When your business receives a glowing review or testimonial, it naturally gives you a good feeling. Likewise, receiving a harsh or even middling review may cause you to feel disappointed and hurt. But for ecommerce retailers, online reviews are about much more than personal vanity. On the contrary, reviews can help lend your products trust and credibility. Positive reviews encourage people to buy from you, while negative reviews may cause consumers to pause or to check out your competition. One way or another, your customer reviews can dramatically impact your bottom line.
So how can you harness the power of online ratings to help you sell more custom products? Consider a few of our top tips for generating more 5-star customer reviews.
Generating 5-Star Customer Reviews: Tips for Print on Demand Companies
A few of our favorite strategies include:
Make it easy. First and foremost, make sure it’s incredibly obvious and intuitive where customers should go to leave you their feedback. They shouldn’t have to scroll across your e-commerce site just to find the review link. Instead, you should position the online review form in a prominent, highly visible, and logical place.
Ask for reviews. Don’t just assume that your customers will remember to leave you a review. Instead, be direct in requesting one. You can ask for reviews with simple CTAs on your receipts and invoices, or with follow-up emails you send out a week or so after the product is shipped. Simply let your customers know how much you value their feedback and invite them to take just a moment to offer some thoughts.
Tap into your email list. Along the same lines, send out a periodic reminder to your email subscribers, simply requesting that your most loyal customers take the time to provide you with a review.
Respond to your reviews. When you actually take the time to respond to your reviews, it helps customers to see that you’re listening to them and that you take their comments seriously. This helps incentivize shoppers to leave their feedback. When you get a glowing review, take just a moment to say thanks. When you get a less positive one, take it as an opportunity to offer customer service; see if you can do anything to make things right for your customer.
Reach out to influencers. This approach may not work for every ecommerce business, but you may consider sending samples of your custom products to prominent social media influencers. Often, if you can get a truly influential person to review your products, it prompts other users to follow suit.
Share your reviews. What should you do when you get really stellar 5-star customer reviews? In addition to saying thank you, consider sharing those reviews on your own social media channels. Turn your best reviews into graphics, and distribute them via Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, even your email marketing platform.
Allow pictures. Text reviews are great, but reviews that come with visual accompaniment can be especially useful. If you sell apparel or other custom products, make sure your customers can submit images, showing what they look like when wearing your products. This is one of the most potent forms of social proof.
Reviews are Essential for Growing Your Ecommerce Business
The bottom line? Online reviews can provide evidence that your products actually meet customer expectations, and thus provide would-be buyers with greater confidence to complete their purchase. To say that reviews can have a massive impact on the success of your print on demand business is no exaggeration.
As you consider your marketing strategy, then, it’s important to consider ways to generate more reviews, and then to use those reviews as meaningful pieces of marketing collateral. If you have any questions about effectively positioning your print on demand company as a trustworthy retailer, we invite you to contact Gooten.
Our team is passionate to see our partners succeed, and to generate the level of 5-star customer reviews necessary to gain a competitive edge. We’d love to tell you more about how to ensure long-term success for your ecommerce business. Reach out to our team when you’re ready to take your print on demand store to the next level.
