The Ultimate Guide to Gathering and Using Reviews

The Power of Reviews: Make or Break Your Business

Think about the last time you wanted to buy a new phone (or any other product or service).

You’ve been loyal to the same brand for some years now, but are wondering if the new model from another brand would be better after all.

How would you approach your decision?

The typical consumer goes online to:

• compare different options and their key features
• compare prices
• read what other users have said (aka. social proof)

After their initial search, they’ll most probably ask friends, family, and colleagues what kind of user experience they’ve had with the top two choices.

There are many factors that influence the purchasing decision (price, looks, whether you are happy with the current brand or not), but one of the most important factors is what other people you can relate to have thought about the product.

Especially with pricey investments, people tend to look for authentic reviews from multiple channels. YouTube, TikTok, and Reddit are filled with unpaid consumer reviews, and these are the ones we tend to trust the most.

And this does not go just for product reviews – you also need business reviews that build credibility for your brand itself.

Even a huge international brand such as Philips has realized the potential of having customer reviews as a part of its online presence.

“At Philips, we have gotten closer to the consumer by using user-generated content. We see an increased conversion whenever it is implemented in the consumer journey. We have a 180% buy-button increase and an organic search increase, and we get a lot of customer insights from our product reviews” Valerie Goncalves, Global Lead, Ratings & Reviews and UGC

Goncalves mentions three important factors that are made possible by asking for customer reviews and posting them:

1. Significant buy-button increase
2. Increase in organic search results
3. Getting customer insights

Even though Philips is an international corporation, the same principles apply to small businesses as well.

5 Reasons Online Reviews Are Relevant in 2024

1. Online Reviews Increase Sales

When you have put in the work and created a well-functioning product or service, you need to post the most recent reviews alongside it to let others know what current users think about it. This will convince them that you are reliable.

Websites with customer reviews tend to outperform sites without them.

By adding customer reviews to your online marketing campaigns, you can get a whopping 270% increase in conversion.

This of course depends on your industry, product/service, and target audience. Here are some more results from specific use cases:

• Meal kit delivery company Ruokaboksi increased subscriptions by 37%.
• Roofing company Kattotutka got over 60% more contact requests.
• E-commerce brand Satokausikalenteri got 20% more sales with video reviews.

2. Reviews Contribute to 10% of Google Ranking

Reviews are a powerful SEO tool.

Having customer reviews on your site can make you rank higher on Google search, and increase your brand’s visibility.

Local businesses without any Google reviews have a hard time ranking well in the searches.

Let’s take hairdressers and barbers as an example. Most towns have multiple salons that might not have an obvious competitive edge against each other.

If you are looking for a new hair stylist or barber, you would likely google establishments near you.

The three businesses with the most reviews and the best star ratings will appear in the “local pack” search results and steal your attention.

The rest you won’t likely even take a look at.

Thus, you should always aim to have more and better reviews than your competitors if you wish to win over new customers through Google search.

Reviews on Your Website

Having reviews, and especially integrated review schema on your website makes a great difference for search.

Review schema helps you get your star rating show up on Google search results, which draws more attention to your link, potentially increases the click-through rate, and can increase your ranking.

Additionally, reviews include valuable information about your business, along with important keywords.

I have even seen in some of our customers’ cases, that Google picks a review as the meta description of the link in search.

So imagine this:

A potential customer googles “pest control” and gets a set of search results.

Your link is in the top three results, and the description below your link says “Professional and affordable solution to my pest problem, I whole-heartedly recommend this service!”

It will immediately set you apart from your competitors that are blowing their own horn.

Having Reviews on Multiple Landing Pages = Duplicate Content?

We recommend our customers to add reviews to all relevant pages on their website.

Some of the SEO-focused readers might be concerned that this could be considered duplicate content and result in penalty from Google.

No worries.

According to Google’s SEO Starter Guide that was updated in 2024:

“If you have content that’s accessible under multiple URLs, it’s fine; don’t fret about it. It’s inefficient, but it’s not something that will cause a manual action. Copying others’ content, however, is a different story.”

According to this, there’s no risk in having reviews on multiple landing pages.

Third-Party Review Sites and Platforms

In the consideration stage of the customer journey, many potential customers search for others’ experiences with a brand they are considering.

This is when it’s beneficial to have reviews on external review sites, like Yelp, G2, Tripadvisor, or other relevant sites. Trustmary also offers a external review page for your business.

These results pop to Google search results, and the potential customer can read reviews about your business.

So even if you don’t necessarily get traffic to your own domain via these links, you still build trust and credibility.

3. Your Ad Click-Through Rate (CTR) Improves

Your CTR lets you know how relevant searchers are finding your ads. If your CTR is high, it means that you are targeting the right people with the right kind of message.

