Shopify customer review: An ultimate guide to grow your Shopify business

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Almost online visitors attract the by other shopping reviews. Sharing shopping experience is more trustworthy than what they see on your website. Considered as the most authentic type of marketing content, Customer reviews is a tool that sellers use to boost their visitor’s trust as well as customer’s encouragement. In addition, the reviews can also break a brand if they are negative.

Especially, with the development of the social platforms, customer review works as an effective social proof for the online sellers to increase the sales. In addition, people will understand more about your products when they see positive reviews. Therefore, by personal recommendations from friends and family, they are willing to buy them with the products that are mentioned. It is also a good chance to increase the traffic for your sites because they are happy to read a good review and keep come back.

People will take time to read about the reviews, be it on your website, in your email newsletters or in print materials.

This article Shopify customer review: An ultimate guide to grow your Shopify business will talk more about the quality and credibility of customer reviews for your Shopify page. With this ultimate guide, they can easily build trust in the buyers and grow their business.

What is customer review?

What the customers talk about their shopping experiences and the products, which is called customer review. Some of the feedback or ratings for shops are also considered as reviews. Therefore, sometimes it makes a bit of confusion because of different kinds of reviews.

There are three main categories in online customer reviews such as:

• Shop reviews: The customers can create a review based on the shop’s services such as delivery times, packaging, etc.

• Product reviews: The content of these product reviews should be about not only the quality but also the performance of this product without mentioning the shop’s service.

• Local reviews: The reviews called Local reviews can be about physical shops.

Today, from online shops to restaurants, online reviews are used as a reference for customers to research everything. That is the reason why it is necessary for shop owners to have a good reputation on the social platform as well as an online marketplace as Shopify. Shopify store owners should be proactive in managing their online reputations. They will reflect their experiences for any customers as a reference to support other visitors to become their customers too.

The importance of Shopify customer review

Some researches show that before making a final purchase decision, there is 70% of customers refer to reviews or ratings about their expected products and these shops. Or based on Marketing Profs, 67% of consumers said that they could trust a business when they only need to read less than 6 reviews. Nearly 80% of shoppers trust their product reviews and a personal recommendation.

On Reputation Advocate research, the percentage of consumers have changed their mind about purchases when they read NEGATIVE information is 80%. 71% of reviews posted on websites are positive, which helps the Shopify store shoppers more comfortable when purchasing the right product or service.

Because online reviews can become a standard part of the buying process, they will no longer struggle when growing sales.

Change customer’s perception

One of the most popular problems is building the trust of online shoppers for their brands. In other words, a good reputation such as quality products, reliability, and helpfulness will be a good chance for sellers to earn some big benefits. By building a good perception for their customers, online sellers can encourage customers to have a trustful look at their products and be willing to experience shopping.

Further Reading: Brand Development: Definition, Process and Successful Examples

Unbiased insight

To avoid biased information, people love to read the reviews so that they can rely on. Moreover, because of third party insight, the experiences in the quality of your product will be more trustful. They also have better imagination like they are themselves using your product on their own from other reviews to support inquiries and reduce common questions.

Build trust

If you are small and new eCommerce brands, it is difficult for you to build trust with customers. Especially in a competitive marketplace as Shopify, they face a larger than larger or well-known brands.

Mark Hayes who is working in Shopify said: “The increasing prevalence of phishing scams, malware, and just plain shoddy customer service makes consumers more wary with their clicks than ever before – which means that trust indicators on your website are more important than ever before.”

Therefore, the indicators on the store are important to persuade any online shoppers by reviews on your site.

How to encourage customers to leave a review on your Shopify store?

Now you know that customer reviews are so important for any Shopify store owners, it is time to generate a consistent strategy with this amazing tool to encourage more positive reviews. Also, building a strong relationship with customers is important too.

By analyzing the data of over 13,000 stores, these below tactics will be effective for Shopify merchants. There are seven proactive methods to generate more and more online reviews for your shops.

1. Make It Easy.

It is highly recommended that Shopify store owners create a is simple and user-friendly review generation process. Removing friction and make it easy, which is the simplest method for online merchants to encourage their customers to leave a review. It is not necessary to stress them with a lot of stuff. Throughout their purchase process, just give them a simple and sweet form.

It will be so complicated for them when they have to answer many questions, which only discourages customers from saying what they want. That is why we should keep this process simple and effortless.

