Dropshipzone

There’s no question about it: customer ratings and reviews have a significant impact on the purchasing decisions of potential customers. Positive reviews can encourage customers to complete their purchases, while negative reviews can deter them. Building a good reputation is crucial for any online business, especially if it’s a new one. It’s no surprise that 89 per cent of customers won’t take action until they read reviews. Including a few good product reviews on your website can make or break a sale.

That’s why the experts at Dropshipzone have detailed the best review platforms for ecommerce in 2024, so you can get your year off to a running start and ensure success.

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89 per cent of customers won’t take action until they read reviews.

Determining the best review platform for your ecommerce store

Getting reviews to display on your website isn’t as straightforward as it seems. Customers usually only leave unprompted reviews if they are dissatisfied with the product or service. This is why you see a lot of negative reviews on Google, where customers complain about long waiting times or items that never arrived. As a business owner, it's essential to reach out to your customers to ask for their feedback, especially if you want your product reviews to push other customers to purchase. Doing so not only helps you engage with them but also allows you to understand what they like and what areas you need to improve on your website or product.

So, what is the key to having your website filled with glowing reviews that will make potential customers wonder why they haven’t tried your products before? It’s all about selecting the right reviewing software to make your life as a business owner as easy as possible.

5 review platforms to consider

Yotpo

Yotpo is a review tool that helps ecommerce businesses improve customer retention and drive sales through repeat purchases. It uses SMS, loyalty and referral programs, reviews, subscriptions, and emails to help you learn more about your customers and keep them engaged. Yotpo's AI-powered review system collects and displays customer feedback in the most impactful way, showcasing positive reviews to potential customers while they're shopping for your products.

Pros

Integration

Yotpo seamlessly integrates with popular ecommerce platforms like Shopify, Google, Facebook, Klaviyo, Mailchimp, Gorgias, Zendesk, BigCommerce, and Magento for a smooth user experience.

Customisable

Yotpo's widgets are fully customisable, allowing you to easily adjust the layout, brand colours, and headings to match your branding seamlessly.

Lots of features

Yotpo offers a wide range of features for businesses beyond just customer reviews. However, its review section has unique features that are not found on other customer review sites. You can ask customers to submit their reviews via email or SMS and use smart review prompts to ensure high-quality feedback. This feature helps customers use relevant keywords in their reviews that address what other customers might want to know, thus increasing your chances of making more sales. Additionally, you can create customised questions to gather more targeted feedback. Yotpo also offers video and photo features that make reviews more visually attractive and impactful. You can also include a community Q&A feature on your product pages to encourage customer education and display community feedback and questions.

Cons

Email function

Yotpo's email feature allows you to send out customer review requests. However, it does not offer the option to send test emails to yourself before being sent to customers. This means that if your emails contain any spelling, grammatical, or design errors, you will not be able to fix the problem before it is viewed by your customers.

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Okendo

Okendo is a comprehensive customer marketing platform that harnesses customer data to help businesses grow. Its feature list includes functions like surveys, reviews, referrals, quizzes, and loyalty programs. Okendo consolidates the information gathered into customer profiles, enabling businesses to collect unified data for more targeted engagement strategies. Okendo is available for all Shopify merchants and has officially partnered with Google, which makes it easy for merchants to collect reviews from Google and display them on their website, and vice versa.

Pros

Easy to use

Okendo is an easy-to-use platform that is ideal for beginners. It provides review moderation tools that help you respond to and manage customer reviews effortlessly. You can collect and showcase customer feedback on multiple platforms like your website, social media, and other relevant marketing channels. Automating review requests is also a breeze with Okendo. You can set up automation triggers and personalised messages to ensure that your review requests are sent at the right time to specific customers, thereby increasing the chances of a response. For instance, you can send review requests to customers who have made repeat purchases or bought high-value products. Okendo's integration with ecommerce platforms like Shopify makes it easy for business owners to integrate the platform into their online store. Okendo also offers a wide range of filtering capabilities, which allow you to sort through your reviews quickly and efficiently based on factors such as customer age, star rating, reason for purchase, and buyer status. This enables you to showcase more positive reviews and highlight product strengths to improve the chances of other customers making purchases. This filtering capability is also useful to your customers as they can easily locate reviews based on ratings and other features they are interested in.

