This is the final part of the online customer reviews series. if you haven't already, be sure to check out part 1 - why to include customer reviews in your site and why they work and part 2 - 10 ways to get reviews from your customers. To conclude the series, we'll be looking at the dos and don't of online customer reviews.
Dos
- Thank your customer for taking the time to review
- Show the average score for product reviews
- Include a little bit of information about the customer posting the review. People are most likely to act on reviews where they see the review as like themselves.
- Listen and act on feedback and suggestions, even if it's not what you want to hear
- Respond to negative feedback
- If you start to see the same complaint a few times - act on it!
Don'ts
- Write the reviews yourself, or pay someone to do it for you. People aren't stupid and will see a fake review a mile away. This will then taint any other real reviews on your site.
- Remove negative reviews. Some negative reviews are important. You can't please everyone all of the time and only having positive reviews can make people wary. On eBay, customers often read the one negative feedback among hundreds of positive to see how it was dealt with and whether it should trouble them.
Customer reviews and testimonials should be part of the toolkit of any website. They can attract new customers and can help you to discover both what you're doing wrong and what you're doing well. They create trust and can even affect your website rankings. There are many ways to ensure that your customers fill out reviews, some of which are very simple to implement. So what are you waiting for?