No matter how great your ad or landing page is, sometimes your prospects need that extra push before they become customers. People like to know what they’re buying before they make a decision. And social proof in the form of positive customer reviews is a powerful motivator for pressing buy.
In fact, consumers who interact with reviews are 115% more likely to convert, and the more reviews you have, the higher your conversion rates.
Read on to find out how to use reviews to increase your conversion rate, how to get more reviews, and what the key benefits are of using reviews in your paid campaigns.
How can I use reviews to boost conversions?
Consistently receiving positive reviews is hard work. Between requesting, gathering, and organizing, a lot goes into sourcing customer reviews. Once you’ve put in all this work use your reviews to help you increase sales.
To have the best possible impact, customer reviews need to be put in the right place. This will let prospects see relevant reviews at the right time and help improve conversion rates. Here are some places you could add reviews to help you boost conversions:
- Landing pages: Your ad might be good enough to get prospects to your landing page. But the next step is getting them to take action. To do this, your landing page needs to be compelling. One element of this might be using compelling social proof.
- Location pages: Location-specific pages help potential customers learn more about your individual stores. Customers are often looking at your hours, address, or phone number on this page. This shows intent. Social proof here will encourage customers to take the next steps and visit your store in person.
- Service pages: These pages explain to potential customers what you do and how you do it. Adding positive customer reviews on this page proves to prospects you’re capable of doing what you say to a high standard. By reading reviews, potential customers will feel that they can trust your services.
So how does this look in practice? Let’s say you’re an auto shop that works on oil changes, brakes, and tires. While you receive plenty of customers through local Google searches, you realize that the “tires” ad group isn’t performing as well as you’d hoped.
Instead of giving up on your tires landing page, you could revamp it with a few customer reviews talking about recent tire changes to encourage browsers who are on the fence about your services to book an appointment.
Here’s another example of how a jewelry store uses the keyword “engagement” to feature all the relevant reviews on their web page.
What are the benefits of using reviews in my paid ad campaigns?
Reviews help potential customers decide if your business is the right fit for what they’re looking for.
Put yourself in your customer’s shoes. When shopping in a new environment, would you go to a store that your neighbor recommends to you, or would you go to the one that no one has heard of?
In fact, 97% of consumers consult reviews before making a purchase. Simply adding one review to a product page that previously had none lifts sales for that product by 65%.
Reviews act as social proof. Good reviews encourage the prospects to try out your products or service, and the not-so-good ones help build authenticity. This makes it a win-win.
There’s also the benefit that businesses with a higher volume of replies and reply rates usually have higher conversion rates. According to one industry study led by Location 3, business locations with the highest reply rate of 8.13% averaged a conversion rate of 13.86%. While locations with the lowest reply rate of 5.73% averaged a conversion rate of 10.42%.
How do I get more reviews for my business?
You can never have too many customer reviews. But, it’s possible to have too few reviews. So, how do you convince your customers to spend valuable time explaining what you did right or wrong?
Here are a few tips for requesting customer reviews:
- Keep your review request short and sweet
- Make it personal. Ask how their stay at your hotel was, or ask if they enjoyed their meal at your restaurant
- Address the customer by name in the intro
- Sign off your message with your name
Learn more: How to ask for customer feedback + 25 templates
Timing is everything when it comes to requesting reviews. Here are some of the best times to ask for customer reviews:
- After a customer interacts with your business
- Following a subscription cancellation
- After a customer purchases a product or service
- If you notice a customer hasn’t used or purchased from your business in a while
The medium through which you ask for reviews is equally important. You can ask for reviews through face-to-face requests as well as email, texts, and via social media DMs — if they interact with you first.
How do I add reviews to my website?
Once you’ve gathered some customer reviews, the next step is to show them to visitors. Here’s how.
Use the review widget to showcase your best reviews
The review widget makes it easy to display both first and third-party reviews on landing pages and service pages. It’s easy to customize so you can display the most relevant reviews anywhere you choose:
- Change the color, size, and alignment options
- Choose the exact location you want reviews to be placed on your site
Going back to our auto shop example earlier, using the tag widget, you could set up auto-tagging for any customer reviews that mention “tires” and publish those tire-related reviews on the Tires service and landing pages.
Conversion pop-ups
Conversion pop-ups let you showcase customer reviews in an eye-catching rotating display. These are especially effective when displayed on business service pages.
They can provide your website visitors with some extra social proof and hopefully lead to a conversion.
Here’s how they work:
- Select the type of reviews you want to display – first or third party
- Choose specific pages to display the conversion pop-up reviews
- You can add a link to it. This link could take the visitor to a buying page, or a complete review page.
- Select the screen location where the reviews will be displayed
Use customer reviews to increase your conversion rate
Getting quality reviews requires a lot of effort on your part. First, you have to deliver top-notch service or products and ensure that the customer experience is equally pleasant.
Next, you have to ask for the reviews. Knowing when and how to ask also plays a significant role in getting reviews.
But most importantly, your reviews need to be seen by prospects. When you showcase the right customer reviews at the right time in the best online locations, you’ll increase your conversions.
Ready to see how you can use customer views to boost conversions? Sign up for a demo today.
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