E-Commerce businesses have seen massive growth over the years. According to Morgan Stanley, the eCommerce market is set to reach more than $5 trillion by 2026.
Such high growth in the eCommerce industry is acting as a magnet for many startups and businesses looking to benefit from the surging market size.
A bigger market size does not mean your eCommerce business is set to skyrocket sales. According to Etailinsights, there are more than 5.9 million eCommerce businesses worldwide. So, you need a strategy to stand apart in a competitive market.
What is the best approach to improving eCommerce growth?
eCommerce is defined as the “commercial transactions conducted over the internet”. According to Forbes, 90% of customers see online reviews before visiting a business. Therefore, reviews are a significant aspect that can help you improve eCommerce traffic.
So, here we are with some tips to maximize the benefits of good customer reviews for your eCommerce business.
Going social is the best way!
Social media is one of the most powerful channels to engage with your audience. 59% of the world's population uses social media daily, which makes it an important platform.
You can use social media reviews for your eCommerce business to improve credibility. However, the best way to leverage social media is to integrate it into your website.
An adult uses the social media platform for more than 95 minutes daily. So, when you incorporate features of social sharing and feedback, its impact is significant.
Further, you can leverage eCommerce development services to develop unique features for instant social feedback. Take the example of an eCommerce retailer selling women’s apparel or accessories. Now you can integrate social media platforms and allow customers to have live video-sharing capabilities.
Users can use the live video calling features through social media profiles through integrations into the website. In other words, you can integrate one-on-one video calls to improve the entire shopping experience and help customers make purchase decisions.
In addition, it will help you get instant feedback and interact with users to understand their pain points.
Here are 4 tips that you can follow to use social media reviews for your eCommerce website:
- Leverage influencer reviews to generate more leads and showcase social proof
- Integrate social media reviews and make them visible on your website
- Build features that allow social media users to post user-generated content for your products on the website.
- Enable your customers to share product details and resources from the website to the social media platform.
Using these tips, you can leverage social media reviews for your eCommerce website. However, you can ask your audience directly from the website to provide feedback.
Asking for a review is not bad!
eCommerce companies often shy away from directly asking their customers for a review. However, there is no harm in asking for a review.
You can invite customers to leave a product review on your website or even provide feedback on social media platforms.
One way to ask for reviews directly is to add a feedback feature on the website.
The best practice is to create review features where users can leave feedback for products on the website. Another way to ask your customers to leave a review is through a rating system. You can design the rating system specifically to improve user engagement.
Use Gamification approach
The gamification approach is where you ask for a review from the customers by offering rewards in return. E-commerce businesses can leverage gamification to improve engagement and get reviews organically.
So how does gamification work?
👉🏼 A user fills out the review; you can serve recommendations and topics that showcase your brand's positive side.
👉🏼 Users get a reward point when they include the suggested topics in their reviews. For example, reviewing a specific feature of computer software.
👉🏼 Convey to the users that there will be a significant reward at the end of a specific amount of reward points!
👉🏼Users will use all the topics intended to convey to the audience; they can be rewarded with discount coupons and other rewards.
E-commerce businesses can leverage gamification to use a sense of participation and generate organic reviews. There is a dual advantage when you use gamification:
✅ You will engage with customers due to the gaming concept
✅ You are not asking customers to generate reviews directly
Though asking your customers directly to write reviews is not a bad idea, you can go beyond direct communication!
Communicating with customers across channels
There are several channels where a customer will interact with eCommerce businesses like social media, customer support platforms, emails, contact centers, etc.
However, communicating with the customers across channels and asking them to take reviews with a personalised message will need massive effort.
Here, eCommerce can leverage Artificial Intelligence based chatbots for each channel that communicate across channels. Chatbots can communicate with the audiences by analyzing their data, including demographics, persona, and profile.
Why using an AI chatbot is beneficial?
- Chatbots will help you cater to the personalized needs of customers
- Satisfied customers will provide organic reviews for your eCommerce products
- It will help you cater relevant topics to audiences
- AI will improve communication and enhance customer support
- Chatbots will send instant personalized messages after the purchase for feedback
- Better UX due to AI chatbots will also help you gain more positive reviews
Though the integration of advanced features like AI chatbots will need to consider the cost, you need to consider several factors for eCommerce development costs, and the integration of services like AI chatbots is one of them.
Fortunately, there are ready-made services with custom APIs to integrate into your eCommerce websites.
Deploy online surveys and feedback mechanisms
Online surveys have been quite popular for feedback. Listening to your customers is the first step to an excellent shopping experience. Your customers know the gaps in service delivery and products.
Online surveys allow you to know the customer’s point of view. For example, whether customers have negative or positive feedback on features, offerings, or products, on the whole, is traceable through surveys.
Creating an online survey is not difficult, with many free and paid software options available in the market. However, what matters is asking the right question. You can use open-answer questionnaires that provide users with more freedom of expression.
Open-answer surveys
The open format allows customers the freedom to convey whatever feedback they have regarding your products or service. Here, there is no restriction or measuring element. In other words, feedback is descriptive rather than a set number or figure.
Multi-choice surveys
The multi-choice approach allows users to choose a specific number or quantify the experience. It is a popular format used for years in customer service feedback.
For example, you may have heard an IVR mechanism asking for ratings after talking to a customer service representative.
You can create surveys for your products and services where users can provide ratings between 0-10 on different questions. Such surveys help improve the Net Promoter Score (NPS) and easily access customer feedback.
Conclusion
Customer reviews are essential in attracting new customers, retaining users, improving the conversion rate, and improving their association with the brand. Every eCommerce website thrives on conversions.
Negative reviews can impact conversions and affect sales of the eCommerce business. So, listening to your customer is crucial to ensure high-quality products and services.
User reviews and feedback help you gather data on service gaps and product shortcomings to improve the shopping experience. We have discussed practical ways to use reviews for your eCommerce website. However, which one to use will depend on your business requirements.
About the author
Tuhin Bhatt is one of the co-founders of Intelivita, a digital transformation place to hire dedicated mobile app developers. Tuhin is regarded in the industry as a powerhouse of unique and best app ideas that shaped award-winning app projects across iOS, Android, web, desktop, and game console platforms. His write-ups are usually based on Technology, Leadership, and Entrepreneurship.
Find him on LinkedIn.