Why are customer reviews important?
Did you recently purchase something online where a review influenced your purchase decision? For most online users, the answer is yes.
Have you experienced shopping online where a lack of reviews for a particular product or service gave you second thoughts about your purchase? As discerning individuals, we want to make sure we have done our homework before making a purchase. In today’s digital era, the opinions of fellow consumers play a huge part in deciding whether a sale goes through.
In a recent 2015 Nielsen research report on global trust in advertising where 30,000 respondents from 60 countries were polled, 69% of them said that they would base their purchase decisions on reading customers reviews posted online. And 70% of the respondents in the 30 to 49 years age group said they would read online reviews before making a purchase decision.
In a 2015 Brookfield report on Global Mobility Trends, 71% of International Assignees are between the ages of 30 – 49 years. Correlating these statistics to Nielsen’s 2015 report, customers of moving companies are in the age group where customer reviews are important in helping them make a purchasing decision.
How are you responding to the needs of your customers in this age group when it comes to reading online reviews? Are you making it easy for them to access the reviews about your company and moving services?
How are you using your customer reviews?
Whether it’s via a survey form that is handed out at the end of a move, or an email or phone call from your team or an appointed third party, I believe we’re all collecting customer feedback/ reviews in some way, shape and form.
The important question is, “Are we using these reviews to increase our sales conversions and drive new business?”
Most moving companies collect customer feedback mainly to assess if anything has gone wrong with the move. If the feedback is a good one, it is archived and the huge marketing potential of the feedback is lost.
Some companies feature a selection of their best reviews on the company website. The problem with this approach is that the savvy customer today will know that these companies chose only their best reviews to showcase. What about the rest of the other not so great reviews?
So how do you increase sales conversions with your customer reviews?
1) Showcase your reviews!
With 69% of online users reading customer reviews before making a purchase decision, it makes perfect sense to engage these users online. The question then is where do you want to showcase your reviews.
You could choose to showcase your reviews on your own website but how likely are the reviews going to influence your potential customers when they know you only showcase the best reviews. Besides, think about the huge efforts required to constantly update your website with the latest reviews.
Consider taking advantage of an external review site. Customers are more likely to check independent review sites rather than your own website when they are looking to read reviews about you.
2) Showcase both positive & negative reviews
Whether they’re positive or negative, it’s important to be transparent as this helps you establish credibility. You can turn a negative review into a perfect marketing opportunity by showing how you accepted your wrong and rectified the situation in a public space.
Research from Reevoo indicates that the presence of negative reviews increases a websites trust factor, and can contribute to a conversion uptick of 67 percent!
Contrary to popular belief, accepting your faults and not deleting the negative reviews can actually help increase your overall sales conversions. Sure, you may have some unreasonable customers who will post scathing reviews; well, at least you’ll know what they’re writing and if the site you’ve chosen leaves you with the final say, you will put the matter to rest once you’ve posted your management comments.
Showcasing your negative feedback can do wonders for building trust. It’s not about presenting an image of faultless perfection to your potential customers, it’s about building trust and establishing credibility. Trust isn’t built on a facade, it’s built through honesty. That’s why you should include all reviews, good and bad.
3) Consolidate your reviews in one single location
Picture this far-too-common situation: You’re plugging along in your business without any efforts placed in accumulating online reviews. By some good fortune, you just happened to have accumulated a handful of positive or neutral reviews from past customers on a few independent review sites. All’s good, right?
Now imagine that a disgruntled customer posts a scathing review on one of the review sites – and one on which you have very few reviews. That single negative review now shows up at the top of the search rankings for your business name, and gives your business an overall rating of 1 star out of 5.
Had you taken steps to encourage reviews and showcase them collectively on a single specialised review platform, one negative review probably wouldn’t cause any dent to the online reputation of your company. Plus, you would have had the opportunity to post your management comments, demonstrating your commitment and putting the matter to rest.
But as it stands, you’re now left scurrying to encourage more positive reviews to dilute the impact of that single negative one.
4) Marketing widgets to showcase latest reviews
And if you do decide to consolidate all your customer reviews on an external review site, you want to make sure that they have the tools to allow you to showcase the collected reviews on your own website.
Have you visited a hotel website with a Tripadvisor widget located at a corner of their site showcasing the latest reviews of the hotel? You want to have that on your website as well. The ability to showcase reviews collected on an independent review site will definitely help increase sales conversions as it lends credibility to your moving company.
And while you are at it, why not showcase your arsenal of customer reviews on your emails as well.
Having a trust sign / banner from an independent review site in your email signature lends credibility and makes it easy to redirect your potential customers to your arsenal of reviews and increase sales conversions.
5) SEO: Be where your customers are looking
Google rewards a website that features customer feedback as its search algorithm favors fresh renewable content written by real people. This generates authentic SEO value and helps bring your review page up the search rankings, putting you right where your customers are looking.
As long as your review pages are Search Optimized and you’re constantly adding content by adding reviews, you will climb up the search rankings fairly quickly. Collecting all your reviews on one single platform will lend credibility when you’re compared with the independent review sites/ forums with a smaller number of reviews.
Also, with enough reviews, Google will be able to better piece together and display these data snippets. This will increase click-through rates since customers will have a slightly higher implicit trust factor built into how they think about your website. According to an Econsultancy article about the benefits of customer reviews, research from Distilled shows that reviews that become rich snippet data in search results can result in a 10-20 percent increase in conversions.
Start Increasing Sales Conversions with your Customer Feedback
In an era where your potential customers are looking to read reviews before making a purchase decision, you must guide these customers along, making it easy for them to find your reviews online.
Reviews are essentially word-of-mouth marketing, a relatively inexpensive and effective way to increase sales conversions and drive new business your way.
Online customer feedback and reviews are essential ingredients in the digital marketing mix if you want to increase conversions and revenue.
So start building up your arsenal of reviews now.
Let us help you
MoveAide is a cloud based word of mouth marketing platform designed specifically for the moving industry. We specialise in helping moving companies around the world:
Increase sales conversions
Take control of online conversations
Be where potential customers are looking
Here’s a 2 minute video that will give you a quick snapshot of how MoveAide works. The system is fully automated and cloud based. No apps or hardware required.
Ready to take a test spin? We’re offering a 30 days free trial and all you’ll need to drop me an email at wendy@moveaide.com and I’ll be in touch to set this up for you.
If you’d like a system demo or a quick chat before you decide on the trial, we can also schedule a Skype call when you have a spot in your calendar. All we’ll need is 25 minutes to take you for a quick tour.
I look forward to hearing from you.
