How to 10x Your Product Reviews on Shopify
Like us, you may have been struggling to receive verified product reviews that can be a critical selling point for any business. It’s a chicken before the egg situation. You need reviews to help drive sales, but you need sales to help drive reviews. It sucks to be missing out on sales knowing how much better you could be selling if your great products were also accompanied with authentic reviews.
Those 5 gold stars under your products are priceless. I don’t know about you, but I find that while I’m shopping online, those stars and peoples comments make a huge difference in my decision to purchase. A report conducted by ‘power reviews’ found that 86% of consumers rely on reviews before making a purchasing decision.
There’s nothing worse than spending time and money to attract a customer, have them navigate your website, show interest in a product to only abandon the sale because there weren’t reviews to base their decision on.
Getting this part of your marketing automation right is essential for not only showing the delight of your current fans to potential new customers, but it also gives you valuable feedback on how you could potentially enhance your offering.
In this blog we want to help you increase 3 very important aspects of online selling:
Verified product reviews
Conversion rate
Organic traffic
By drawing upon these metrics, you will achieve greater sales and create a better experience for your customers to buy with confidence and security.
It doesn’t seem like that long ago that developers would tell you not to bother putting in a reviews section on your product pages as “no one uses it”. The game has changed and you need to make sure you are up with the play.
The One App to Judge Them All!
Judge Me www.Judge.Me is the most effective review generating system we have ever used while also being extremely cost effective. They have a free tier which is great in its own right, but if you want to unlock the ‘Awesome’ features you are only looking at $15US per month.
Once the app is downloaded onto your store (Shopify, Big Commerce, Woo Commerce), the setup is extremely easy. The Judge.Me system will ask you where you would like your customer reviews and star ratings to be displayed and then the app will automate the implementation based on your preference.
If you are already using another system to generate reviews, transferring your current reviews across to Judge.Me is extremely easy using their import tool, so no data will be lost.
There are a range of different options to make the widgets look the best for your site while also creating automated messages to your customers that fit your branding. We would highly recommend investing in the ‘Awesome’ features option so you can tailor the look to fit your business.
The Game Changer
Now I know what you are thinking. Displaying customer reviews in an athletically pleasing manner, isn’t exactly ecommerce wizardry. Where Judge Me absolutely rips up is in its email automation. Based on a predefined timing trigger, Judge Me will email your customers an email asking for a review. The review can then be completed by the customer without even needing to leave the E-mail. Taking out the step of making the customer go back to the site to leave a review is a game changer. This feature radically increased the amount of reviews we get across all brands we look after.
Verified & With No Carrot
While incentivising your customers with discounts on future orders can work, we believe that if the customer likes the product enough, they will leave a review without needing a reward. This also ensures that the reviews are honest and don’t need to be flagged as ‘Incentivised’.
When we decided to begin using Judge Me, the change in reviews coming through our websites was noticeably different. It seemed as though every other sale was resulting in another review, when previously there was no easy way for people to even express their satisfaction in the product. People are busy and no matter how much they have enjoyed your product. Getting them to stop and give it some love is tough.
When a customer leaves a review after purchasing from your site the system automatically labels them as ‘Verified’. These are the reviews you want. You can’t fake these reviews by getting old mate to jump on and say how awesome you are.
As more reviews are completed, buyers will have access to view these on each product which will increase conversions, as reviews help ease purchasing decision barriers which may have held back buyers before. Having product reviews on your product pages are excellent for these reasons, but they can also help in getting buyers to the product page in the first place…
The Google Shopping Mall…
Unless you have been living under a rock, it’s no secret that Google Shopping is a very important part of every ecommerce marketing strategy.
Google Shopping has fundamentally changed the way people browse for products online. Customers no longer need to browse through sites to find what they are after. They can get shown a raft of options from a number of different online stores all from one page by doing a simple Google Search.
This is where your review strategy can be amplified in both your paid and organic searches on Google. Once your website has 50 or more verified reviews you can apply to active additional marketing features in the Google Merchant Centre. Once activated your reviews will now in your Google Shopping promotions as well as your organic search results.
Now I don’t know about you guys but my instinct is to immediately click on the option that showcases those magical golden stars! You instantly know whether customers like this product which as mentioned before is a contributing factor to over 80% of individuals purchase decisions.
Once we heard the target number of 50, we made it our goal to get there within a month. Sending follow up emails and ensuring the automation was operating smoothly, we sure enough ended up with 50+ reviews. Now this doesn’t need to be 50 reviews for ONE product – as long as there are 50 total verified reviews site wide, your entitled to get the additional features on Google Merchant Centre.
Conclusion
We know it can be daunting to ask customers to review your product – your basically signing yourself up for a comedy central roast. Except you need to remember that as long as you believe in your products, others will too. Reviews are the next step in your product selling journey and if you haven’t considered it then your time is now. Judge Me allows complete automation of your reviewing process and by the time you build up your review portfolio you’ll be eyeing the google shopping bar in no time.
If you think you may need help setting this up or managing your reviews, get in contact with us now. We’re here to ensure your website is optimized to sell effectively!
Hot Tips
Download ‘Judge Me’ NOW! This app has a completely free version that will allow you to set up email automations and begin collecting review data immediately.
Reach Out to previous customers requesting a review as the more reviews that come in result in a more informed buying decision for potential customers.
Focus on that magic number 50 to gain access to the Google Shopping feed reviews
Ensure that the reviews on your product page are synced and up to date, utilising each review is key. If the review applies to multiple products, use Judge Me to create review groups of products.
Use these reviews on your home page loud and proud for buyers to see.
Most of all, don’t worry about putting your products out there for reviews, if you believe in them – so will others.