CTR = Number of clicks your ad receives : the number of times your ad is shown

How are CTR and customer reviews connected?

According to a study done by BrightLocal, having a 5-star rating will get you 39% more clicks than having a 1-star rating.

If you can increase your rating from three stars to five, your CTR will increase by 25%.

To put it simpler: If you get people to click on your ad, you have a high chance of getting them to buy from you. After all, they were interested enough to click on the ad to end up on your website.

Note that any reviews won’t do the trick. They have to be positive to increase your CTR. Especially local small businesses should be aware of having a lower rating than a three-star rating in Google Local Pack.

This chart shows the variance in CTR for different star ratings compared to having no stars at all.

If a company has a lower than a three-star rating, it’s more beneficial to hide it from the Google Local Pack and to work on increasing that rating to be at least three stars.

4. Increase Reputation with Word-of-Mouth

When you aren’t simply blowing your own horn, but letting your happy customers speak for you, you are creating a positive buzz around yourself. Word of mouth marketing (WOM) means that your customers are talking good things about you to their friends, relatives or colleagues.

A great American publisher and author William Feather pointed out already a century ago that everyone should praise themselves loudly.

“Blow your own horn loud. If you succeed, people will forgive your noise; if you fail, they’ll forget it.”

But an American actor, comedian, and cowboy, Will Rogers, had a better understanding of how to more effectively spread the word about your business.

“Get some else to blow your horn and the sound will carry twice as far.”

Will Rogers

In the recent years, word-of-mouth marketing has become more and more popular among big and small businesses. Word-of-mouth marketing means that your customers are saying good things about you to their friends, relatives, or colleagues.

No matter if you are a corporate CEO or a small business owner, you should use positive reviews to boost your exposure on search engines. Building a reputation is crucial for small businesses and having reviews on your site and social media is a great place to start.

Curious about how word-of-mouth marketing is affecting your business? Read one of our free articles on +35 word-of-mouth marketing statistics.

5. You Get Valuable Customer Insights

Last but not least, what is a company that can’t meet their customer’s expectations?

Such company will not exist for very long.

It’s extremely important to know what your customers think and how you could improve their experience.

Reviews, good or bad, provide clues on what you should do differently, and which things your customers love.

Some people are downright afraid of getting bad reviews. But they should be met with gratitude, as they teach you valuable lessons. A customer has taken time to tell you there is an issue so that you can do something about it.

Best Practices for Review Marketing

Review marketing is all about using your reviews in your marketing strategies. It entails collecting reviews and putting them to good use to build trust and get more customers.

The number of reviews, the overall rating, review sites, and responses to reviews all matter for your business.

While reviews can be easy to manipulate in 2024, reliable reviews and user-generated content are still unmatched marketing asset.

It’s important to guard your online reputation by staying far away from fake reviews, AI review generators, or buying reviews.

When you do things right, reviews build trust and give you many marketing advantages.

1. Never Buy or Generate Fake Reviews

The number one mistake you can do with reviews is faking them.

First of all, it’s illegal in many countries, and you can face legal consequences. For example, the Federal Trade Commission in the U.S. enforces rules about reviews.

Your customers will also notice when you are faking, and you will lose trust. If reviews promise the best customer service and the fastest shipping, but reality doesn’t match the expectations, the word will get out.

Additionally, you can get sanctioned by Google. Your business can be hidden from Google searches, your Business Profile can be removed, and Google can penalize you by decreasing your rankings.

2. Never Censor Your Reviews

As dishonest as getting fake reviews is censoring your reviews.

Your potential customers are interested in how transparent you are in posting reviews. It’s important to do reputation management, but don’t take it too far.

As many as 62% of consumers don’t buy from brands that clearly censor their reviews online. We trust businesses that don’t hide negative comments, but rather post them and give personalized responses to them.

Have you never thought it this way: negative reviews give consumers a peak at the “worst-case scenario”. If a one-star review for a hotel says that the color of the carpet was hideous, you probably think that the hotel must be great if this is the worst thing someone has to say.

In other words, let the positive, but also the negative reviews stay on your company website.

In fact, it has been researched that businesses that have a full five-star average rating are less trustworthy and convert less than businesses that are between 4 and 5 stars. The best star rating to have for maximum trust is between 4.2 and 4.7.

3. Acquire a Larger Number of Reviews

It matters how many people have reviewed your business. Note that the overall number of reviews you have also includes negative reviews.

As we are constantly influenced by the unconscious phenomenon of social proof, you must offer your prospective clients solid proof that you are worthy of their money.

According to the above-mentioned Bright Local survey, the majority of people prefer businesses that have 20-100 reviews.

If a business has three five-star reviews, it will not build as much trust as a business that has thirty reviews that amount to a four-star rating.

