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Customer reviews are an important part of every business’ marketing strategy, whether it’s an online store or a physical location. They give social proof for your store’s visitors, but they’re also useful in a variety of other ways.

Continue reading this article to learn about the many types of customer reviews, the best practises for collecting and presenting them, and the features to look for in a reviews provider.

The Context of Customer Reviews

If you’ve ever purchased online, you’re probably familiar with the concept of consumer reviews. Some people call them reviews, while others refer to them as feedback. Some people refer to a store’s rating or star rating. However, there appears to be some misunderstanding about the various categories of reviews. 

The Different Types of Review

When it comes to customer reviews, they can be broken down into three categories. Shop reviews, local reviews, and product reviews. But what is the difference between these three types of review?

Shop Reviews

Shop reviews are evaluations of a store’s services. Customer service, shipping delays, packing, and the shop’s general obligations should all be addressed in these reviews. Normally, store reviews should focus solely on those aspects, not on the items’ quality.

Local Reviews

Local reviews might be included in the store reviews category. They’re reviews for actual stores in the real world. People still utilise the online world to investigate businesses, even if your main business selling point is in the physical world. 

People nowadays read internet reviews for everything, from laptops to restaurants. As a result, even brick-and-mortar businesses should be proactive in preserving their internet reputations.

Product Reviews

Product reviews are for product feedback, much as store reviews are for input on the shop’s service. Again, a product review should focus solely on the product’s quality and performance. 

Customers who submit product reviews should, in theory, ignore the shop’s services and focus solely on their thoughts on the item they purchased, with no mention of the shop’s services.

Why Customer Reviews are Important

Everybody knows that the reviews can be an important factor for anybody looking to make a purchase. We’re confident that you have been swayed one way or another by an online review in the past! However, reviews can do so much more than just make up a buyer’s mind.

Shopify customer reviews may help your shop and its products get social proof. This is a highly visible technique of establishing confidence in your store. 

There is a lot of online data showing the effectiveness of online reviews in converting clients. Oberlo’s article has a lot of eye-opening statistics. Here are a few notable examples: 

  • Customer reviews on product pages result in 3.5 times more conversions than those without. 
  • Three out of four customers say they trust internet reviews just as much as personal advice. 
  • Before making a purchasing choice, 89 percent of internet customers check reviews.

Reviews can also help to boost your Shopify store’s visibility on Google through SEO. Adding reviews to your website is akin to adding new material to your website in Google’s eyes. Google’s web crawlers will look for relevant information on websites to determine where they should appear in its search engine results pages (SERPs). 

This user-generated content supplies your website with essential keywords that are updated on a regular basis as fresh reviews are added (Google also loves websites that constantly add new content). As a result, the higher you rank on Google for your company’s most critical keywords, the more reviews you have. 

Shopify User Reviews Help Build Trust

You will agree that when you see a company with many positive users reviews, you trust them just a little bit more. Review stars (sometimes known as star ratings) are the visual features I’m referring about. It’s already a good indicator of credibility if your Shopify store ranks highly organically. 

However, adding those tiny yellow stars next to your organic search results will help you capture the attention of your target audience even more (some studies have indicated a 35 percent boost in traffic when stars are featured in Google’s SERPs). 

It’s the same with your Google Ads. Those eye-catching stars take up more space and can raise your click-through rates significantly (that goes for Google Shopping ads as well).

Making Sure You Encourage and Collect Reviews

Another factor to consider when selecting a reviews provider is how simple it is for consumers to leave reviews. Because the majority of consumers do not post reviews, your reviews should have a good review collection mechanism in place. 

It might be difficult to get customers to leave reviews in the first place. You can increase the number of reviews you receive by controlling the time of your review request emails (for example, 2 days following delivery).

Enhancing Your Shopify Store with ShopFox

In conclusion, collecting and presenting customer feedback will be beneficial to your online store. By collecting these reviews, you raise your website’s reputation, improve its SEO, and gain direct input from your consumers, all of which may help you improve your company processes.

For more help in building your Shopify store, get in touch with us today. We’re a Shopify app development store with a selection of different apps to help optimise your online store. 

Proofer Proof Management – That extra pair of hands you always needed for your customised products.

FraudBlock – Goodbye fraud and refund fees, hello more free time!

AutoSync for Square – Automation for your Shopify and Square inventories. Simple.