Online customer reviews are imperative in today’s e-commerce world. With customers having the ability to conduct their own research and making purchase decisions long before they ever come into contact with your brand, the more information that you can provide at their fingertips via the touch of their mouse or keyboard, the better. And if you don’t think online reviews are important, you might want to think again. Various studies have found that nearly 90% of consumers make a purchase decision based on what others have said about your product or service online.
Oftentimes, business owners get leery of requesting reviews from their customers, as they fear that negative reviews will get posted. And unfortunately, no matter how great your business might be, it is inevitable at some point that you will experience a negative review from a customer. It’s simply a fact of human nature and mistakes happen. But, a negative review, though unfortunate, should be viewed as an opportunity, and the risk of a negative review here or there should not deter an organization from encouraging customers to leave reviews whenever possible.
How to get those online reviews
Soliciting reviews from your customers does not need to be a difficult or time-consuming activity. On the other hand, the process can’t be left by the wayside either or left as a low priority task. The act of requesting reviews and responding to customers that take the time to do so needs to be a high-level priority in any organization whether they be an e-commerce seller, a brick and mortar retailer, or a service provider in any industry.

1. The most important step in encouraging online customer reviews is in ensuring that your customers have a place to leave those reviews. For most businesses, this means that you should have pages/sites set up on Facebook, Yelp, and Google, at a minimum. In most cases, customers will choose to leave their comments for you in these spaces. And not only are these sites a great place for customers to leave reviews, but they are also great sites for you to further educate your customers about your business.
2. The next step is in understanding when to ask for a review and there are several different ways you can go about this. For your e-commerce site and even your brick and mortar location, it is always smart to have an online badge or checkout signage that tells customers that you are located on these sites and that their review will be encouraged. Though it is always better to ask for the review, these badges and signs create a visual reminder that many internet-savvy customers will notice, and remember.
3. Incentives provide a great way for you to encourage customers to leave a review. For example, if you are in the catering industry, consider an online campaign over a month where you ask customers to leave reviews, and in exchange, you enter their name into a drawing for a high-end bottle of wine. At the end of the campaign period, randomly select a winner from the list of reviews, and follow-through by rewarding the prize. If you are a savvy marketer or business owner, you can also leverage this as an opportunity to take a photo of the winner with their prize, and use this on your social media channels as content.
4. Finally, be sure to respond to every review that you receive, whether positive or negative. For those positive reviews, taking the time to thank the customer for their efforts will be appreciated and will show other customers that you are paying attention. And for those negative reviews, this provides you with the opportunity to turn around a bad situation. Your other customers will notice your efforts here too.

Ultimately, customers want the opportunity to voice their opinions about their experience with your business. So, be sure to provide them with that voice. Over time, you will start to receive more reviews and your customers will appreciate knowing that they are heard. Further, your future customers will feel good doing business with an organization that cares about them.
Mystic Media has developed an easy to implement process for our small business clients to encourage customer ratings and reviews. If you woul d like to learn more about it please feel welcome to give us a call (866) 764-2877.