Imagine you are interested in a particular product. You have already researched it online and read up on it thoroughly. Unfortunately, though, you are a little overwhelmed by the flood of offers and options. If you still cannot make a decision, other customer reviews are often the last thing that helps many buyers. And that is true of almost every product you can buy, online and in a shop. Only online, however, do you have the advantage of being able to read customer reviews quickly and, at best, in summary.
Recommendations, reviews, stars
Anyone looking for a new dentist checks Jameda, online shoppers carefully read customer reviews on Amazon, and a restaurant visit gets rated on Yelp. Many buyers hope this will spare them a bad experience, yet anyone can speak their mind. And apart from bought reviews or poor reviews from competitors (that would be a blog topic of its own), once there is a certain number of reviews you can be fairly sure you will find exactly what you are looking for.
For many shop owners and product providers on the internet, the question now is: “How do I get many good and, above all, genuine reviews?”
Of course there are many review services and review requests, for example from Trusted Shops or Trustami. We would never recommend ignoring them. Customers have also grown a little tired of them, though. And from a data-protection point of view it is no longer straightforward.
What matters much more here – once again – is running trustworthy content management across different channels.
Feedback on social media plays an ever more central role for your brand and your product. Especially for many small shops, the fan community on Facebook, for example, builds more trust than a positive review of on-time parcel delivery ever could. If your fan community recommends you and shares their positive experiences, that is worth far more in the long run than masses of uncommented 5-star ratings.
So, once again, an appeal to position your company more strongly on social media, to communicate more and to take part regularly. That is how you stay relevant as a company in the public eye. Then people talk about you (positively) as well.
Customers often use your website or your social media profile to get in touch with you. You should not miss this as a new way of communicating, and you should handle it promptly. If you look after your customers well across many channels, you can earn important extra points here.
Make a point of looking professional. Images, captions and text on your social media channels and your other platforms should look appealing and well thought through. It always matters that everything fits together – it should feel like one piece. Coherent in theme, free of errors and in line with your brand. Nothing is more off-putting than profiles that look amateurish.
Instead of many half-hearted platforms, you should concentrate on the ones that match your target audience. So first ask yourself which social media channels your target audience actually uses. Then decide on 1–2 channels that you can run properly.