Collecting reviews consistently is also a great way to mitigate the effects of the odd negative review. Even if a couple of people give you one star, the number of good reviews makes up for it.

4. Post Your Reviews Everywhere

Reviews not only build trust for the potential customer, but they also encourage people to write more reviews.

When your customers see that others have left a review for you, they are more likely to leave reviews as well.

One of our customers tested what happens if they ask for reviews and insert an existing example into the request. The result: it multiplied the number of public written responses they got.

In addition, posting customer reviews fosters customer relationships. When customers see that their feedback is celebrated, they feel appreciated.

5. Use Multiple Review Sites

According to the Local Consumer Review Survey 2024, people research online reviews diligently:

36% of consumers use two review sites when deciding to use local businesses, while 41% of consumers use three or more sites.

(If you’re hungry for more statistics, check out our free resources on online statistics that’ll blow your mind.)

Be mindful of which review sites are relevant for your business and make sure you are listed on all of them.

6. Treat Reviews as Conversation with Your Customers

Even though the conversation might be done openly online and your dirty laundry might be aired in public, this is a great way for you to learn what you are doing well and what you can improve.

You might also be able to convince a disappointed customer to become happy again by offering great service and fixing the issues they mentioned.

Always offer your customers a way to give you feedback and remember to respond to both negative and positive feedback. This sort of open dialogue also creates transparency which make customers more likely to buy from you, as they know you are responsive and care what customers think.

If your customers feel that they are important and their opinions and worries are listened to, they are also more likely to stick with you. Collecting customer reviews is a great way to increase brand loyalty.

How to Get More Quality Reviews?

Do you want to hear the secret ingredient for getting more quality reviews?

It’s all about you producing great customer experiences.

Secondly, you need to ask for them.

It seems that some people don’t want to ask for reviews, as they think it’s tacky or inappropriate.

This couldn’t be farther from the truth!

In fact, asking for reviews should be an integrated part of customer service.

You are not the only one experiencing difficulties with reviews… We asked companies about their pain points in collecting reviews, and many businesses say they struggle with messaging, different platforms, legal aspects of reviews, and using reviews after getting them, to name a few.

The Formula to Getting Great Reviews

1. Request reviews in different stages of your customer journey
2. Respond to all of them in a polite manner
3. Learn from the answers and improve your business
4. Post the reviews (website, on-page, social media,…)

Following the formula will lead to a happier client base as they feel their opinions are valued. At the same time, it gets easier to get new customers when they can see that other people love you.

The Way You Phrase It Matters

This section can be shortened down to one sentence. Are you ready?

After your customers have bought anything from you, ask them to do you a favor by reviewing your business or the product they bought.

The secret here is that asking them for a favor lessens the feeling that they are obligated to review you. This will lead to them being more likely to review you.

No matter which review platform you are using, I urge you to try this right away. I’m confident that it’ll make a noticeable difference in your answer rates.

If you don’t want to spend time on review requests, take a look at these customer review templates.

Incentivizing Reviews

This is a tricky topic. In my opinion, you get the most authentic feedback and reviews when there are no strings attached. If you are using Google or Yelp and they catch you using incentives to get reviews, you’ll be penalized. It’s against their user guidelines.

If you’re in a situation where you aren’t getting reviews even though you constantly ask for them, first try to focus on improving your customer service and paying attention to which forms you are using to collect reviews.

Maybe the review platform you are using is too complicated for your target audience. Maybe people don’t want to use these platforms, or maybe they don’t have an account to use them.

Once people are happy with your services and you’re offering them an easy way to give feedback and reviews, you’ll start to get them.

You should never pay for reviews, as most review platforms will ban you if you get caught. And you will get caught.

However, there are many customer loyalty strategies you can use to try to motivate your customers to review you:

Direct Incentives

• Offer discount codes for reviewing
• Organize a lottery
• People can take part by reviewing you and you’ll draw a gift card with the respondents
• Send free samples to consumers and ask for a review in return
• Give loyalty points reviewers can use in your store later

For example, ExpressionMed has tied incentives to their loyalty program. They also have plenty of user pictures, because they have made it easy for their customers to leave a picture.

For a relatively small business, 1303 online reviews with a 5-star rating is phenomenal.

Indirect Incentives

• Give a discount code as a thank you after reviewing and without telling about it beforehand
• Getting early access to products after reviewing the previous version

Harvard Business Review experimented on how incentives affected people’s reviews. In one of their experiments, they asked diners to review their meal after they had already eaten it. Half of the diners were promised a $1 Amazon gift card and the other half wasn’t offered anything.

The results were mind-blowing:

• The people who received the gift card used positive language 55% more than the control group.
• The analysis was done by AI and human judges.
• They both rated the language to be 70% more positive than the reviews of the people who weren’t promised anything.

