Social Proofing: Get More Customer Reviews with SMS Messages

In today’s world, customer reviews are a staple in the online shopping experience. They provide shoppers with an unbiased opinion of products, helping to make decisions easier.

When you have more reviews for your product on your site, it can help increase customer trust and conversion rates by proving that your product is worth the money! They also provide valuable insights for business owners in order to improve their products and services.

How then can you get more customer reviews in your store to improve social proofing? One great option is through SMS review requests.

This article contains the following sections:

Why Product Reviews are Important

Top Product Review Apps in Shopify

Creative Ways to Request Reviews via SMS Messaging (with Templates!)

In an ideal world, your customers will always leave reviews about their experience with your product.

However, it is often difficult for businesses to get customer reviews, especially when they do not have many followers online. You may have tried requesting a review through email or social media, but there are many other ways you can do it as well!

In this article, we will discuss the different ways that you can increase your reviews by reaching out to customers via SMS, email, and more. But first, we will start by discussing why product reviews are essential for businesses, then move onto different Product Review apps in Shopify that you might find helpful when requesting product reviews via SMS messaging.

Why Product Reviews are Important

Requesting for reviews is essential, since the more positive reviews you have, the better your brand credibility. While having limited reviews on your website will not work in improving your brand or product’s credibility, it’s still better than not having any at all.

You must then work extra to get more people to leave reviews. Before we talk about how to do that, let’s talk about why it matters first.

Product reviews can:

1. Give Potential Customers Insight into the Product

Many people read reviews before buying a product or subscribing to a service to get “real” information about the product based on customer experience.

After all, a seller would indeed say his product is perfect, it’s the best, and it can solve the customers’ problems. Who’s to say whether this is true or if they’re saying this just to get some sales!

Product reviews allow potential buyers to:

• be sure of the quality of the product or service,
• feel confident that the product or service actually works, or
• they can make sure they won’t get cheated out of their hard-earned money.

Reviews help other people who come across your products on e-commerce platforms to make a more informed decision before buying something from you, rather than just relying on a single image or description of it.

Furthermore, customers will see what others have had to say, and if it matches their needs, then chances are that they might purchase the same item or a similar one.

2. Help You Learn About Your Customer’s Experience

Reviews are an excellent way for retailers to learn more from their customers. In the review, your customer can tell you what they liked and disliked about the product or service, as well as offer constructive criticism that may help improve future products/services offered by your business.

These can help you understand what your customers want and how they see the world so that you can provide them with an even better experience in the future. Not only will this make it easier for people who come across your products on e-commerce platforms, but also those who are looking for reviews online before buying anything from you.

*Pro Tip: Retailers should strive to make sure all reviews submitted on their website have an answer, so it is clear someone actually read them.

Customer reviews where someone from the company responds are even better social proof! Other customers would be happy to know that you value your customers enough to respond to them. They would feel that you are actually listening.

Most of the time, it’s more than just the product;

it’s more of the customer’s experience that matters to others as well.

Even if the product was perfect but say, for instance, the customer service was terrible, it can cause potential customers to back out. If the customer experience is stellar, then other clients will feel that they, too, will be satisfied. Non-response to a valid concern is almost always equivalent to bad customer service.

Reviews can provide you with an opportunity to make changes for the better. Your customers are giving you a chance to offer them something they’ll be happy with again in the future, and all it takes is listening to what their needs are.

3. Build a Community

Another reason why reviews are so important is that it helps create a community around your products, which in turn will help build sales for the long term.

With more and more people leaving feedback about their experience with your product, they have an opportunity to share not only their thoughts but also their photos and videos.

You can build a community by using product review apps that let customers leave comments beneath each review so that they can throw each other questions and answers. Use it as a platform to talk to engage with them, too!

On a side note, you want to make sure that they have the best possible experience with your product because it’s going to be reflected in how other people feel about it too!

4. Increase Your Product’s Trust Factor

Reviews also help with trust factors, so if a customer sees that there are lots of reviews and they all seem to be from people who had success using the product, they will feel more confident in their decision to buy it.

