SEO is about getting people to your website but we also need to ensure people are doing what you want when they get there. Often the reason some people buy one product rather than another, is because of the customer reviews. People may buy a product that is slightly more expensive if it has 27 good reviews. The problem though is getting people to remember to log back on to leave a review. A couple of sites spring to mind that have a lot of good user review content – one being Amazon of course and another one is Greenfingers.com. Greenfingers.com have a lot of good feedback and when some of it isn’t positive, they have countered the criticisms constructively, in such a way that still encourages me to buy the product.
So how can you get happy clients to remember to leave reviews (unhappy ones are only too eager to review). One scheme that works well is incentivise the process with a free gift. For example, add a little printed slip with the product you’ve dispatched that tells the purchaser something along the lines of:
Thank you for your purchase!
Now receive a FREE Gift!
Simply review the product you purchases by logging onto blahdeblah.com
Find the product you purchased, write a review and we’ll send you a free gift from our product line!
You are not asking for a positive review, simply an honest review. No one expects the free gift to be expensive, for example I’ve just had a slip like this for a fish filleting knife I bought. I bought this knife over another one, on Amazon, because it had lots of great reviews. The alternative knife was a bit cheaper and came with a free case, but I bought this one even though it has no case and is slightly more expensive. I wonder if I’ll get a free case if I log in and leave a review.