This would mean that offering even a small incentive would make people use more positive language. However, if positive reviews are inaccurate, they’ll possibly lead to disappointment and backlash.

If you use incentives to get reviews

• Encourage people to tell accurately about their experiences
• Give the same reward for everyone leaving a review

Find the Right Channels

Depending on what kind of reviews you want to collect, there are different options to collect reviews.

Via email

Review request emails are the most common way to collect reviews. They are easy to automate, and work well in industries where you have your customer’s contact information at hand. You can also always be sure that only your real customers can open the review form.

The defect of email review requests is that they are easy to ignore, and there can be deliverability problems if you don’t have the right methods.

SMS

Text messages or even WhatsApp messages are a newer way of asking for feedback. Like emails, they are easy to automate and integrate with other tools, and they often get higher response rates. This can change in the future when more and more brands start using them for review requests and satisfaction surveys.

QR code

There are many businesses that simply don’t have access to the customer’s contact information, such as restaurants or brick-and-mortar stores. In these cases, your chance is to collect the reviews while the customers are in your location.

QR codes or NFC stands are an easy way for you to ask for reviews and for the customer to leave them. Have these available in restaurant tables, at the counter in your shop, or next to the door so customers can scan the code before leaving.

Direct link

A simple URL link to your review form is a handy tool for e.g. social media. Just copy the link and paste it to your post or story for customers to use. Keep in mind that this method is susceptible to fraudulent reviews that aren’t from your real customers.

Read our guides on how to find your Facebook review link and Google review link.

Website embed

Sometimes it’s a good idea to use website embeds for your review requests, but choose the situation carefully. These are good for e.g. asking for feedback from the online shopping experience after checkout.

The Most Effective Method for Collecting Reviews

We recognize the struggle of getting feedback and reviews. People are quick to ignore your requests or abandon surveys that are too long.

If you ask for e.g. Google reviews, people don’t go through the trouble of finding the right place and writing a review.

Additionally, you might have trouble with privacy regulations like the GDPR if you want to personally ask for people’s reviews and also showcase them.

We have developed a process called the Trustmary Method that tackles these problems.

It’s all about making the process easy for the customer and reaching them at the right time.

We use a three-in-one survey that first asks the customer for a satisfaction rating (like NPS or star rating), next asks for open feedback and thirdly collects reviews from happy customers.

Customers can decide if they want to give reviews anonymously or with their name. The review form also includes consent management, which is important to be compliant with GDPR and other privacy regulations.

Furthermore, with our review software, you can quickly get an overview of what your company’s NPS is and ask for video reviews from the ones that gave you a 9 or 10. (And what would be more convincing than actually hearing the words coming from your customer’s mouth or seeing a product in use?)

The method is so easy that it feels like a way to generate reviews – but the reviews are authentic and legit.

You can test Trustmary for free for an unlimited time. Click the link below ⬇️

Add Reviews to Your Website

So, how do you add reviews to your website?

You could do it by hand, or use Google’s embed features, such as the Google trust badge, to embed Google reviews on your website.

It sounds tiring: imagine having to copy and paste individual reviews and figuring out how to make them look nice…

Luckily, there are software tools like Trustmary that make the process easy. You get stylish and customizable widgets that make reviews look amazing on your homepage, and you can showcase your best reviews automatically!

Let me tell you more about it.

1. Import Reviews from Review Sites

You can make use of your existing reviews on various third-party websites, including:

• Google
• Yelp
• Tripadvisor
• Facebook
• Capterra
• G2

Just register to Trustmary, choose the desired source, write your business review page URL, and Trustmary will fetch your reviews automatically.

2. Create Widget with Your Best Reviews

Now that you have imported the reviews, you get to choose the right widget for your reviews.

Check out these cool branded Google review widgets, that can of course be used with any kind of reviews.

The most popular one is the “Review Widget” as shown in the picture below:

If you are happy with the simple design, you’re good to go and can continue with the next step.

In case you want to spice up the widget and make it more fitting to your brand, you can!

The simple widget editor enables you to customize the colors, fonts, and other details.

Oh, and hear this: Trustmary automatically prioritizes your best reviews in the widget! The prioritization is based on following factors:

• Star rating. The higher, the better.
• Length. The longer, the more effective.
• Recency. Newer reviews are more trustworthy than older ones.

You can add reviews from multiple sources in the same widget.

3. Embed on Your Website

Now, all you have to do is to copy a code snippet and paste it to your website’s backend with HTML.

Trustmary’s widgets work on most website builders and CMS, including:

• WordPress
• Shopify
• Squarespace
• Wix
• WooCommerce

Whenever you have the widget on your website, you can edit it on Trustmary, and the changes are updated automatically.

There it is! Now you know how easy it is. Why not try it yourself? Importing reviews and adding them to your website is completely free!