Reviews can help create a sense of trustworthiness for potential customers by showing them what others like themselves think about the products you sell.

But don’t just leave the positive reviews and hide the negative ones! If all you show are glowing reviews of your brand, then your customers will automatically feel that something is not right. They will be able to sense that you are “lying” to them at some level.

So don’t hide the negative reviews you receive; respond to them instead and use these negative comments as an opportunity to show how great your customer service is.

5. Help Determine if You are Reaching the Right Audience

Product reviews let you determine whether the people you have reached with your marketing efforts and have purchased from you are the right people for the product.

If you are selling a product to university students and see in your reviews that the majority of them have been purchased by young professionals, then it might be time to either find another marketing strategy or focus your marketing efforts on a different audience segment.

6. Improve Your Product or Business Reach

Reviews also help amplify your business’s search presence. A company’s review signals are taken into account when organic and local search rankings are displayed by search engines, mainly Google. This means more reviews equals better SEO, which will get you a higher ranking in search results.

And what does higher search engine ranking mean?

More organic traffic, therefore, more potential customers.

Reviews are a great way to get your company’s name out there and create awareness for what you do, which will ultimately lead to more business.

7. Increase Sales and Improve Conversion Rates

In general, reviews can greatly improve your conversion rates because of the trust it generates. That is the main goal, after all, right?

It’s only reasonable that businesses learn how to ask their customers for feedback on a consistent basis. If you’re already providing a great experience, customers won’t find it difficult to vouch for you. So why not just ask them for feedback?

Top Product Review Apps in Shopify

Shopify Product Review Apps serve as both a place where customer reviews live long after purchase. And it creates another medium through which prospective buyers may look at features companies offer, such as return policies, without having to ask about this information directly.

These apps work by creating an easy way for visitors of your site who have purchased from you before to upload photos and reviews that showcase their experience with what they bought.

A few of the best product review apps available in Shopify are as follows:

1. Fera Product Reviews

The Fera Product Reviews app enables retailers to earn the trust of their customers by showing them how great a product is with reviews, photos, videos & testimonials.

This review app is the most comprehensive review platform available for Shopify stores.

With its built-in review system, smooth integration with your store’s checkout process, and a fully customizable experience; it has everything you need to get more customer reviews on Shopify.

You can use the Fera Product Reviews app to send out automated follow-up messages that ask for feedback when a customer leaves your store, asking them what they liked and didn’t like about their experience. This way you’re guaranteed at least one review from every in-store visit!

Alternatively, you can send a one-off message to your customers with the Fera Product Reviews app asking them for feedback via SMS. This is great if you want to keep track of how people feel about their experience or simply maintain an active contact list for marketing purposes. If done well, customer reviews are more likely to lead to new customer sales.

This product review app is excellent for Shopify stores that want to:

• display beautiful reviews
• receive lots of responses from customers review-wise
• need an affordable corporate-level review solution, or
• need an app that performs all review functions for their multiple stores.

Pros:

• easy to install and won’t break your store’s layout.
• integrates with Shopify seamlessly so that you don’t have to do anything more than click a few buttons.
• You can set up and send automated review requests and offer different kinds of incentives for reviews.
• It provides the most comprehensive review features on the market today, including customer testimonials, video reviews, photo reviews, average rating badges, photo/video wall widgets, and store-wide reviews.
• Easy to fully customize so that you can show off your brand’s personality.
• Allows you to categorize products to make displaying reviews much easier.
• Fera’s paid plans start from $9 per month but can go up to $99 per month.

Cons:

• There’s a limit on the number of active widgets and reviews you can use per month.
• You can’t use the developer customization feature until you subscribe to a paid plan.

2. Stamped.io

Stamped is another product review app that can easily be integrated with Shopify. The software provides the ability to request customer reviews through email, Facebook Messenger chat, and of course, SMS messaging! Likewise, it can be used by businesses to promote their products and services.

Users of this app are able to automatically send review requests to customers. This allows businesses to know what the customers think about the product or service, as well as their general experience in the store.

Through this, e-commerce store owners and retailers get the chance to acquire a positive image for their business to easily convince first-time buyers online.