Design elements

Okendo provides a fully customisable platform that allows you to match your reviews with your brand and website design for a seamless look. You can enhance your reviews by adding customer photos and video reviews, which helps in verifying that the reviews are from real customers. By providing visual feedback, potential customers are more likely to make a purchase as they can see what the product looks like in real-life situations and in the hands of someone else. Okendo also offers a ‘Verified Buyer’ badge that adds credibility to your reviews, creating a more polished and professional look for your website.

Customer data capabilities

Okendo offers excellent analytics and reporting capabilities, which is one of its biggest advantages. It enables you to track various metrics like review volume, engagement, and overall sentiment. These analytics can be utilised effectively to make informed decisions about your marketing strategies and help you optimise your products to meet your customers' expectations. Okendo allows you to target a specific audience when requesting reviews, based on factors like age, demographics, and purchase history. You can collect targeted feedback easily and maximise the likelihood of responses. This feature helps you conduct market research in a more specific way with little effort, ultimately improving your ability to understand your customers' needs and preferences.

Cons

Pricing

Although Okendo offers a 14-day free trial to new customers, their pricing plans for ongoing services can prove to be on the higher side, especially for new or small business owners. Depending on the size of your business and the number of orders you have per month, Okendo’s plan prices range from $19 per month to $499 per month. You can find out more about their pricing plans here.

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Trustpilot

Trustpilot is a platform that enables customers to write reviews of products and brands, which online businesses can then display on their websites. The mission of Trustpilot is to enhance trust in online brands and help customers shop with confidence. According to Trustpilot for businesses, using customer reviews can increase website conversions by up to 23 per cent, driving sales and traffic.

Pros

Fraud detection

All reviews undergo Trustpilot's fraud detection software to remove fake reviews. Users who post fake reviews will be flagged, ensuring only genuine reviews are displayed on your website.

Recognised by leading search engines

When people search for your product or website on search engines like Google or Bing, Trustpilot can show customer reviews instantly. This can boost your website's visibility, as potential customers are more likely to click on your website if they see positive reviews from other customers. This increases the credibility of your website, as it shows that your product or service is trustworthy and reliable.

Trusted brand

Many customers are already familiar with Trustpilot's global brand presence. According to Trustpilot, websites using their platform to display reviews are 73.6 per cent more likely to attract customers who already have a Trustpilot account and make a purchase.

Cons

Pricing

Trustpilot offers a free version that allows you to send up to 100 review invitations each month. If you need more, you'll have to wait until the next month to send additional invitations. However, their pricing plans can be quite expensive. The standard package starts at $180 per month, the growth package at $450 per month, and the scale package, which is designed for businesses looking to maximise their performance, starts at $650 per month.

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Shopify

If you have an online store set up on Shopify, you can use the Shop App to showcase customer feedback and reviews on your storefront with ease. With this tool, you can manage, edit, filter, or hide reviews as per your preferences and display them on Google. This is an excellent choice for you if you are already using other Shopify apps and tools.

Pros

Easy to integrate for Shopify users

If you already have a Shopify store, integrating reviews onto your website is a breeze with this method. Your customer reviews will blend in perfectly with your branding colour palette and fonts. Everything you need will be available in one convenient location, making it an excellent option for those who are already using Shopify.

Boost SEO

Incorporating customer reviews on your website is an effective way to improve your search engine optimisation (SEO) and visibility on search engines. When customers leave reviews, they are essentially providing fresh and relevant content that search engines will index, resulting in increased online exposure for your products. This increased exposure will help attract more potential customers to your website, and as a result, boost your sales. So, showcasing customer reviews is not only a great way to build trust with your customers but also a valuable tool for improving your online presence and driving more sales.

Price

If you use Shopify, you can access this tool for free. This is great news for new or smaller businesses looking to integrate reviews without paying too much per month.

Cons

Only compatible for Shopify users

This tool is exclusively available for Shopify business owners. If you have built your online store using an ecommerce platform other than Shopify, you will not be able to access this function.

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BigCommerce

BigCommerce is an ecommerce platform that offers the option to enable customer reviews on your website. Although it may not have as many features as Okendo, you can still request and manage customer reviews and product ratings, which can be displayed on your website with ease. The best part is that this tool is completely free for BigCommerce users.

Pro

Easy to manage reviews

With BigCommerce, you can easily manage your customer reviews from your dashboard, keeping everything organised in one place. You can turn reviews on and off for different products and also to delete, approve, or disapprove reviews as needed, giving you complete control over the reviews that appear on your website.

