3 Strategies to Get More Valuable Reviews for Your Online Store

We all know that getting reviews for your products and for your e-commerce online store is essential in any kind of business. But the problem you might be facing right now is actually getting the most valuable reviews out of your customer base. In this article, I’ll tackle a few ways in which you can get valuable reviews from your best customers that will bring new sales and customers in.

Who Are Your Best Customers?

The first thing that you should decide on is who are your best customers. How do you define them? Are they people who have spent a certain amount of money with your store, or are they people who made a certain number of orders, or are the customers who brag on social media about buying from you? Or is it a combination of all of these, plus a few more?

After you have decided on how your ideal customer looks and behaves, it’s time to implement some of the following strategies.

Strategy #1 – The Repeat-buy Threshold Method

You already know that people buy the same products from the same store only if they love the product or the store, or if they consider this to be the best way to spend their hard-earned cash. With this in mind, if someone bought from you for the 5th or 10th time, it is obvious that they love your brand, your store, and your products.

Why not give them an opportunity to share this love? Any respectable e-commerce platform will allow you to save the customers in a database and get valuable insights about their buying behavior.

You can go in your admin interface and check people who have passed a certain threshold, like spending over $500 or $1000 buying from you, or having placed a certain number of orders. Or, if you are using a CRM (client relationship manager – and you should), go straight into its dashboard and sort the customers by the purchase amount.

After this, you should go into your CRM (if you are not using one, you should start as soon as possible), select them, and through an email service provider like Mailchimp (which is now both an email service provider and a CRM) you can send them an email asking them what they love about your brand and about your products. Obviously, you will ask them if you can use their answer as a review and maybe even give them a small incentive to allow you to do this (a discount coupon works wonders).

Why Does This Work?

If you are wondering if this review-generating strategy works, let me give you a quick answer. The reviews you will be generating are from customers that love and trust your brand, and, in my opinion, they have the highest influence in convincing new customers to buy from your store.

Strategy #2 – The Quiz Method

Another way to generate valuable reviews is to quiz all of your customers. This way not only you gain valuable information in regards to your audience, but also they will get a sense that you as a brand are looking after them and are interested in their problems.

You can quiz them about what problems did they encounter when buying or using similar products. Asking them what they look for in a brand or in a product they are buying. Ask them even what they didn’t like when interacting with brands like yours (this works wonders because it seems that we all love to complain about things we don’t like).

And, in the end, ask them for a quick review about what they loved about your brand when compared to others. And, of course, as I said before, it works best to give them an incentive to fill in this quiz

Why Does This Work?

As I’ve already said, if you do this technique you will show interest to all of your customers. Or, you can make it personalized and seem that you are looking for the specific customer’s opinion. Needless to say, if the review is the last field in the quiz, they will be more likely to fill in the review and submit it.

Strategy #3 – First Time Buyer Enthusiasm

Okay, earlier in this post I’ve said that repeat customers are the best people to leave reviews, but that doesn’t mean you have to ignore first-time buyers. On the contrary, after they have bought and have been delivered the goods, you can follow up with them and ask to rate their experience interacting with your brand.

And, as a little incentive, you already know what to give them, right? A discount coupon, or another kind of offer.

Why does this work?

This strategy works because you tap into the first-time buyer’s enthusiasm (with the obvious mention that you already provide great customer service, great products).

The Bottom Line

Most of the time, getting good and valuable reviews is a matter of just asking for them. Now you know 3 (more) strategies that will help you get more reviews and it’s time to try them. Go ahead, shoot your customers and clients an email and see what reviews you can get.