2. Ask your customers

The majority of customers will ignore them because they are busy. So some encouragements like some questions are necessary for online sellers. But this simple thing usually is forgotten by many merchants. Therefore, an automated review generation ignore is obviously important for you not to forget to ask their customers for reviews.

Research indicates that buyers are willing to leave a review when they are asked. Sending emails is a great way to remind them of a review. However, in light of GDPR regulation, the Shopify store owners should only send to customers who consented to receive marketing emails.

3. Incentivize

When you failed to ask some customers, they need additional motivation to invest their time in writing a review. It is necessary for online sellers to give this extra nudge with attractive offers. In addition, including a subtraction for next time use also increases the chances of repeating purchase.

4. Set up the discount

By giving various discounts in your shops, your customers who would like to have this discount will generate a lot of customer reviews. By an app, Shopify store owners can automatically generate a unique, non-reusable code for them for each review.

5. Make the incentive explicit

In requesting emails, the only thing that online sellers need to do is polishing their copy and emphasize the incentives on these emails.

6. Easy-to-apply discounts

Generating reviews with discounts is a good way to boost the number of reviews. But Shopify store owners should care more about how their customers use a discount code. They will be more satisfied if they are easily applied to your store.

7. Custom email subject and body

Personalize the subjects as well as the email body will make the requesting emails more effective. Although these default emails can work, the Shopify store owners who customize these small things to fit with their customers will have their trust so that they will have more customer reviews.

How to add Shopify customer review?

In the last part, we mentioned about multiple tips for online sellers to encourage their Shopify customers review. This paragraph will share with you how to add Shopify customer review to your Shopify stores.

Using Shopify customer review apps

In the Shopify app store, online merchants can find some transparent, honest and authentic apps that help them deal with negative reviews from your customers. Moreover, they are also an effective tool to show how much you care about them.

Product Reviews by Shopify:

This is an important tool for any e-commerce administrators to make their customer’s reviews available and good looking. Because it is provided by the Shopify team, it works perfectly on the Shopify platform.

Ali Reviews:

Developed by the FireApps, Ali Reviews - Product Reviews is a Premium Apps for any E-commerce drop shipping by importing feedbacks from AliExpress. Besides, this is also an exceptional assistant tool with Shopify e-commerce for Photo & Site reviews.

Yotpo Reviews:

Yotpo team produced an outstanding assistant for online merchants called Yotpo Reviews, Photos, and Q&A. With this tool, administrators enable boosting conversion rates as well as customer’s satisfaction by collecting and showing different kinds of reviews such as product, photo or site reviews, and Q&A.

Besides, to discover the best 20+ Shopify Product Reviews Apps from hundreds of the Product Reviews in the market, online merchants can read this updated app collection which is ranked and result in February 2020 is derived from AVADA Commerce Ranking - Shopify Product Reviews Apps.

Integrating Google customer reviews

Launched in 2011, Google Customer Reviews which used to know as Google Trusted Stores aims to create trust for users via third-party reviews. If you do not want to pay any fee for an app, this Google Customer Reviews will be the best choice for you. With this tool, it is easy for online sellers to collect their customer’s reviews without paying free. As an effective program, it also allows the retailers to show their customer’s shopping experience on the thank you page.

Below we will provide you the way to integrate this tool into their shops:

Step 1. Register

First of all, the online sellers need to register for the program in the Google Merchant Center. In the top-right, they enable choosing on the three vertical ellipses. And then, click to Merchant Center programs.

Step 2. Enable Customer Reviews

To Enable on the Customer Reviews section, you have to read the agreement and continue.

On the left-side of Merchant Center, choose Customer Reviews if it appears immediately. Sometimes, you need to wait several hours instead.

Step 3. Copy code

At this step, you just see below codes as a merchant_id value in the configuration of customer reviews.

<script src="https://apis.google.com/js/platform.js?onload=renderOptIn" async defer></script>
<script>
  window.renderOptIn = function() {
    window.gapi.load('surveyoptin', function() {
      window.gapi.surveyoptin.render(
        {
          "merchant_id": XXXXXXXXX,
          "order_id": "ORDER_ID",
          "email": "CUSTOMER_EMAIL",
          "delivery_country": "COUNTRY_CODE",
          "estimated_delivery_date": "YYYY-MM-DD"
        });
    });
  }
</script>

And choose to copy these below codes:

