Getting reviews for your ecommerce business seems simple.
Step 1 - Sell the product
Step 2 - Send an automated email asking for a review
Done deal, right?
Don’t get distracted by the “Tactics” and “Hacks” to getting reviews
As an ecommerce founder, it is so easy to get stuck in the technical weeds and tactics of how to do something. But, it is often who can be excellent at the fundamentals that wins. I will go into some cool tactics to show you how we got so many reviews. Not to mention, that 16,620 of them are 5 Stars!
Once you have a review app of your choice installed, it is time to build a post purchase system gives you the right to awesome reviews.
There are so many great review apps out there. I prefer Judge Me for the following reasons:
Easy to set up
Amazing and fast customer support (there live chat is one of the best out there)
Simple to customize
Affordable
Fast load times
Seems obvious but some people miss this: Make a truly great product
The one part of this equation I can’t control, but you can is the actual product quality. Does your product actually deserve 5 stars? If you just launched your first branded product, it is ok if its only 4.2. I recommend taking real feedback from these reviews and launching version 2.0 based on that feedback. This is a potentially great way to get your second product to 5 star quality.
A great way to get feedback outside of the actual reviews is to email your customers directly. I recommend a plain text email from the founder or person at the company. Making the email personalized and native to the platform is a great way to increase likelihood of opens and authentic replies.
You can also tally the replies to look for any trends. We use software like Helpscout to organize and tag our replies for feedback.
Ok, you already have a great product but aren’t getting as many reviews as you would like.
Thank your Customers (Video, Letter and in Ads!)
This is one of these “tactics” that I don’t like to talk about, because if you don’t truly believe in the overall strategy it won’t work. If you truly are thankful for your customers and don’t look at them as just an order number in your dashboard, please proceed.
Simply telling your customers thank you and that you appreciate their business has a snowball effect. It can increase your word of mouth referrals, help build your brand image and you guessed it; get you more reviews! But, don’t just do it for the reviews, do it because you ACTUALLY are thankful.
3 Effective Methods to Thank your Customers (Tactics)
1: Thank you videos
(I promise I was smiling once the video started)
This is not necessarily the easiest thing to scale, but you can easily make a loom video and train your customer service team in one hour or less. We use Bonjoro to quickly make a short and simple thank you video for each customer. We set it up in such a way, that we have different messaging for first time customers and repeat customers.
The support legends will spend 30 minutes or so a day making videos. If there is a lull in the day, this is a great way to have a positive impact on the brand and increase that likelihood of getting more and higher rated reviews.
Pro Tip: Don’t overthink it! Make the videos personal with your customers name, what they ordered, and tell them thank you. Short is good!
2: Thank you postcards
One of the coolest ways to stand out from the digital world is to send postcards. I hear you cringing, POSTCARDS! Kinda, these are handwritten thank-you notes. We use Thanks.io to send out handwritten (by a robot) thank-you cards. Once this is set up in Shopify it is truly a set it and forget it.
The implied effort of this and the message itself is what makes it so powerful for brand image and increasing the likelihood of getting great reviews for your store.
Pro Tip: I do not use a coupon or do ANY selling with this tactic or really any of these. If you look at this as an opportunity to make money or sell, you need to change your mindset. They are REAL people, not dollar signs.
3: Private Owners Only Facebook Group (Build a real community)
Remember, if you don’t have the high-level strategy and willingness to wow your customers then this tactic is just that. Once a customer places an order from our site, we send them a simple plain text email explaining how awesome they are. From there we invite them to a private facebook group.
This group is comprised of customers only. This alone is worth a blog post or 2, but this owners only group is insanely powerful at building a real community for your brand. Think about it, this is a place for all of your customers to talk about your brand and more importantly the passion surrounding your products.
You can use the Facebook group for a million different things, but we try to keep it simple. We invite them, and tag them for joining each week. From there we let them talk about the things they love and engage with each other. We try not to do any selling and if we do, it is to give them early access or something exclusive because they are why we exist!
Pro Tip:
Add a question that asks for their order email and order number to join the group. This way you can insure only customers are joining. Also, make the group fun! Life is too serious.
In conclusion: Get more reviews by taking care of your customers
It is my hope that you get as many reviews as you can for your Shopify store. Don’t get caught in a tactical nightmare of apps and tech. Find simple and authentic ways to show your customers they aren’t just an order number. Continuously improve your products and build a community and LISTEN to what they have to say. They are the reason your business exist, treat them like it and guess what…You may get more reviews, and I bet they won’t be 1 star!