How to Collect More Online Customer Reviews and Boost Your Business

Displaying online reviews is an important element of building trust with your potential customers. Beyond simply displaying your reviews, it’s crucial for your business to have a constant stream of new ones coming in. Today, we’ll look at how your online shop can start collecting more customer reviews.

With that in mind, let’s first explore some more reasons why online reviews matter so much for your e-commerce business.

Why online reviews matter

Before learning how to collect more reviews, let’s review the biggest reasons why you should collect customer reviews to begin with.

Building trust and credibility

Showing off your customer reviews is one of the best ways to build trust in e-commerce and the numbers don’t lie. According to a 2024 Trusted Shops survey:

• 66% of consumers prioritise positive online reviews over price when making a purchase decision.
• 70% of European shoppers read reviews every time or most of the time before making a purchase.
• 90% of Europeans agree that genuine reviews increase trust in a company.

As far as the number of reviews go, most shoppers expect to see a significant number of reviews when looking at products. According to Search Engine Journal, 59% of consumers expect a shop to have between 20-99 reviews in order for the rating to be considered trustworthy.

In essence, customers rely on a high number of authentic customer reviews in order to make informed purchase decisions. Collecting product reviews, for example, has even been proven to reduce product returns.

Recommended reading:
Reducing the Return Rate in the Online Fashion Industry

Boost your ratings

The fact remains that if you leave it completely up to your shoppers to leave reviews on their own, a higher ratio of reviews will be negative than if you proactively ask customers for them. That is because negative experiences motivate users to go out of their way to publish their feedback.

Satisfied customers need to be asked for their reviews because their motivation is generally lower. Therefore, once you start asking them for customer reviews (in an effective way), you’ll notice your ratings will go up, which reflect your customers’ sentiments more accurately.

Boost SEO

Both service reviews and product reviews can improve your performance in search engines. With the right reviews platform, your star ratings can appear throughout Google, whether that is in organic search results or in Google Shopping Ads.

Surveys and data analysis show that displaying star ratings in your Google Ads increases the chance of the user clicking on them. Improved ad performance generally leads to lower CPCs (cost-per-click), which helps you get more value out of your marketing budget.

Offer you insights and feedback

Customer reviews bring benefits to your business beyond that of a trust marketing tool. It might sound silly, but don’t forget that customer reviews actually provide you with useful feedback! And the more feedback you get, the more accurate the rating.

Whether it means you are getting insights into specific products or feedback on your logistics provider, analysing your reviews can help you improve your offer and thus, improve your online reputation.

Once you’ve started collecting a high number of customer reviews, tools like the Trusted Shops Sentiment Analysis can help you analyse them to get an overview of your customer feedback, making it even easier for you to optimise your business.

Common challenges to collecting reviews

Before we hop into the tips, let’s get a quick overview on some of the most common challenges that online shops face when it comes to collecting reviews.

• Customers forget or lack motivation: If collecting reviews depends on your customers remembering to do it or being motivated to leave a review, you’re probably going to be disappointed. Most product purchases don’t motivate users to go out of their way to leave a review.
  
  
• Fear of getting negative reviews: Some shop owners might be paranoid about asking for reviews in fear of getting negative reviews. This is a mistake. Sure, you might get the occasional negative review (it’s basically unavoidable).
  
  However, the occasional negative review in a sea of positive reviews will rarely be a deal breaker for any customer. The key is to make sure you have plenty of positive reviews to drive up your rating.
  
  
• Lack of a streamlined process for collecting reviews: This is going to be a key point for many shop owners. If you want your customers to do you a ‘favour’ after the purchase, you’ll have to do it in a calculated and strategic way in order to see good results.
  
  
• Too many review platforms: There are a lot of reviews providers out there. Google may be king, but even the search engine giant often sources their reviews from some of the popular providers out there.
  
  Tools like the Reputation Manager help you allocate which platforms should receive reviews. This way, you can focus on improving your rating on a specific platform (e.g. Trustpilot).

With all this in mind, let’s see what you can do to start collecting more reviews…

Strategies to collect more customer reviews

So, how can you start collecting more online customer reviews? Here are a few strategies to keep in mind:

Ask for a review!

This tip may be a bit on the nose, but it is so crucial! There’s no shame in simply asking for a review.

Remember, people are busy with their own lives. If you provide an excellent user experience, some consumers will proactively go out of their way to leave you a review. This is even more true for negative experiences.

That is of course, unless you ask them. Make sure you have a system in place that automatically asks your customers for reviews shortly after their purchase.

Make it easy for your customers to leave a review

These days, users expect a smooth user experience everywhere online. The process for writing reviews is no different.

Create a dedicated email that goes out to customers asking them for a review. Provide them with the links they need to begin the review creation process quickly and easily.