{% if first_time_accessed %}
<!-- BEGIN Google Customer Reviews -->
<script src="https://apis.google.com/js/platform.js?onload=renderOptIn" async defer></script>
<script>
  window.renderOptIn = function() {
    window.gapi.load('surveyoptin', function() {
      window.gapi.surveyoptin.render(
        {
          "merchant_id": XXXXXXXXX,
          "order_id": "{{ order.name }}",
          "email": "{{ order.email }}",
          "delivery_country": "{{ shipping_address.country_code }}",
          "estimated_delivery_date": "{{ order.created_at | date:'%s' | plus:604800 | date:'%F' }}"
        });
    });
  }
  window.___gcfg = {
  lang: '{{ shop_locale.iso_code }}'
};
</script>
<!-- END Google Customer Reviews -->
{% endif %}

The language of the lightbox and survey as shop_locale.iso_code object will return the local code like en_US. You will recognize the difference in value when seeing the local country codes.

Step 4. Paste the code

They can continue by choosing Checkout , Settings and then Additional scripts section of Shopify

After that, they can paste the above code into this section.

Step 5. Modify

For this step, they need to modify two things:

Firstly, at step 3, whether they replace XXXXXXXXX with the merchant ID number or not.

In addition, they change the estimated_delivery_date value of 604800. This number means 604800 seconds = 7 days which represents the email review sent out to the customer.

If Shopify store owners want to send requesting emails to the lightbox, the {% if first_time_accessed %}and {% endif %} portion can be removed when the thank you page is viewed.

Step 6. Replace XXXXXXXXX with merchant ID

This is an optional step when you want to like to display the badge on your store. Just copy these below codes and paste them before the closing </body> in your theme.liquid file.

<script src="https://apis.google.com/js/platform.js?onload=renderBadge" async defer></script>
<script>
  window.renderBadge = function() {
    var ratingBadgeContainer = document.createElement("div");
    document.body.appendChild(ratingBadgeContainer);
    window.gapi.load('ratingbadge', function() {
      window.gapi.ratingbadge.render(ratingBadgeContainer, {
        "merchant_id": XXXXXXXXX,
        "position": "BOTTOM_RIGHT"
      });
    });
  }
  window.___gcfg = {
  lang: '{{ shop_locale.iso_code }}'
};
</script>

Recommended: How to Become a Google Trusted Store? The Ultimate Guide

How to manage Shopify customer reviews?

It is more likely for people with bad experiences to leave reviews than those who have positive ones. The bad reviews usually happen when a customer has bad experiences for any of the reasons, which can be outside of your control. The Shopify store owners want to implement their bad reviews on Shopify stores. It is possible for them can handle the inevitable challenges with these activities. For example, during the shipping process, a product is lost or damaged package; as a result, the buyers will report it with their bad feelings.

The first principle to solve this problem is not to take these bad reviews too personally. It means that when someone leaves a bad review, it is better to interact with them and find an opportunity to minimize bad feelings. The best strategy is turning negative reviews into positive ones.

Even if you enable disabling the auto-publish setting in your app when reading these reviews before, it is not recommended that you deal with your unsatisfied customers by hiding their comments. You can try to resolve the issues by working with them in term of some several options:

Remove altogether:

Only when these issues were resolved, you can delete them. It just brought up a good conscience in the eyes of other customers. However, it should be flexible, depending on case-by-case personal decisions.

Respond publicly:

It is possible for the users to know and respond to their review by the Shopify Product Reviews app. The content of this solution includes the outline of what you will do and the results for it. It is important to keep your friendly and positive tones in your response instead of accusatory or negative ones.

• Ask to post a revised review:

When the problems are solved, but all they said can be bad feelings for other readers. After you build the trust for them, you can ask them to leave revised reviews. These previous reviews could be left or removed after that. Without feeling guilty, some cases that online merchants can choose to remove them safely.

• Laced reviews which are profanity or in inappropriate language
• Include personal attacks on their business or others
• Inaccurate review about product description for product or service
• Reviews from never purchased or used reviewer
• Fake review

For some shops, they consider that the review which is less than five-star review is Less than perfect reviews. There are many reasons why Less than perfect reviews is a good thing.

First of all, there is nothing perfect, so it is strange for a store to have all five-star reviews. It is impossible for online sellers to make their business become perfect, so a 4.5 review might be more authentic than a perfect one. It is also a great way to gather feedback for Less than perfect reviews than others. It could be a great chance to develop and improve future products. For instance, this is a great indicator if reviewers leave four-star reviews and show a certain issue so that you may improve their design or features.