Stamped used to deal with only email marketing, but now it gives its users the opportunity to request reviews through SMS too. With the app, you can create custom messages that reflect your brand, from colors to logos.

You could also present your customers with related products based on their purchase patterns.

With Stamped.io, you can offer incentives as a way to not only drive customers to leave a comment but also to purchase more. The SMS option is, however only currently available for stores based in Canada, The United States, and India.

Pros:

• Great for Shopify retailers of all sizes
• Brings the best features for acquiring customer reviews through various messaging options.
• It’s very easy to use and affordable too, when compared with other reviews management tools.
• It has great customer service. The team at Stamped will help you with any questions that come up, as well as provide new tips and tricks for getting the most reviews possible.
• A free plan is available, and paid plans start from $19 per month.
• Offers over ten display widgets

Cons:

• The free trial is quite short and limited
• SMS messaging feature is available to a limited number of countries only

3. Loox App

It is a known fact that consumers are more likely to respond positively to photos taken by others rather than stock photos.This can be attributed to the authenticity that these photos taken by others bring.

Costumers can easily tell when a photo was taken specifically for marketing purposes from when it’s actually a picture taken of a purchased product. For this reason, photo reviews bring a higher level of credibility.

This is what makes the Loox product review app such an amazing one.

Loox enables businesses of all sizes to automatically collect feedback with images from customers and publish them in an aesthetically pleasing way.

As photo reviews are the highest form of social proof, displaying photo feedback from customers creates a store that customers can trust. This, in turn, boosts conversions, drives good quality traffic, and persuades consumers to return for more.

Loox allows businesses to offer incentives as a way to encourage customers to leave photo reviews. As a result, Shopify merchants are provided with lots of photo reviews from satisfied customers using their favorite products.

Collaborating with your happy customers will benefit your brand, as these customers could act as free brand ambassadors. Your store’s credibility will improve as more and more people post positive reviews from their purchases, giving you the best momentum to drive buyers and establish your brand.

Pros:

• Loox lets you send request messages automatically
• You can offer incentives in the form of discounts for customers to leave photo reviews
• You can display your photo reviews on your store in galleries, review sidebars, carousels, and popup widgets.
• It’s easy to import reviews with photos from other sources like Aliexpress and Amazon.
• Affordable paid plans starting from $9.99 per month

Cons:

• Full customization is only available with the Pro plan, which goes for $59.99
• There is no free plan, just a 14-day free trial.
• There is no option to request or display video reviews.

4. Product Review by Shopify

If budget is your primary concern, then why not opt for a free app? Shopify has its own Product Review app that you can use at zero cost.

Shopify Product reviews allow you to add a customer review feature that encourages sales and engagement. The user-friendly interface makes it easy for your customers to share their opinion, which provides an opportunity for them to engage with each other as well.

The downside? It doesn’t have a lot of features like the paid ones mentioned above.

Pros

• Your store’s look and feel will be automatically matched with Theme-Friendly Reviews.
• Edit the look without the need to learn how to code
• publish glowing reviews or hide negative ones with just a few clicks
• Importing and exporting reviews is possible
• Review scores are SEO-friendly
• Completely free

Cons

• Rich media like photos and videos cannot be added
• No review requesting features

To make up for its lack of review requesting options from your customers, you can use the existing customer outreach apps you have.

For instance, if you are already using an SMS marketing service like WinBack, you can just as easily send a message to customers who made a purchase and request for comments or reviews.

The next section will discuss how you can make your customer outreach strategy to get a review more effective.

Creative Ways to Request Product Reviews via SMS Messaging (with Templates!)

Customers who are happy tend to share their experiences far and wide. This increases word-of-mouth advertising while improving your social media footprint as well when people post pictures or comments about how much they love what you do!

Every great review helps build trust from potential customers by showing them what others think about your product or service. Who doesn’t like hearing good things about themselves?

There’s also the SEO factor. A high ranking on Google search results is important for any business but especially small businesses that cannot compete financially with big-name competitors. The more positive reviews a company has online, the higher its rank will be in search results.

