standards of other customers.
4. Inform Users About Quality Assurance
High-quality customer reviews and ratings can also help you inform your customers about your quality assurance process. By publishing customer reviews and ratings, you can let your customers know if the products they receive are of high quality.
This can help you avoid receiving complaints about bad products and allow you to focus your efforts on improving the overall quality of your products and services.
5. Improve User Experience Over Time
The best way to get started improving your user experience is to start with your rating and review policies. If you find that your policies are lacking, this is a great opportunity to start over.
6. The New Form of Marketing
Many businesses will tell you that they aren’t concerned with reviews and ratings, but they need to be. No matter what your industry is, there are a few things you can do to take advantage of reviews and ratings and grow your business.
Organic online reviews and ratings are just one of those things. After all, there are only so many ways that you can improve the product before it stops being unique and new. Having the ability to generate new reviews and ratings is a great way to offer something new and fresh to your customers.
Value Both Online Reviews and Ratings
As a retailer, you’re going to get a wide range of reviews and ratings from your customers. While some reviews and ratings will be five-star, glowing experiences, others might be a one-star review and a series of neutral stars.
While you don’t want to ignore the negative reviews and ratings, you also don’t want to fixate on them either. You want to make sure that you’re prioritizing the ones that are positive and constructive.
This balance between positive and negative reviews and ratings can be tricky, especially if your online sales are still new.
How to Improve Online Reviews and Ratings?
If you’re still wondering why you should care about your review and rating policies, the good news is that it’s easier than you think to implement these practices in your eCommerce shop. First, you want to make sure that your product pages are easy for customers to find and navigate. You can do this by displaying your ratings and reviews on your product pages so that customers can easily find and read them.
Next, you want to make sure that your ratings and reviews are genuine, helpful, and representative of your overall service level. You can do this by asking your customers to leave online reviews, and making sure that the ones you’re displaying are. You can also use these tips to help improve your overall ratings and reviews on your eCommerce platform.
With these tips in mind, you can ensure that your review and rating policies are as great as they can be.
Bottom Line
With the appropriate customer review and rating policies, you can leverage the power of peer reviews to build trust, inform users about quality assurance, and improve user experience over time. If you find that your ratings and reviews are low, this could be a sign that you aren’t leveraging the appropriate channels to drive traffic to your store.
If this is the case, you may want to consider partnering with a third-party platform to boost your online presence. Once you have better customer engagement, you can focus on boosting other areas of your online presence including your product page.
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