How to Collect Reviews for Your eCommerce Store?

You’ve probably heard that reviews are important for any ecommerce store, but you might need help knowing where to start or how to collect reviews from your customers. It is good to figure out things right from the start. 

Did you know?💡

Surveys show that 95% of consumers read online reviews before they shop. 

The above stats clearly say a customer decides whether to buy a product or not purely based on the product and picture reviews posted by other customers. This shows how collecting reviews are very important for your Ecommerce business.

However, if you are a small business or a startup still muddling over the perfect way to collect reviews, we’re here to help! Here are eight ways to collect reviews for your Ecommerce store so that customers can share their thoughts about your products and services.

1. Send an email to past customers requesting a review.

Asking your customers to leave reviews is a great way to improve your business. In fact, studies have shown that businesses that ask their customers for reviews see an increase in sales! Getting reviews from customers is very important for your Ecommerce business. Reviews are a great way to get more exposure and increase your sales.

So how do you get those reviews through email? You can either ask for them directly or send out review forms to past customers and request them to fill them out. Both of these methods have their pros and cons. Let’s see how both work for collecting product reviews:

• Directly asking for reviews: When you ask your customers for a review, they will know that you want their feedback on your product or service. But this can also be intimidating for some people, especially if they haven’t used the product yet. 
• Sending out review forms: This is a great way to get more customer feedback and improve your business. It allows people who haven’t used your product to share their honest opinion about what they think about it based on their experience with it.

So what are we waiting for? Let’s get those reviews up so everyone can see them! How can you do this?

• Email your past customers to ask for a review.
• Make sure you have permission to email your customer. If they haven’t given you permission, it’s best not to send the request at all.
• Send the email in a timely manner–don’t wait until after Christmas or Black Friday has passed! 
• Be polite and respectful when asking for reviews. This shows that you really care about their feedback and will make them more likely to respond positively.
• Provide offers for those customers who take time to respond to your feedback forms

2. Collect reviews via SMS

We’ve got you covered if you’re looking for a new way to collect reviews for your Ecommerce store.

SMS is a great way to send customer review links or rate their purchasing experience. All you need is a few minutes and the text messaging capability on your mobile number.

We’ve put together this simple guide to help you get started:

1. Set up an account with an SMS platform like BayEngage. 
2. Enter the information about your company name. And the SMS provider will give you a shortened URL (Review forms) and help you send it to your subscribers.
3. Use free SMS templates or create your own with limited characters (up to 300 characters)
4. You can create your own workflow and automate them too.
5. Get instant reports on your SMS campaigns

3. Working with influencers for reviews

Influencers are now a key part of any marketing strategy. They can reach customers better and build loyalty among common people. Their reviews are more important to them as they trust them better. The company will benefit from the best influencers; the key is finding the right person for your business. 

Instagram, Facebook, and Youtube are very popular platforms for influencers to review a product, and you can also see other people commenting on their videos on the same product. This can improve the brand’s reputation and is a great way to collect customer reviews.

As we all know, influencers have large audiences and are trusted sources of information. They can help you promote your brand and collect reviews for your Ecommerce business.

Here’s how you can do this:

• Find influencers with a relevant audience. Choosing people who will be interested in the product or service you’re offering is more important than randomly choosing someone.
• Once you’ve identified some potential candidates, reach out via email or social media–it’s best not to call them directly as this may seem pushy!
• Do a study about that person and choose someone who fits your budget.
• Make it easy for them by providing all necessary information prior (e.g., links where they can find images, coupons, etc.) 
• Then ask them to develop a video strategy and post it on their social media pages.

4. Add a testimonial section

You can use testimonials on your website to encourage customers to leave reviews. This will motivate the customers, and you can collect more reviews from different customers. Testimonials are a great way to show off your products and services, which will help increase conversions and help you sell more products. 

Here are a few things you should keep in mind to stay genuine with your customers:

• Make it easy for customers to leave reviews.
• Make sure the testimonials are relevant to your business.
• Be sure the testimonials are genuine and from real customers, not friends or family members.
• Keep the testimonial section up-to-date so people can see what others think of your products or services when purchasing!

If you have a physical store, asking for reviews in person is another good option. You could also give away a gift card or discount code as an incentive for leaving a review on Google or your website.

Suppose you have an ecommerce store with no physical presence where customers cannot contact staff members directly (for example, Shopify stores and Amazon). In that case, using pop-ups will be one way that might work well for getting more reviews from shoppers visiting the site.

5. Use review tools to collect reviews for your Ecommerce store.

Collecting reviews is a multi-faceted process; you should use various methods to get the most out of it. Some channels may be more effective than others, but there’s only a way to tell which ones will work best once you try them out.

You need to use different channels to collect reviews to reach as many customers as possible. For example, if someone leaves a review on their mobile device (which many people do), it will only show up on desktop computers if they go back and edit their review later. So make sure it’s optimized for mobile phones and desktops as well!

To simplify it, you can choose a review tool to collect reviews for your ecommerce store. They take care of everything! Right from requesting customers via email, sms and embedding them on your website to indexing them on google and optimizing it for all devices. 

Here are some of the best tools to collect reviews for your Ecommerce store!

Top 5 Tools to Collect Reviews for Your Ecommerce Store

1. BayReviews

BayReviews is a review tool exclusively designed to collect product and picture reviews. It’s one of the best Yotpo alternatives in the market that can help you collect 12X more reviews. It is best suited for all kinds of business. BayReviews also helps to index all the reviews on Google to drive more traffic to your products and services.

Features:

• Suitable for small businesses
• Collect reviews in real-time
• Integrate with other E-commerce platforms like Shopify, BigCommerce, etc.
• Affordable
• Supportive customer support
• Index your reviews on Google
• Create Q&A for customers
• Easy to set up

2. Birdseye

Birdeye is another review-collecting app to collect customer feedback. It helps you with collecting reviews in real time. Also helps you collect reviews across all channels like websites, social media, surveys, etc.

Features:

• Review marketing
• Affordable pricing
• User-friendly
• Good customer support

3. Loox

Loox is another review platform that is a great competitor to Yotpo in terms of optimization. It is also one of the best market review tools for collecting and picture reviews. It is also a Google review partner like BayEngage. So you can easily index your product reviews on Google easily and get traffic to your website organically.

Features:

• Easy setup
• Google review partner
• Display your brand beautifully
• Collect more picture reviews
• User-friendly
• Good customer support

4. Reviews.io

Reviews.io is a great platform for collecting reviews, and it is best suitable for new and small companies as it is affordable with all basic features. This is popular as you can collect reviews in the form of videos for your Ecommerce store.

Features:

• Collect video reviews
• Collect product reviews
• Good UI
• Google ratings
• Affordable

5. Trust Pilot

Trust Pilot helps you to collect reviews easily and display reviews on Google. This is best suitable for all businesses as it has a user-friendly interface and is affordable. You can customize the design of the review forms (pop-ups). You can also integrate with other Ecommerce platforms online.

Features:

• Verified reviews 
• Personalized review request forms
• Best customer service
• Ensure authenticity

Wrapping Up!

I hope this article has given you some ideas on how to collect reviews for your ecommerce store. Many tools can help, but it’s important to remember that they won’t do all the work for you. 

The most effective way is still contacting customers directly and asking them if they would be willing to leave feedback on their experience with your company or product. But in today’s busy world, we are good with text messages and emails, and that’s why we need alternatives to get to know what customers think about our products and services.

Choose the right way that works well for your Ecommerce store!