The product reviews also can become an extension of your product descriptions because they can provide detail information for other customers. It is the best way to respond to them in detail to boost their customers.

Best tips to promote your brand by using Shopify customer review

1. Build reputation by leveraging customer reviews

As I mentioned above, it would be a prominent spot for any online shops when they can have the best unedited reviews on their website. Just by bold and upfront these reviews, they can help your sites so that your visitors are willing to buy your product or hire your services.

The reviews can be more authentic and credible by adding the name and photo. It is essential for them to take customer permission from the customers before publishing their names or picture. This can be done easily on the web pages or on your site. The glowing testimonials can be one of the parts in setting up the entire page. It would be dedicated to creating a series of reviews. The reviews page should answer all the visitor’s questions apart from adding credibility to the site. It also encourages users to check the brand’s social accounts.

There is an example of the outstanding selling fashion products and accessories is Hotsy Totsy, which is a fashion website. It is well-known for displaying customers’ testimonials and feedback on a separate page.

2. Respond to reviews quickly

The customers love to be cared so that it is essential to reply to them as soon as possible no matter they leave positive or negative reviews.

Take notice to ask them to contact with you publicly and directly, so it is easy for online merchants to discuss the problem as well as rectify these problems. Therefore, they can build customers’ trust and make their shops outstanding compare to other competitors. Zappos is an excellent example for you when using customer reviews to boost their business.

3. Make it easy

The process of reviewing a product in your shops should be quick and easy, which encourages your customers to want to rate it. Moreover, they never feel burdened when leaving more ratings and more reviews for your products and services.

The more customers review forms simple is, the number of reviews they collect. Just by minimum clicks, Kissmetrics.com which is a blog can earn a lot of customer’s feedback by keeping their review short. The review request emails could be an option for online sellers to sends an automated online review platform. The answer in this feedback will be proof of how your customers might feel and whether they are satisfied or not with your products. You could also do a short survey on your website or a quick poll on Facebook to know about your customers.

4. Customers become brand ambassadors

It is not easy for online sellers to create content to engage and entertain their customers equally because the content on the website is overload now. That is a great way to let your shoppers become your own brand ambassadors.

It would be perfect and more trustful if you have their customers who tell the good things for the online shops. With the as authentic voice from your brand ambassadors, your online shops will be more competitive. Even your business can grow and make the breakthroughs with the best method. By real customer sharing, it is possible for online stores to build trust and change their brand reputation. Therefore, it had better encourage their shoppers to leave their comments, tweet or post their stories on their blog website.

5. Keep a regular check on review sites

People know about the review sites as a place where they can read the trustful and real experiences. So it is one of the most effective ways for shoppers to research their products from various businesses and brands. By basically local directories, that is also an easy method to boost their images or product.

Their visitors can get reviews and ratings easily and along with your brand is launched to approach more to customers. There are some names that are popular for online sellers such as Yelp, Review Center and Trust Pilot. It is easy for any online merchants to have an account on all these sites, and it is absolutely helpful for you.

6. Share in promotional emails

Promotional emails is considered as a good idea to start boosting the business and encouraging your customers to make a purchase on your site. The number of emails sent is over 294 billion each day according to Unbounce.com, which means that there are 72 emails per person. And we spend nearly 30% the working day to check out the inboxes. That is an absolutely huge number, so that you definitely need to invest in their emails.

7. Share on social media

With the development of social media like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, online sellers should take advantage of them. These platforms are definitely helpful in boosting their customer’s feedbacks or reviews for your products and your stores. The positive for specific items will leverage customer’s trust as well as the brand’s trust.

On Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter pages, online shop owners enable adding some videos or a customer picture to add credibility. They are strongly effective when using video testimonials on social media. Therefore, InVideo as video engagement will be the tool to create video testimonials. Just feel free to do it without being an expert videographer.

Conclusion

User experience is paramount more will need an extra. There is nothing wrong at all with wanting your store to be perfect. But to maximize the effectiveness of reviews, you should realize that reviews are not about a perfect rating, but rather about striving to be better. Trying to appear perfect by hiding all negative reviews is not the optimal strategy if your goal is to maximize conversions. In the end, it’s how you handle negative reviews that make all the difference.

This article Shopify customer review: An ultimate guide to grow your Shopify business has given you some ideas about Shopify customer review. We hope that Shopify store owners can have a better understanding of its advantage and how they can utilize this tool to boost sales. If you have any questions, let’s leave a comment below.