What are Google buyer evaluations?
As the competition gets tougher by the day, ecommerce businesses need to pull out all the stops to make sure they keep beating the competition.
A simple yet powerful marketing tool that you can use to your advantage is the Google Customer Reviews feature.
Research shows that 70 percent of people trust online reviews more than advertisements. Because of this, getting as many reviews as possible from your customers can be one of the best things you can do for your business.
Google has made this easier with Google Customer Reviews.
Let's dive right in and see what these reviews are about.
An overview of Google customer ratings
Google Customer Reviews is a service that businesses use to collect reviews on their website. To participate in Google customer reviews, you must have a Google Merchant account.
Google does most of the heavy lifting by collecting customer feedback for you. To do this, Google will send your customers an email asking if they would like to provide feedback on their experience with your brand. Customers who choose to participate will receive a short survey form to fill out.
The ratings and reviews that customers leave in the surveys can be viewed on your website and other marketing platforms. They also help determine the seller ratings that Google gives merchants, including the average star rating and number of reviews. The higher the rating, the more trustworthy the dealer is.
Replacing the retired Trusted Stores program, Google Customer Reviews is a great way to prove to potential customers that they can trust you to keep your promises.
Why are Google customer reviews important?
If you're wondering if you should even bother with the Google Customer Reviews program, let me quickly give you three top reasons why you should.
Help build social evidence
Earning the trust of your customers is one of the essential components of running and growing a successful ecommerce business.
This will help you with Google Customer Reviews.
The customer reviews you collect are great for creating social evidence that can be used to gain new customers' trust. Social proof simply means proving that other people trust you to provide them with a positive shopping experience. This means that other customers feel comfortable shopping with you. As a result, it has a positive effect on your conversion rates.
By participating in Google customer reviews, you can create social evidence and add a Google branded badge on your website to increase conversions.
Help build a better brand and products
Not only does Google Customer Reviews help you gain your customers' trust, it is also a great way to get feedback from your customers. You can use this feedback to improve your product and service delivery. That way, you can build a better brand and create buyer journeys that your customers will love.
Boosts your local SEO
Do you want to increase your local SEO? Then use the Google customer ratings.
Search engines, especially Google, want to serve the most relevant companies in local search queries. To do this, think about what your brand is doing.
Most importantly, they value the opinions of people who have had first hand experiences with you.
This is where Google customer ratings come into play. They help search engines know which companies to recommend to users. Google rewards brands with better reviews by ranking them higher on the search engine results pages (SERPs).
Google Customer Reviews also helps users decide which brands to do business with. To get your fair share of the business, you need to have more positive reviews than your competitors.
Ignoring Google customer reviews can rob you of the opportunity to give more miles to your business and marketing. This is especially true as studies show that 87 percent of people read reviews online when looking for local businesses.
How do Google customer reviews work?
How does this program work? Fortunately, it's a lot easier than trusted stores. You only need three simple steps to get a customer review:
1. Google asks your customers to sign up
When a customer buys something from you, Google sends them an email on the day they are expected to receive their purchase. The purpose of the email is to ask the customer to sign up to receive a survey about their experience shopping on your website.
2. Customers take part in the survey
Customers who sign up are then directed to a survey that consists of a star rating system (from one to five). There is also space for additional comments if customers want to provide more information about their shopping experience.
3. Google aggregates the ratings and data
Once the survey information is submitted, Google aggregates it to get star ratings for your business. These will show up on your website, as well as in organic and paid search results.
While Google Customer Reviews is a Google initiative, you as a merchant benefit from it.
Try as much as you can to encourage your customers to participate. That way, you get more reviews and more reviews mean a better seller rating (the average Google rating for your business).
This in turn will encourage more people to buy into your company.
What can you do with your reviews?
You managed to get some reviews using the Google customer review program. What's next?
Well, this is where the fun begins as you can use these reviews for many things. Here are just a few ideas:
Integrate them into your business listings
Your reputation is one of your most valuable assets. What better way to show customers that you are a legitimate business than showing them what other customers are saying about you?
Include your reviews in all of your company's business listings on the internet to build customer trust.
Display them on your website
One of the first things you can do with your reviews is to display them on your website. In this way you will gain the trust of your customers. Plus, customers can see that you're transparent, a value 81 percent of customers look for in brands.
Use them on social media
We all know that social media can be a very powerful marketing tool. When running your social media marketing campaigns, you can take advantage of your reviews by incorporating them into your posts or ads.
You can use your reviews on any marketing platform and with any marketing strategy. The whole point is to show potential customers that your company is reputable and known for great customer experiences.
So, if you think your marketing message could benefit from a review or two, pull up one from your Google customer ratings.
How are Google customer ratings different from Google product reviews?
Another Google program that you can join is the Google Product Ratings program.
By participating in Google Product Reviews, you can collect customer reviews on the products you sell. As with customer ratings, the results of the product reviews are aggregated and can be used for other marketing platforms such as Google Search and Shopping Ads.
The main difference is that product reviews don't reflect your business. Instead, they reflect how satisfied customers are with the product.
As you've seen earlier, customer reviews are an assessment of your customers' overall experience with your brand. This may take into account the product (and its reviews), shipping, and customer service, among other things.
To put it simply, product reviews help other customers choose quality products, while customer reviews help other customers choose reputable sellers.
Product ratings and customer ratings are two different programs. However, you can edit your Google Customer Reviews code snippet to include specific products so that your customers can rate them in the same survey.
What to do if you get negative Google customer reviews
Negative reviews are inevitable in business. There will always be a customer or two who are not happy with their experience with your brand. Legitimate or not, these negative comments can affect your business.
What Do You Do If You Get A Negative Google Customer Review?
First of all, don't ignore the rating. While you must respond to all published reviews, negative reviews must be treated with extra care. That means:
Answer quickly
Don't leave a negative review unanswered for long. This leads to anyone reading the review either believing it or drawing a conclusion. Both can be detrimental to your business.
Before you respond quickly, however, you should evaluate your customer's feedback. Use it to get a positive and helpful answer.
Respond cautiously
When you answer, make sure to personalize the answer by including their name and the product they purchased.
It's also important not to turn a negative review into a debate or a finger fight. Thanks to the reviewer for taking the time to provide their feedback.
Also apologize for the negative experience. If you accept the guilt, your customers will see that there is an empathetic person behind your brand.
Move the conversation offline
Another important step in dealing with a negative review is to ask the reviewer to contact your customer service department. Moving the conversation off the Google Customer Reviews platform allows you to take care of the customer's problems in a better environment.
It also shows potential customers that you care about delivering the best experience.
If you do well they might change their rating and leave a good one. What customers really want is to know that you care about them.
When you make an effort to deliver a good customer experience (CX), the chances that they will stay true to your brand increase.
Offer a solution
If a customer leaves a negative review, it is a sign that they are not happy about some aspect of their experience with your brand. Aside from just leaving your answer, you should offer a solution to correct the situation. Offering a solution also shows that you really empathize with the customer.
The way you react to negative reviews can either affect or affect your brand. If you do it well, you can reduce customer churn. You can also increase the likelihood that your customers will leave glowing reviews and become your brand ambassadors.
Conclusion
You can use Google Customer Reviews to improve your brand's credibility and visibility.
As an e-commerce company, reviews are the lifeblood of your business. Yes, the negatives too, as you can use them to show the human side of your brand.
Use Google's customer ratings and give your customers a voice. This will let your customers know that you value them and can also help increase conversions.
What is your experience with Google customer reviews?
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