In 2020, 60% of shoppers admitted to consistently looking at reviews while checking out businesses. That number shot up to 77% in 2021.

What’s more, psychological research confirms that people are more likely to purchase a product that has more reviews than  an identical one with fewer reviews.

In other words, reviews can get you more conversions. And so, as a business, you need to do three things:

• Collect more reviews.
• Get reviews on site pages, quickly.
• Showcase reviews to prospects throughout the funnel to motivate more purchases.

In this article, we share five tactics you can implement to amplify the conversion power of the reviews you acquire.

1. Make Leaving a Review Easy, Quick, and Timely

Nobody wants to receive a review solicitation email (RSE) before they’ve received the product in question, and they likely don’t want to be redirected to your website in a browser window to leave their review. Optimize for a simple and timely user experience when it comes to review solicitation.

Ratings & Reviews platforms like Pixlee TurnTo allow customers to submit reviews without leaving their email with inbox submission, and ensure RSEs are only sent out after the buyer receives the product. Brands can also provide review incentives to encourage more reviews, faster, and urge customers who submitted a review to “do more” by reviewing other past purchases or answering more product-specific questions.

Other buyer feedback tools like Checkout Comments™ (customers' answers to why they purchased a product) can also be valuable in driving conversion. Customers are deterred by products that don’t have any kind of customer feedback. Even if a new product has no reviews yet, Checkout Comments™ can help give 

Revel Nail saw a 4x increase in conversion after showcasing Checkout Comments™ and user-generated content on PDPs and other website pages.

Finally, one last way to get more reviews and load your website with social proof to drive conversion is to syndicate reviews. Syndication refers to cross-posting reviews of the same product on both brand and retailer websites — learn more about the review syndication process.

2. Show Reviews at Key Steps of the Funnel

Showing reviews from the moment a prospect lands on your website motivates them to take the next step in the buyer’s journey. Pixlee TurnTo provides a handy solution for growing businesses by helping them show customer reviews to their prospects at every step of the funnel.

For instance, Helzberg Diamonds shows reviews and user-generated content (UGC) on their homepage by using Pixlee TurnTo’s customizable widget. Combining visual UGC and reviews is a smart move, as it maximizes the level of social proof on your website.

This helps visitors feel confident that they’ll get the value they have been looking for. Rather than the business claiming how great their products or services are, they will hear from a trusted third party, someone that they have more in common with.

Another way you can show reviews to your potential customers is through Community Q&A sections. In the consideration phase, shoppers are more likely to have a detailed discussion with or just view answers from individuals who already have been in their shoes and decided to purchase.

‍

Pixlee TurnTo seamlessly integrates with your website and/or app to show (and collect) reviews at every step, even at the checkout page.

Reviews at every stage will keep the customer engaged and this way, they’ll look forward to the value offered by your products/services.

3. Establish Service Quality with Seller Ratings

Do you remember the last time you made your first purchase with a brand without Googling them?

That is exactly what your prospects do before buying from you. A Google search not only helps them with the basic details of your business but also shows them your product reviews and seller ratings.

Since they are checking out your reviews, they are clearly already motivated to some degree to make a purchase. It is your job to fully convince them to buy.

Fortunately, Google Seller Ratings allows you to take reviews a step further by showing your service is high-quality, just like your products. Pixlee TurnTo’s seller ratings tool allows you to both collect feedback about buyers’ shopping experiences and syndicate those reviews to Google.

Next time someone looks up your brand or products, they’ll be more likely to browse and purchase when they right on Google’s SERP that you’re a trusted seller.

4. Turn Reviews Into Display Ads or Social Posts

Display ads are a preferred marketing channel by many top brands, because these ads:

• Can be hyper-targeted to a defined audience.
• Are shown to prospects across the web, such as on ecommerce stores and niche blogs.
• Are easy to set up and manage.

Generally, businesses tend to showcase their products through these ads, but due to the reasons we mentioned at the beginning of this post, showing reviews is even better.

Here are two reasons why showing reviews through display ads will improve your conversion rates:

• The prospect will know what value your product/service will deliver for them.
• They will find it more relatable, as the reviewer is someone like them.

There are many templates for display ads where you can show your prospects how valuable your product/service is to your customers. Take a look at the following example by Maui Jim:

The above ad helps brands motivate their prospects to click on their ad because it provides some details of the reviewer, focusing the ad on a person rather than the business, for maximum credibility and trust. It also clearly shows the value the brand delivers, features visual UGC, and provides a CTA.

‍Bonus tip: Apart from display ads, you can also show reviews and ratings of your products to your prospects via Google ads as well. Take a look at the following example from Lego.

The stars, the rating, and the number of reviews by customers encourage the prospects to click on the ad. As many people rated the product highly, it is likely that the prospect clicking through will assume the same and think about a purchase.

Ratings & Reviews as well as UGC can also make engaging, trustworthy social posts — both sponsored and organic. Consider sprinkling customer-powered content throughout your social strategy instead of solely focusing on content created in-house.

5. Spotlight Highly-Rated Products in Emails

Our last tip is to showcase products with a solid volume of high reviews in email campaigns and newsletters. Use an eye-catching subject line that teases the real customer content featured in the email itself, and include product photos next to ratings and reviews.

Converse used this strategy to design a series of emails around some of their top-rated shoes, and these emails ended up performing extremely well, seeing a higher open rate than the brand’s typical email campaigns.

Reviews Generate Results

Showing your customers’ reviews at the right time will motivate shoppers to make a purchase. To effectively amplify the conversion power of reviews, you can implement the three tactics we’ve outlined above, and keep review content and UGC handy for future marketing campaigns.