Con

Limited email functions

BigCommerce's email capabilities are not as extensive as some of the other review sites on this list. As a result, it may be more challenging to request reviews via email. While it is still an excellent tool for beginners, it may not be as suitable for larger businesses that need to gather reviews on a more massive scale.

Why are review platforms needed for your online store?

A review site is a useful tool that enables you to request ratings and reviews from your customers and display them on your website. It helps you automate many of the functions that come with online reviews, so you don't have to spend time manually sending emails and finding a way to add online reviews to your website, making your life a lot easier.

Customers want to know that what they are about to buy is a genuinely good product. No one wants to be conned out of money, and there are plenty of online stores out there that will do just that. Studies show that 91 per cent of millennials trust online reviews as much as they would their own family and friends. Customers tend to have trust issues when they shop online, and seeing verified customer reviews who have purchased the product and had a good experience acts as a kind of safety net. It's a way of saying, "It's okay, you can purchase this item and nothing bad will happen." You wouldn’t buy a product that had reviews claiming it broke within the first week of ownership or worse or that it never arrived. Similarly, you wouldn't take your family to a restaurant that had reviews featuring dreaded words like "food poisoning."

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Studies show that 91 per cent of millennials trust online reviews as much as they would their own family and friends.

A single product review can increase conversions by 10 per cent. When you post reviews on your website, you ultimately increase your sales. If a customer is unsure whether they want to make a purchase, a glowing review might be just what they need to make the decision. Reviews also help improve your brand awareness, attracting new customers. Additionally, it helps improve customer loyalty. When your customers write a review, it gives them a sense of value, especially if they have provided you with ways you can improve and you have listened. Search engines like Google also place a lot of value on customer reviews. Your SEO rankings will improve, and Google will rank you higher in their search engine so that when customers search for a product you sell, yours will be one of the first results they see.

Tips for managing online reviews

It is normal for businesses to receive negative reviews, and it can be quite challenging to avoid them. Although it is impossible to please everyone, there are some best practices that you can adopt to improve your brand reputation, foster trust with your customers, and enhance your SEO. You don't need to worry about including hundreds of reviews for every product on your website. According to studies, 90 per cent of customers only need less than ten reviews to form an opinion.

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A single product review can increase conversions by 10 per cent.

Respond to reviews

Customers can leave reviews both when they have a positive experience and when they have a negative one. It is crucial to respond not only to positive reviews with gratitude but also to negative reviews with solutions. According to ReviewTrackers, businesses that respond to negative reviews are 45 per cent more likely to receive visits from customers. This shows that being responsive to customer feedback and concerns is important and can help you build a loyal customer base. It demonstrates that you value their opinions and care about their experience, which can encourage them to keep returning to your business.

When responding to positive reviews, it's important to express thanks and personalise your message whenever possible. You may also want to recommend other products that the customer might enjoy, which can help reinforce their positive experience. When it comes to negative reviews, it's essential to adopt an empathetic tone to demonstrate that you value your customers and take their concerns seriously. The quicker you respond to your customers, the better the outcome is likely to be. Additionally, it's often helpful to refer customers to your support team to ensure that they receive the assistance they need.

Ask for reviews

It's unlikely that waiting for customers to review your products and brand will generate the number of reviews you want. Customer reviews usually don't come to light on their own, so it's crucial to request reviews at the right time and in the right way. Many of the platforms we mentioned above allow you to set up an automated system to request reviews. For instance, sending a post-transactional email asking customer satisfaction questions is a simple way to accumulate reviews. You should determine whether you need general ratings of your brand or more specific product reviews and cater to the types of customers you have. If your customers are new, they may not provide in-depth answers like a long-time customer would. Therefore, you’ll need to create tailored groups to ensure the right review requests are going to the right customers.

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Sending a post-transactional email asking customer satisfaction questions is a simple way to accumulate reviews.

Offer incentives in exchange for customer reviews

Offering incentives is probably the most effective strategy to improve the return rate of customer reviews. Offering a simple discount, free shipping or points for your loyalty program are all ways to ensure your customers rate your products. You can even include requirements to ensure you get the most detailed reviews, such as having to include particular keywords or a photo of the customer using the product. You want to make leaving a review simple for your customers so they find they have no choice but to leave a review. Not only will this increase customer satisfaction, but you'll also find that customers are more generous and positive with their feedback.

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