If any special instructions are needed, make them short, clear, and to the point.

Alternatively, you could even print a QR code on your product packaging that links to them to your reviews page.

Shutterstock/Sergey Nivens

Ask at the right time

In e-commerce, timing is very important. We know this is true for online marketing (think about those retargeting ads). Asking for customer reviews is very similar, but maybe even more sensitive to timing.

If you ask for a review too early, there’s a chance the customer hasn’t even received the product yet. Getting a review request at this time might even annoy the customer and make a poor impression. Even if they have received the product, they might require a few days to use it before they can give informed feedback.

Conversely, if you ask for a review too late, the customer might be less enthusiastic than they were just a few days earlier.

This of course all depends on the product and the niche you operate in, but keep timing in mind for your products and your audience. For example, a lawnmower might require some more time for user testing than a t-shirt.

Test some different time periods. With a good reviews provider (like Trusted Shops), you can align the date with different triggers. You can decide how many days after delivery you want the review invite to be sent out. In no time, you’ll figure out the best dispatch time in order to maximise the number of reviews you collect.

As you can see above, with Trusted Shops, you’ll even have the option to remind users who haven’t left a review yet. Asking a second time can boost the total number of reviews you collect. Just make sure the timing of the review reminders isn’t too soon or too late either.

Incentivise your clients to leave reviews

There are a number of ways you can do this, but it’s important to stay on the legal side of things here. In Europe, for example, you can not incentivise your customers to leave positive reviews. However, you can incentivise them to leave honest reviews.

Alternatively, if you have a loyalty programme of sorts, you may even reward your users there with extra bonus points or something like that.

Again, you should feel encouraged to check the legality of review incentives for the markets you operate in.

Leverage social media

It’s not uncommon for some online shops to post a particularly outstanding customer review on their social media pages.

Not only does this boost trust among your followers, but it can also inspire other previous customers to leave a review (or comment below the post), thus boosting your social proof even further.

Tools like the Social Media Creator make it easy for shop owners to convert their best Trusted Shops customer reviews into beautifully designed social posts.

In this example for Mother’s Day, we see a customer review that fits the topic of the holiday. Seasonal periods are the perfect way to remind users of an upcoming holiday while simultaneously inspiring trust.

(Background image: Shutterstock/Oliver Hoffmann)

Respond to all reviews

Replying to existing reviews can boost the number of reviews you receive as well. If a potential customer sees that a shop replies to all reviews (particularly the negative ones), they’ll be more inclined to leave one themselves.

The first positive outcome of replying to reviews is that it will inspire users to buy from you. By replying to the negative review, you can counteract the effects of the ‘bad feedback’. When customers see that you care about customer satisfaction, they are more likely to give you the benefit of the doubt.

Secondly, it will also inspire them to leave a review once they get the product. Knowing that a company is very responsive to their customer base will improve the chances that they leave a review themselves since they know there is basically a guarantee they will get a response.

Once you begin collecting more and more reviews, replying to them all in a thoughtful way can be quite time-consuming. If you find it difficult to keep up, the Trusted Shops Smart Review Assistant can help you save time without sacrificing the personal touch you provide with review responses. With the help of artificial intelligence, you can create unique and relevant review replies with the click of a mouse.

Special tips for B2B businesses

If you run a B2B business, you already know that they work a bit differently than a classic B2C brand. Because the customer journey is a bit longer and multiple stakeholders may be involved, you should consider a couple extra strategies.

Ask for reviews personally

If your customer relationships are based on personal relationships (i.e. success/account managers), have them ask for reviews personally during an annual review, a networking event, or even a contract renewal conversation. This can help them realise your value while also promoting your business. Asking personally can also dramatically impact the review response rate.

Consider the timing differently

Before, we mentioned that automating your review requests is a great strategy for B2C shops. However, for B2B relationships, there may not be a classic 'delivery date' for you to make such a request. Additionally, products in the B2B world often require a bit more time before users can give genuine feedback.

With this in mind, consider asking for reviews at more relevant milestones. For example, after a successful implementation of your software or the completion of a specific project.

Incentivise them with more value

Although you still need to keep the legality in mind (i.e. not requesting positive reviews), you can still incentivise your customers to review your business. Offer them value in other ways that can benefit their business. For example, if you create useful content (e.g. whitepapers or webinar recordings), make them easily accessible to your client.

Additionally, you can negotiate a potential testimonial/case study with them. If they are particularly happy with your business, creating a case study (the ultimate review) together can benefit both parties.

Trusted Shops has created multiple case studies with clients in a variety of markets. Check out this case study from Solarplexius, which has used our trust solutions in over 10 markets:

Conclusion

Collecting more customer reviews will benefit your service rating as well as your product ratings. They key to getting more is to make it easy for your customers, ask at the right time, and test your processes in order to optimise them.