Customer reviews are invaluable to your business. With 97% of consumers checking reviews before making a purchase, customer feedback is more thana ‘’nice to have’’, it’s a must.
Thankfully, consumers are ready and willing to share their opinions. With plenty of opportunities for consumers to give feedback on every transaction they make - both on and offline, customer insight is out there for the taking.
So, how do you choose which review tool or site is the best option for your business?
What makes a review useful:
To find the customer feedback platform that’s right for you, you need to know what you’re looking for in a review. Here’s what can make your reviews as helpful as possible:
Customer feedback is one of the most powerful insights into your business. Review platforms can have a positive impact on everything from your position in the search results to your brand reputation.
To find the best customer review platform to fit your needs, figure out what you’re going to be using your feedback for. Here are just a few of the benefits that customer reviews can have on your business.
77% of customers view a brand more favourably if they’re asking for customer feedback and acting on it. Taking comments on board - and making all-important changes- can strengthen existing customer relationships and do wonders for your brand reputation.
You can gain a lot from your reviews. Neutral and negative feedback gives you a chance to learn and develop, as well as the opportunity to resolve issues with unhappy customers.
But feedback isn’t just for learning about your business - it also holds huge amounts of insight into your customers. From demographics, such as age and location, to how your customers are using your product, getting hold of this data can help you create buyer personas, identify your target audience and enable you to constantly improve your customer experience.
Adding an external perspective to your business decisions can help you make the right judgement calls. You may know your company well, but customer perception can be very different to how you view yourself as a business.
Opening up the floor to your customers and allowing their opinions to guide your decisions is a powerful move. We’ve seen some of our clients make effective decisions based on the views of their customers, from making more sustainable choices to expanding their customer service teams.
Nothing is more persuasive than the voice of a happy customer. You can use positive reviews across your marketing - from your print ads to your homepage - to increase trust, boost conversion, and attract new customers.
A deeper dive into your reviews can even guide your marketing strategy. Customer feedback may highlight a use for your product you hadn’t considered, or help you fine-tune your tone of voice to match your target audience.
There are plenty of tools and sites available to collect and manage customer feedback, and what works for one business may not be as effective for another. Certain review sites cater to specific industries, and others focus on feedback for local, regional or worldwide businesses.
The great news is you don’t have to choose just one of these sites, tools, or platforms to collect customer reviews. Gathering customer feedback from a combination of these sites can give you a well-rounded view of how customers perceive your business, wherever they come from.
We won’t mention every feedback site out there, but instead give a rundown of the most popular, how they work, and the benefits of each.
Customer feedback may not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Facebook. Surprisingly, Facebook reviews (officially called Facebook Recommendations)holds 19% of all customer reviews. With such a huge number of users, and 66% of those likely to share their experiences on their purchases there, Facebook is a powerful tool for building brand reputation - both online and for physical stores.
Unlike the commonly used 5-star rating system, Facebook uses ‘Yes/No’ options to get feedback from its users. Appearing on a business Page’s “Recommendations and Reviews” section, users answer a simple question: “Do you recommend (business name)?” Reviewers can answer with the click of a button, and then add more detail with more text, photos and tags.
To see reviews on your Facebook Business Page, click the Recommendations or Reviews tab under your profile picture. Facebook displays all reviews publicly, and you can’t make them private.
Responding to your feedback is important, and with Facebook Recommendations it’s simple. Like any other posts on Facebook, you can respond to your reviews by adding a comment or ‘reacting’ with a heart or a thumbs up.
Facebook reviews can be really useful to your business, especially if you’re a small company. Here’s why:
With more than 60% of consumers checking Google reviews before they visit a business, this rating is one of the first things a potential customer will see when taking those first steps to using a brand.
Chances are, you’re very familiar with seeing Google reviews. They appear on the search engine in the Google Business profile which pops up if you’re searching for, “supermarket near me”, for example:
Google reviews will also appear on Google Maps when searching for a business.
Google’s popularity and influence mean the reviews left on the platform are far more widely read than those left on other sites - so understanding how to collect and manage them is important.
To start collecting Google reviews, you’ll need to claim your Google Business Profile. Here’s how:
To leave a Google review, customers will need to:
To make sure that the reviews give a transparent view of the business, Google won’t remove feedback solely because it’s negative. Google will only take down customer feedback if it violates any of its guidelines, so if you feel this is the case, simply flag the review as inappropriate.
Benefits of Google reviews
When it comes to brand awareness online, Google reviews are a must. Here’s how enabling Google reviews can benefit your business:
Locations that improve their Google ratings from 3.5 to 3.7 can see a significant increase in conversions
As Amazon’s growth continues to skyrocket, so does the number of customer reviews left by its millions of users. Amazon has 310 million customers worldwide, with 66% of consumers starting their product search on the site. Competition on Amazon is fierce, but reviews could help set you apart.