If you want to improve your search engine performance, build customer loyalty and improve products or services while delivering better experiences for customers, then try using SMS messaging to collect reviews. Here are some creative ways to do that.

Here are some useful templates:

• Appreciation for Being a Customer

This SMS template is the simplest to use. It’s a great one to get started with as it doesn’t ask the customers for a lot of personal data or information.

This makes it effortless to post a review and more encouraging to customers, thereby leading to more reviews. An example is

Hello (First Name), thanks a lot for shopping with us! We value your feedback, let us know your experience thru this link (review link). Text STOP to opt-out.

We’re always looking for ways to improve. We’d love your feedback on how we can do better. It’s quick & easy – just leave a review at (review link)! Text STOP to opt-out.

• Put value into your customer’s voice

One powerful incentive to customers is to make them believe that their opinion carries weight.

Tell your customers that their review matters and is valued. Let them know what the difference it can make for other people who might be looking to buy from you.

Your opinion matters to us at Company.com and to thousands of other people who view our products. Let them know what you think! Text STOP to opt-out.

• Provide an incentive

People love free stuff and a chance to win something. While some people frown at offering discounts to get reviews, the results will speak for itself. If giving out a promotional offer or discount in exchange for a review can get you more feedback, then by all means continue with it! If that technique doesn’t work for your business, you can always shift to a different incentive style.

One way of incentivizing feedback is by running monthly prize draws for all customers who leave reviews on your products.

You could send out emails or place flyers in the packaging with this information – but it’s best not to make it too obvious because people may stop leaving honest feedback if they know there are rewards involved!

Hey (First Name), get a chance to win one of our monthly prizes by leaving a review today. Leave a review now at (review link)! Text STOP to opt-out.

• Get Personal

Let your customers know that there’s a real person behind the company. Send them a review request that sounds like it actually came from a person who genuinely cares about what his customers think.

Hi, it’s Jay from Company.com. I wanted to reach out to ask how your order went? Did you receive what you expected? We’d love to hear from you. You can place your comments at (review link). Text STOP to opt-out.

• Make it easy for them to leave feedback

Make review requests easily accessible and visible on your site so that customers are prompted to leave reviews without feeling like they’re being pestered.

When sending SMS messages to request for a review, make sure you provide the exact link they need to visit so they won’t have to search for it on their own. An easily clickable link that opens up the actual review page without needing a lot of prompts can encourage your customers to leave reviews because the effort they need to put forth is reduced.

Hi (First Name)! Did you know that leaving a review is easy as 1-2-3? Click on this link to share your experience: (review link). Text STOP to opt-out.

• Be Fun!

Nothing can be more encouraging than feeling like it would actually be fun to leave a review. But leaving your comments is not really a “fun” activity, is it?

But if you can display a fun personality in your text message, then you can leave a good impression on your customer.

Hi there! Did the pen you buy from us change your life? Did it make flowers appear on your every step? Do you love our pen so much you feel like marrying it? Share your life-changing experience at (review link)! Text STOP to opt-out.

The text message above seems out of this world and can make your customer laugh or feel weird. When going this route, make sure your message reflects the personality of your business or company, or it can all too easily backfire.

As always, don’t forget to look into SMS Marketing Compliance regulations before running a review-request campaign to make sure you don’t overstep your boundaries.

Start Collecting Customer Reviews!

With the potential for businesses to grow their customer base and engage with customers at a more personal level, it is in their best interest to utilize SMS as a way to request customer reviews.

Beyond this, it is also a good way for businesses to monitor customer feedback in real-time and engage with customers at the appropriate moment.

It can be used as an effective tool to generate more reviews from happier clients who are also eager to share their experiences on social media or through traditional review sites such as Yelp, Facebook, and Google+.

Thanks to awesome product review tools like Stamped, Fera, Loox, and Shopify’s own Product Review app, review management on Shopify has been made incredibly easy. Combine it with a nifty SMS marketing app like WinBack, and you’re off to a great start!

Topics: SMS Marketing, Shopify Marketing, SMS Messaging Templates