How To Collect Reviews & Ratings After the Holiday Season?

Reviews and ratings are an integral part of the shopping experience for modern-day customers. Through them, customers can share their experience with your product or service. This form of User-Generated Content (UGC) influences the final purchase decision of the vast majority of customers.

For sellers, they are marketing tools that have the potential to help them build a long-term relationship with their customers. If your online store doesn’t have reviews and rating features, or if you don’t have enough reviews in your collection, customers will be hesitant to buy from you.

Don’t worry. If your online store doesn’t have a significant number of reviews yet, the post-holiday season is the best time to start acquiring them. With online sales at an all-time high, you would have witnessed a huge inflow of customers. And this is the perfect opportunity to convert these one-time holiday shoppers into your patrons through reviews and ratings.

But you must also be wary of the fact that it is extremely difficult to gain positive reviews. Usually, it’s either the extremely happy customers or the extremely disgruntled customers who leave reviews. But we are not going to talk about negative reviews in this post. Today we are going to explain how to acquire positive ratings and reviews for your online business.

Post Purchase Emails

Now that you have fulfilled most of the holiday orders, you should carefully start planning to send a follow-up email to check whether everything is okay with the product. These types of post-purchase emails are one of the easiest ways to lure a holiday shopper into giving you a review. But bear in mind that timing is crucial with post-purchase emails. The customer should have had ample time to use your product or experience your service to pass a judgment. Dropping a review request before they have had a chance to use the product might make you seem desperate, and the customer might even treat your email as spam.

With post-purchase emails, you can also gain valuable feedback, especially from shoppers who had a negative experience with your product, which is quite common during a busy season like the holidays. You can learn about the customer pitfalls and resolve the situation, thereby showcasing that you care for the customer. You can ask the customer to drop a review about your customer service or how you helped them resolve their concerns. It will also help bolster your review collection.

Here is an example of a post-purchase review request email from Charlie Hustle Clothing Company. It is compact, polite, and moreover, it clearly sends out a message to the customer that you value their opinion.

Incentivize Reviews

Once you have gotten the ball rolling with review requests, you should take it a level higher by offering attractive incentives for customers willing to share their experiences. This is important because most of these customers are one-time shoppers and they have no motivation to give you a review unless you give back something in return.

You can use discounts, coupon codes, or other sales strategies to encourage customers to post a positive review. It is an effective marketing ploy that will simultaneously boost your brand image and review collection. As an added bonus, the customer might use the discount or vouchers on another purchase after the holiday season which is another sale for you.

For example, look at the below review requests. They are offering incentives like a 5 EUR voucher and a 5% discount, which will increase customer engagement.

Make The Review Section Easy To Access & Mobile Friendly

User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI) play an important role in dictating the success of your business. They are also crucial when it comes to reviewing requests. The customer must reach the review section conveniently to drop a review. They should not be asked to jump through numerous pages to post their review. If you are sending your review request mails, be sure to provide a direct link to the review page or give the customer an option to post a review directly through the mail. They will generate more positive responses from the customers.

Another factor that you must consider is the compatibility of your review page. With the number of mobile shoppers increasing significantly, you must optimize your review process accordingly. The last thing a customer wants is a clunky mobile experience while posting a review.

Show Appreciation

Each review is valuable. One of the most basic mistakes online sellers make is that they give too much attention to negative reviews. They forget or ignore the positive reviews as dealing with negative reviews offers them a chance to show off their customer service skills, which boosts their brand reputation.

But this approach is wrong as your objective is to boost your review collection. And ignoring one set of reviews will not help. Instead, be courteous and thank the customer for sharing positive feedback with the world. It helps you reinforce your brand, validates your product’s capabilities, and encourages more customers to come forward with their feedback. These positive reviews will also be vital for future customers and their purchase decisions.

For example, look at how JetAir monitors its online presence and responds to the customers. Here the customer used the social media platform Twitter to post a review, and JetAir was quick to appreciate the customer’s effort.

Summary

Collecting reviews and ratings are a daunting task for online sellers. It takes tremendous work from a customer service perspective to reach out to a huge number of customers and ask for their opinions. But reviews and ratings are essential for any business operating in the digital space. Customers trust other customers more, and no amount of marketing campaign can surpass that. So, you must have a solid review strategy that will take you over the line. Follow our tips - send out post-purchase emails, offer incentives, and show appreciation for each review; you will start witnessing a significant increase in ROI. You can also read this blog from our partners at Fera reviews to learn more.

Vajro is also here to help. We have aided numerous online sellers in their digital transformation journey. We deliver your dream mobile app within a short span of time, and our apps come with all the latest features and what’s more, you can track your online presence and reviews easily thanks to our plug-and-play integrations with platforms like Judge.me and Loox. Click here to know more