Do you sell products or services from your WordPress.com website?
If so, you already have the perfect platform to share what real-life customers think about you. When people shop online, they want confidence they’re purchasing something that other people use and like, so reviews are an important part of ecommerce success.
Let’s outline why reviews are essential, which reviews you might need, and how to display them on your WordPress.com product pages.
Why add customer reviews?
Sometimes business owners wonder if it’s worth adding reviews to their website. Many fear it may leave them open to poor reviews. Yes, it does, but consumer research overwhelmingly shows that genuine reviews are necessary for anyone selling online.
When you shop for a product for the first time online, there’s a high chance you look for reviews to help inform your purchase decision. 91% of consumers read online reviews, while 84% trust reviews as much as recommendations from friends. Customers are likely to spend 31% more on a business that has “excellent” reviews.
Customers prefer a higher volume of reviews on websites. One survey found that consumers prefer seeing 40 or more reviews, as this number helps to justify the average star rating. From this perspective, a product or service that has 40 or more reviews with an average star rating of 4.5 will often see more traffic than a competing product with less than 10 reviews, averaging 5 stars.
The data here shows consumer behavior, but here’s the reasoning behind it:
Reviews are trust indicators
Reviews tell a customer that other people shop your products and approve of them. More reviews mean more people are buying, and that there’s a high chance those reviews are genuine. This is one reason why more reviews often mean more sales, even if a competing product has a higher average star rating.
Reviews are social proof
Social proof is a psychological effect when people make decisions based upon the collective actions that others are taking. This is ingrained in us from a young age. For anyone who ever said “but Mom, everyone else has a [name of latest toy]”, this is one example of the impact of social proof. We may have matured as consumers, but we’re still interested in what everyone else is doing.
Reviews contribute to SEO
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) describes a range of strategies that draw more search traffic. Reviews help in a couple of ways; they help to add keyword content to your website which pops up in searches, and Google tends to rank businesses with more reviews higher on search results, sending more traffic your way.
Reviews help you to gather feedback
Besides motivating customers, reviews are important for your business as well. They’re a great way to gather feedback, which ensures you’re meeting customer needs. Even if you do get some negative reviews, customers will analyze your responses. In this sense, negative reviews aren’t always bad. Your interaction with the customer can help to build trust in your business.
Reviews vs. testimonials
You can choose to have both reviews and testimonials on your WordPress.com website, so it’s important that you understand the differences between the two:
Reviews
Reviews provide a snapshot of the customer experience using a product or service. They usually describe a single experience of purchasing the product or service and generally include some sort of rating. They may be given directly on your website, or via a third-party site. Reviews tend to be found on product pages and are more impactful in larger quantities.
Testimonials
Testimonials tend to be a longer, more detailed description of customers’ experiences with your product or service. They’re usually provided by customers directly to the company and may be written or in video format. Testimonials are usually displayed more prominently on a website, such as on the home page, rather than on a product page. They’re always a positive account of the company, whereas reviews may be positive or negative.
How to display reviews
There are many places that customers can choose to go to leave you a review, so you have choices when it comes to displaying them on your product pages. For example, you can have people leave product reviews directly on your website, or they can leave reviews on third-party review sites.
What’s the difference? Third-party sites are often very well-known by consumers already and are a go-to for many as soon as they are inclined to leave a review. Yelp, Trip Advisor, Google Reviews, Facebook, and Foursquare are examples of these sites. The sites are also searchable by other consumers. Many people will go to a site like Yelp and search for something like “best electrician in [my town].”
On the other hand, you usually have to ask for reviews if you have them directly on your website. Most people don’t automatically go to an ecommerce website to leave a review (not unless you’re Amazon!).
To display reviews on your product pages, you’ll need a plugin or widget that supports the type of review you want to show. For example, you can display your latest reviews from third-party sites, or have people leave reviews on your site, facilitated by a plugin.
Here are some examples:
WP Customer Reviews
The WP Customer Reviews plugin uses shortcodes to add customer reviews to product pages. It includes the ability to add review submission forms to any page, for which you can customize the fields. This is a great way to make sure the right reviews are displayed with the right corresponding product.
Widget for Google Reviews
Widget for Google Reviews is one way you can display reviews in the widget area of your product pages, or other pages of your website. The widget will pull through your most recent Google Reviews to display.
You need to have a Google My Business account set up so you can respond to reviews and make sure your business details are correct. But if you’re putting the widget on individual product pages and you have multiple products, the review displayed won’t necessarily be for the corresponding product as it’s pulled directly from Google Reviews.
Site Reviews
Site Reviews is a basic plugin, allowing you to publish reviews using shortcodes, blocks or widgets. It provides a form for customers to fill out, although the form fields aren’t editable on the admin end. You need to manually approve reviews before they go live, and it includes the ability to block certain users from submitting reviews.
Widgets for Amazon Reviews
Widgets for Amazon Reviews works by pulling your reviews from Amazon to display via the widget section on your product pages. You can choose from several different styles and layouts, and display up to 10 reviews at one time. It also allows for filtering of reviews.
Customer Reviews for WooCommerce
Does your WordPress.com website add ecommerce functionality through WooCommerce? There are review plugins available that specifically work with WooCommerce. Customer Reviews for WooCommerce is one of them. A useful feature of this plugin is that if you use CusRev, a third party service, you can set it up for automated email reminders to leave reviews.
How to get more reviews
It can be a challenge to get consistent reviews, since leaving a review is often not the first thing a customer will think to do. Here are some quick tips for getting more reviews:
- Ask! Send reminder emails, or include reminder inserts in product packaging.
- Make it easy for customers to leave a review. Include a link in your emails that takes them directly to where they can write their review. Ensure you have a user-friendly system in place.
- Collect different forms of reviews. For example, a mix of third-party review sites, and reviews left directly on your product pages.
- Give them positive reasons to want to leave a review. Many people will jump to reviews if their experience is negative, while most won’t review a “neutral” experience. However, when people feel they’ve received outstanding service, they’ll often want to reward that with a great review.
You’re ready to add reviews to your WordPress.com website
If you sell any sort of products or services online, then you need to be proactive about getting reviews for them. WordPress.com offers you many different options for gathering and displaying reviews on your product pages.
Reviews are an important part of the purchase decision process for most consumers, so aiming to get more reviews can pay off. Decide how you want to gather reviews and direct your customers to those places after they’ve made a purchase. Make it as easy as possible for your customers, and use a good plugin or widget to display them.
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