Customer feedback is important to Amazon. From the moment you search for a product, its customer rating is one of the first things you’ll spot. Reviews feature heavily on product pages too, appearing directly under the name of the product, and numerous more times as you scroll down the page, from product comparisons to customer photos, and on-page reviews.
Amazon encourages customers to submit product feedback by sending email requests after shoppers receive their items. Otherwise, all customers have to do is:
As a business, you can see all your Amazon reviews by visiting Your Profile.
Amazon has set some guidelines for customer reviews, and if they’re broken, they can suspend or remove your product listings permanently. It’s worth taking some time to become familiar with these rules, but here are the main things to consider:
Collecting customer reviews on Amazon can have a great impact on your business. Here’s how:
Yell.com is the UK’s largest online business directory. For free you can get a business profile including everything from contact details and opening times to photos and customer reviews. The Yell Reviews platform offers customers the chance to leave their thoughts on the business they’ve used and allows a two-way conversation between the business and the reviewer.
To leave a review on Yell.com, customers just need to search for the company on the site and click ‘Write a review’ at the bottom of the page. Reviewers sign into a Yell.com account to publish feedback, which can be set up using a Facebook or Google profile. Alternatively, they can sign in as a guest.
With over 3 million business listings on Yell.com, businesses are seeing the benefits of Yell’s reviews platform.
A bit different from the rest of the platforms on our list, Which's own team writes its reviews, not the general public. An independent consumer review organisation, Which? tests and reviews products covering everything from washing machines to craft beer.
Most of Which’s content is available on its website completely free of charge, offering a monthly subscription for additional access to its app and magazine.
Although you won’t be able to sign up for Which? as a business like you can with other platforms we’ve mentioned, it’s a good idea to keep a close eye on Which? for reviews of your, or your competitor’s, products.
Founded in 2004, Yelp is a crowd-sourced review site for local businesses. Accessible online and via its app, it features listings for millions of companies, targeting customers locally.
Users can rate local businesses on their performance using a five-star scale, but Yelp also encourages long-form reviews. Rather than just giving one line saying, ‘great service’, for example, reviewers can go into great amounts of detail about their experiences.
Signing up as a user is completely free, and anyone can leave a review. It’s also free to sign up as a business and create a profile.
Here’s how to get started on Yelp:
Next, optimise your page. Yelp offers lots of tools that can help you personalise your page to fit your brand. Make sure you catergorise your business correctly, use relevant keywords, write a detailed description, and add photos and videos to bring your page to life
Rather than verifying its reviews, Yelp uses an algorithm to detect any reviews that may be fake or malicious, but much like other sites, Yelp will only remove reviews if they go against its guidelines.
With over 8 million tourism businesses listed and around 490 million new visitors every month, TripAdvisor is the largest travel platform in the world. Travelers rely on the site to find the best travel destinations, compare accommodation, and make bookings.
To make the most out of TripAdvisor, you should create and manage your business listings. Here’s how:
With so many travel companies listed on the site, making your profile stand out is probably the biggest challenge on TripAdvisor. You’ll need to get to the top of the popularity index, which, according to TripAdvisor, ranks by quantity, quality, and review date.
Businesses in the travel sector use Tripadvisor daily to get millions of eyes on their locations. Here’s how it could benefit you:
Foursquare is a location enabled service that allows users to ‘check in’ when they stop at a business - whether that’s a shop, club, a hair salon - any place listed on the platform. Users can earn points when checking in and completing various activities and can leave ratings and reviews on any business they visit.
Foursquare is a lot more ‘playful’ than other sites on our list. However, the platform can offer some great opportunities for businesses that it features:
Feefo is different to most review platforms. To make sure that all feedback is genuine, Feefo clients only ask verified customers who have used the business to give feedback. This means that the insight collected by Feefo clients relates to real experiences - whether good or bad.
Feefo gives clients the tools to collect customer reviews with ease - whether that’s by sending a feedback request email, an SMS, or a customer survey. Clients can then manage all their feedback within the Feefo Hub, where they can read and respond to reviews, identify trends and access reports.
Unlike other sites, you can’t just create an account and leave a review. Feefo sends out personal feedback requests on behalf of businesses, and if the company is collecting reviews for public use, publishes the review on the business’s Feefo page, and sometimes on their own site too.
Feefo will not take down a review just because it’s negative, but there are some regulations when it comes to the feedback we publish. Feefo will remove a review if:
Feefo is about collecting customer reviews and loads more besides. Feefo offers a wide range of tools that can boost traffic, improve brand reputation and help you learn about your customers.
Customer reviews are key to understanding why people are using your business, and what you can do to improve their experience with you. Whichever platform you choose, make sure your feedback is: