Why You Need Customer Reviews in Shopify

Do you have a Shopify store?

If yes, I have something to tell you.

You might think that embedding one Google review widget is enough to attract new customers and keep your online reputation good.

Google reviews are a great starting point and very important, but there is another thing that you should do as well.

Put reviews on your Shopify store!

This blog tells you why and how to do that, and introduces some actionable review strategies.

Build Trust in Your Shopify Store with Customer Reviews

The ultimate goal of having reviews is to build trust in your brand. That’s what makes review marketing so important.

There are so many scam websites and e-commerce stores out there, and people can be suspicious about new online shops.

When you have reviews from actual customers, you become legit and trustworthy in the eyes of your potential customers.

It proves that you are real and that you sell real products.

There are several mechanisms behind the power of reviews, which I’ll introduce below.

People Trust People

Advertisements are cool, but they are never as effective as authentic recommendations from real people.

In fact, 93% of online shoppers read reviews before buying a new product, because they want to see what other people say about it.

Additionally, 62% of shoppers are more likely to buy if they see photos and videos from other customers.

These review statistics show that reviews are extremely important. Companies that don’t have them are lagging behind.

What makes reviews so effective?

It’s due to a psychological phenomenon called social proof.

This phenomenon makes us people refer to our peers when in new situations. We look for cues about correct behavior and usually end up following the lead of others.

Reviews and video reviews are great sources of social proof, but there are also other tactics to apply social proof to e-commerce.

Stop Losing Opportunities

Customer reviews help your potential customers to make buying decisions.

If they are still a bit unsure about a product, seeing a product review can make or break the deal.

This is especially effective when the reviews are in photo or video form, as seen from the statistics before.

However, if their need for more information is not satisfied, they might move to another store.

In that case, you lose an opportunity to get a new loyal customer.

Better SEO Results and Website Traffic

Perhaps a surprising benefit of having reviews on your website is that it increases your visibility in search engines.

Customer reviews often include relevant keywords that help search engines to find and position your business.

Another thing is that people will spend more time on your page reading the reviews, and Google rewards that.

Especially video works well here. Pages that include video are 53 times more likely to rank high on Google search results, and people spend 3 minutes longer on a page that has video content.

statistics about video and website traffic

The Best App to Use

There are many review apps for Shopify with various features and pricing plans.

But what is the best one?

If you want to collect unlimited text and video reviews and showcase them on your website with an elegant widget, Trustmary is your choice.

Let me tell you how it works.

Import Reviews

If you want to get started immediately, the easiest way is to use Trustmary to import your existing reviews from third-party review sites to your own site.

It only takes a few minutes, and you already have glowing reviews on your site.

Trustmary lets you import

Fetching the reviews for the first time might take a bit longer, but after that, you get new reviews from the review sites with just one click.

Basically, you could direct your customers to leave you Google reviews and get the best of both worlds!

import reviews from external sites to your own website

Showcase Reviews with Widgets

Adding reviews manually to your website is overwhelming. There’s always something wrong, and you get frustrated beyond measure.

Forget about that!

When you use Trustmary, all you have to do is copy and paste a code snippet. If you use pop-ups, you can easily configure them to appear on specific pages.

Moreover, the review display widgets are cool. Go beyond basic review lists and try a dynamic carousel or a review wall with filters.

See all Trustmary’s widgets and choose your favorite. I’ll also introduce some use cases and examples of widgets for those situations.

One more thing: you can filter out bad reviews and only showcase the positive ones. But if you want, you can let all new reviews go live automatically.

Step-by-step instructions for adding your customer reviews to Shopify

Trustmary has the fastest and simplest process for adding your existing reviews from Google, Facebook, Yelp, and others to the Shopify website.

Here’s how to do it in 3 steps.

Sign up for Trustmary. It’s free!
Import reviews by pasting your review page URL.
Copy the automatically created widget and paste it to your website with HTML snippet.

Easy as that!

Of course, you can also decide to customize the widget if you want to. Whenever you make changes to the widget, they will be automatically updated on your website.

With Advanced Plans Come Advanced Features

All the above features cost you nothing: they are part of the free forever Trustmary Solo plan.

