Reviews are powerful way to help both businesses and other consumers like you. It's important to be honest and detailed in your review, providing specific examples of what you liked or didn't like about the product or service.
We’re all about high quality feedback here at Feefo. Our invitation-only method of sourcing feedback means that you can be sure that the reviews we host on our clients’ websites are genuine. When you’ve had an interaction with a company, look out for invitations via email or SMS, to leave a review to share your impressions of the product or service that you’ve experienced. And if you’ve not yet received an invitation, then you can fill in our request to leave a review form and we’ll verify the transaction and get back to you.
But how do you write a good review that other potential customers will find helpful?
It's important to be honest and detailed in your review, providing specific examples of what you liked or didn't like about the product or service. This can help other customers make informed decisions and help the company improve their offerings.
Top seven tips for writing helpful reviews
Follow our top tips, to ensure your reviews always get the thumbs up from other readers.
Be specific
Instead of writing a vague review, try to provide as much detail as possible. Adding in the specific elements of your experience, including what you liked or disliked about the product or service, helps other consumers understand what to expect. It also makes it clearer that yours is a genuine review, rather than something that anyone could have put together. This is less of an issue on Feefo because of our invitation-only model but detail still forms the basis of any really helpful review.
Be honest
It’s essential to say what you feel. If you feel positive – great, the business will love to hear about it. But don't be afraid to provide constructive criticism if there were things you didn't like about the product or service. Detail is helpful here too. Letting people know exactly what didn’t work for you is much more helpful than a rant about how everything was rubbish. It’s the detail about what needs working on that can help companies improve and provide better experiences for everyone.
Use descriptive language
Try to paint a picture of your experience to really bring the review to life. Consider the difference between "the food was good” and “the ravioli was great, with unusual flavour combinations and beautiful presentation with fresh herbs”. With the first example, you don’t even know what type of food is involved, while the second details the dish and exactly what about it was good. If you include descriptions of exactly what you enjoyed (or didn’t), you’ll help other consumers get a sense of what the product or service is really like. Plus it helps the business understand what’s working, so in this example, they might choose to keep the pasta dish on the menu or create similar dishes.
Avoid bias
Professional reviewers aim to approach every product or service with an open mind and ideally, you should do the same. Always stick to the facts and try to be objective in your review, avoiding personal biases and emotions. For example, if you don’t enjoy seafood, you may not have a great experience at a specialist seafood restaurant – but that’s not really going to help others, whose personal tastes are different to yours. Being objective will help other consumers make up their own minds based on the information you provide.
Make it easy to read
It’s important to do what you can to make your review easy for others to read. Check your spelling and grammar – many platforms will do this for you - and ensure you avoid acronyms, jargon or text speak as this can be hard to follow. Well written feedback can help ensure that your review is taken seriously and that others easily understand your message.
Include photos or videos
As the old saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. Including photos or videos can help bring your review to life, as well as making your feedback much clearer. This can be especially helpful for products or services that are visual, for example clothing or interior decoration products.
Keep it concise
While it's important to provide details, try to keep your review concise and to the point. We’re all busy and no one wants to have to work at it, to find out what you’re trying to say. It’s probably best to aim for around 100-300 words, depending on the product or service. This can help other consumers quickly get the information they need.
Feefo and feedback
We love to receive your feedback at Feefo – it’s what we’re all about. And you can read reviews that other consumers have left on a range of products and services on our website, as well as seeing them on our clients’ websites too.
As we’re an invitation-only reviews platform, you can only leave a review for one of our clients after having a verified interaction with that company (i.e. you’ve bought something from them, visited one of their stores or contacted them in some way). Following that interaction, we send out invitations to leave reviews on the Feefo website and you can also request to leave a review, if you don’t receive an invitation to leave feedback within four weeks.
We publish all the reviews that we receive, provided they pass our moderation process. We do not allow people to use bad language within reviews and we will not publish reviews if we cannot verify that you have definitely had an interaction with the company involved. You can find out more about Feefo here.
