With the eTrusted review platform from Trusted Shops, you can effectively collect authentic reviews - automatically and optimised for high conversions.
Authentic reviews from real customers are very important to be successful with an online shop or other online business. With a meaningful review profile with a good rating, you not only increase the number of your visitors, but also ensure higher attention and a better conversion rate.
There are different ways to get customers to write reviews.
"Those who don't ask will not be reviewed."
Our event-based automation function helps you to automatically invite customers for review after a time period defined by you.
In this article we answer questions about how to effectively collect reviews.
1. What is the optimal time for a review invite?
Your automatic invite dispatch is triggered by events. It makes sense that the conclusion of a purchase (checkout) is an event that triggers dispatch. Once the event has occurred, a period of time that you can define elapses. You can set this time in the eTrusted Control Centre. At the end of this period, the Review Invite will be sent to your customers.
The length of this period should be is an individual decision. It depends, among other things, on your standard delivery times. Our experience shows that in many cases, a period of around 7 days from the date of shipment is sensible. By then, your customers will most likely have received the package. They will also have had enough time to get an impression of your reliability and service. However, if you do not wait long enough or if you wait too long, your customers have either not yet received the goods or the motivation to submit a review has dissipated.
Do you collect Product Reviews in addition to your Service Reviews? Then, you have the option of sending a separate Review Invite for your Product Reviews. Because your customers need a little time to test the purchased products, you should send the Review Invite for the Product Review a few days after the invite for the Service Review. The decision about how long the period between the event and invite dispatch should be individualised for your business and depends, above all, on two factors:
- How many days does it usually take for your customer to receive the products they have purchased? Can you deliver your products immediately or do you sell products with longer delivery times, such as furniture or customised items?
- How many days does your customer expect to spend testing the purchased products? An example: To test new hiking shoes, your customers probably need more time than they would to check the quality of a vase.
Therefore, analyse your product range and then define a period of time that makes sense for as many of your products as possible.
We know the (statistically) optimal time for a review: Most reviews are given between 12 and 1 pm. Many of your customers check their emails during their lunch break and have a few minutes before going back to work anyway. It is therefore best to set the delivery time to the morning.
Read here about how to set up your automatic invite dispatch: How to send invites to my customers automatically?
2. Can I personalise my review invites and questionnaires?
By default, the review invites and questionnaires show the logo and the colours of Trusted Shops. This will help you to motivate many customers to leave a review, as Trusted Shops is a well-known and trustworthy brand in e-commerce.
With our personalisation feature, you can also adapt the review invites and questionnaires to your company. We offer you three options to do so:
- Replace the Trusted Shops logo with your company logo.
- Use your own company colours instead of the colours of Trusted Shops – yellow and black.
- Decide whether you want to address your customers with the formal or the informal form of address.
Personalisation not only gives your review invites and questionnaires a personal touch. It also increases the probability that your customers will associate the review invite with the order in your shop. Increase the conversion of your review invites.
Would you like to adapt your review invites and questionnaires to your company? In this article we explain how to do so: How do I personalise Invite Mails and Questionnaires?
3. Is there any benefit in displaying reviews prominently?
No matter whether on the product page, on your social media channels or even on the homepage of your online shop or company, presenting reviews and real experiences in an open and transparent way has several major advantages:
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Trust is a valuable currency on the Internet: By means of a prominent display of your reviews, customers can immediately see how others have rated a product, a service or your service as a whole, and trust these reviews. More reviews mean more trust and more trust means more sales for you.
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Trusted Shops reviews are authentic: If customers see that reviews from others are actually read because your website shows reviews prominently (e.g. with eTrusted widgets), this increases the motivation to write a review themselves considerably. In addition, you can create further trust by reacting to negative reviews in a service-oriented manner and thus show your customers sympathy and care.
- Attention through rating stars directly in the Google search results: If people search for your shop or your website, or if your page appears with an advertisement on Google for certain search queries, our Google integration allows you to display your rating stars directly in the results list, attracting attention and setting you apart from the competition.
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Turn your best reviews into meaningful social media posts: You get valuable feedback in your inbox every day. It would be a shame not to use your customers’ experiences and turn them into compelling social media posts. The Social Media Creator now makes this transformation easier than ever. With this useful feature, you can use your top reviews as eye-catching content for Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn with just a few clicks.
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Making a consistently positive impression throughout the "entire web" with excellent ratings: With Trusted Shops you also have the possibility to collect positive reviews not only for your Trusted Shops profile, but also to optimise your overall score on other review platforms such as Trustpilot and Google My Business with the same convenient automation. Use our Reputation Manager and easily link between 10 and 50% of your review invites to these other platforms. Customers receive an invitation by Trusted Shops, but they can also rate you on e.g. Trustpilot and optimise your overall rating there.
Read here why it can be very useful to also look good on other popular review platforms
Why is it a good idea to optimise my overall rating on other review platforms?
4. Should you reward your customers for reviews?
As the owner of a website or an online shop, you have probably already thought of rewarding your customers for a review (e.g. with free shipping or vouchers). Legally, however, this is not so easy, like proven in this case, for instance, and should be avoided.
However, despite the law forbidding rewarded/bought reviews, you are still allowed to reward loyal customers, if you do so without taking into account whether they regularly write reviews or not. In retrospect - i.e. without any additional incentive in return for a review - you can thank your customers with vouchers, loyalty bonuses and other measures or even respond to a review with a "thank you". In this way, you can raise the relationship with this customer to a personal level and strengthen loyalty even further.
Read in these articles how you can make the most of your well-deserved stars:
- How do widgets look like on my website?
- What is Google integration?
- Overall rating calculation and review profile