It’s a perfectly suitable solution for raising your landing page conversion rate and getting unlimited reviews, but Trustmary offers additional features for premium plan customers.

These features include:

Collect Reviews and Video Reviews

If you don’t have online reviews on external sites, you can use Trustmary to collect them.

The review request form allows you to collect text or video reviews easily.

You can distribute the form via email, SMS, or QR code, or embed it on a website.

The customer fills in the form or films a short video directly on the form, and the response is saved on your dashboard in Trustmary.

You can easily store and manage your customer reviews on one easy-to-use platform.

Use Cases for Reviews in Shopify

Here are some practical ideas for how you can use reviews in your Shopify store and boost sales.

1. Showcase Customer Testimonials on Your Landing Page

When a new visitor lands on your Shopify store for the first time, you need to make a great first impression.

Showcase customer testimonials on the front page!

It creates instant legitimacy and trust for your store. Choose reviews that don’t necessarily talk about a specific product, but rather about your brand.

I recommend you use a dynamic widget that catches the attention of the visitors and allows you to display multiple reviews without taking up too much space.

One option is the magnificent Testimonial Wall:

2. Product Reviews on Product Pages

When your customers are scrolling through the products, they appreciate relevant reviews.

Data generated by Bazaarvoice shows that product pages with reviews have a 3.5 times higher conversion rate than pages without reviews.

Just think a moment about how much that makes in sales! 😱

If you get reviews of specific products, use them on the corresponding pages.

Even better if you can add photo reviews that show real people using the products. Especially in the case of clothing and accessories, people love seeing the clothes on another real person.

For this purpose, check out this photo review widget from Fera:

3. Social Proof Pop-Ups

Trustmary also allows you to create pop-ups with reviews and other social proof content.

A small pop-up at one corner of the page does not interrupt the shopping experience, but it is a great way to show that you have customers who actively leave comments about your products.

Pop-ups are also a creative way to promote your best-selling products and create urgency for the shopper, which makes them purchase faster.

You can display pop-ups on any page you deem suitable.

4. Video Review on Checkout Page

The checkout page is a crucial point in the customer journey. It’s the last moment for the shopper to leave and abandon their cart.

We have seen real-life results with placing a video review on the checkout page. One of our clients experienced a 32% raise in sales after implementing it! Another case shows that video reviews generate 20% more e-commerce sales than regular text reviews.

With large impact choices like this, you definitely should A/B test your reviews to see which ones generate the best results.

5. Exit Intent Pop Up

When your e-commerce store visitor is about to leave, there is not much you can do.

Except for showing them an exit intent pop-up with a tempting special offer and a review from a happy customer.

Give a special discount code or another offer that lures the customer back in. That’s what Ruokaboksi did and saw a 37% increase in subscriptions to their product!

When you create pop-ups or any other widgets with Trustmary, you get to customize them to fit your brand. You can edit the colors, fonts, text, and other elements as much as you like.

6. Chatbot with Review

Chatbots are an easy way to add personalization and conversation to the shopping experience.

Create a personalized chatbot with Trustmary and script the interactions to fit various needs that your visitors might have.

The chatbot can guide the customers, give tips, or collect feedback.

Don’t forget to top it off with a shining testimonial.

Here’s an example of a chatbot you can try:

How to Get Customer Reviews for Shopify Online Store?

Now that you know how you can use the customer reviews you get, we should cover how you can get them in the first place.

1. Allow customers to leave reviews on many channels

71% of happy customers will leave a review if it’s easy.

Provide your customers with many different ways of leaving reviews. It maximizes the chances of getting them.

You can embed a review request on your website, send an email or SMS, or even ask for reviews on social media.

Another benefit of using different channels is that it gets you reviews and feedback on different things.

If you ask for a review right after a purchase, it’s clear that your customers can’t possibly tell you how they like the product.

At this point, they can speak about the overall shopping experience, which is also good to know.

When you ask for reviews later, you can ask about the product.

2. Send an automated email after purchase

To get shining product reviews, you must wait for a while. Let the customer test out their purchase before harassing them with queries.

If you are thinking “but how am I supposed to remember to send the review request?”, welcome to the world of automated emails.

When you use Trustmary, you can set an automated email sequence that goes out after a specific period of time.

Remember to formulate the initial message well. Otherwise your messages will just get ignored.

See our tips for writing great customer feedback request messages.

3. Follow-up if not replied

The first rule of getting any kind of input from your customers is: ask, ask, ask!

If they do not reply, ask again. It will create urgency and signal that your request is important. You can set up an automated reminder while creating the form.

However, don’t overdo it, either. That’s just annoying.

4. Ask again after x months for a long-term opinion

If applicable, you can ask for the customer’s opinion again after a few months.

Especially if you advertise your products as durable or life-changing, it’s crucial to have those testimonials from customers.

Once again, you can automate the question ahead of time and just see responses fly in.

5. Incentivize

Even though satisfied customers don’t often need any extra encouragement other than a nice request, sometimes offering an incentive for customer reviews is a good idea.

When you are just starting out your business and you don’t have many reviews from customers, the threshold for someone to leave a review is much higher. Social proof works in this situation, too.

If you lack social proof, rewards like discount codes or freebies might pay off.

Tricks for Getting Positive Reviews

If you wishfully opened this chapter to find a magic trick for getting better reviews, you will be disappointed.

There are no shortcuts here. At least not ones that would make you more good than harm.

To get better reviews, you have to deliver a better customer experience. It means:

Smooth and intuitive shopping experience
Great products
Accurate descriptions
Nice-looking website
Easy purchase process
Well-organized delivery
Outstanding customer service
And all other touchpoints

Okay, I can mention some shortcuts, which I do not recommend using.

Buying fake reviews. Not recommended! Use an automated and authentic testimonials generator instead.

Only asking for reviews from happy customers. First of all, how can you even do this if you don’t meet your customers face to face? Besides, you will miss out on valuable customer feedback when you do this.

Bribe your customers to give great reviews. While you can incentivize feedback collection, you should not base it on the type of feedback you get.

It is unethical to only reward positive reviews, and in the end, you might end up giving false expectations. If you can’t match the promises that you make, it will result in a poor customer experience and a bad reputation.

Besides, negative reviews are extremely important. They tell you where your biggest problems lie, and what prevents your online store from growing.

Conclusion and Next Steps

Customer reviews in your Shopify e-commerce store are a relatively easy and inexpensive way to increase sales.

I especially encourage you to try video reviews. They have a great effect on your website performance as well as the customer experience.

Even negative reviews have a positive impact on your ecommerce business as they reveal pain points and help you develop the business.

Pro tip: To alleviate the sting of negative reviews, respond to them to provide a better experience for the unhappy customer.

This blog introduced actionable ways to collect and use reviews with the Trustmary review app. It’s completely free to import and collect unlimited reviews and video reviews, and you can start right away!

In case you already have Google reviews, you can add those to Shopify with a branded Google review widget. You can even get more Google reviews in the future with Trustmary.

Why wait another day when you can start leveraging reviews now?

For more thorough step-by-step instructions, see our guide on adding customer reviews to Shopify.

FAQ

How can I add customer reviews to my Shopify store?

With Trustmary, you can import your existing Google reviews to your ecommerce website. You just have to log in to Trustmary, fetch your reviews, and create a widget with the reviews. After that, you copy and paste the simple embed code to your Shopify page, and enjoy the cool review widget.

Why to add customer reviews to Shopify?

Ecommerce stores that have product reviews perform much better than stores without reviews. Customer reviews are a form of social proof, they help customers make buying decisions, and they boost your organic search results.

How can I get customers to leave reviews for my Shopify?

Most satisfied customers are happy to leave reviews as long as you provide an easy way to do so. Ask for reviews in multiple channels and at the right moments. Remember to follow up to those who don’t reply the first time. Sometimes you might need to offer a reward in exchange for customer reviews.

How can I add fake reviews to Shopify?

Please don’t. Embedding fake online reviews is always a bad idea.

Your potential customers will see right through them and they’ll end up having the opposite effect: People will deem your Shopify store as untrustworthy.

Instead, create an authentic testimonial generator and never worry about having to create fake reviews again.

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