Consumers are increasingly alert when searching for products and services online. Studies have shown that almost 80 percent of online shoppers today read customer reviews before making a purchase.
Therefore, if you want to make the right first impression on potential customers who visit your website, you need to display the right customer reviews.
This article shows you where to put reviews on your website.
What Are Customer Reviews And Why Are They Important?
A customer review is an unbiased positive or negative feedback about your product, service, or overall business.
These reviews are typically given by customers who have bought your products or interacted with your business in some way.
When a customer posts a review on your website, it becomes public and can be read by anyone who visits the site.
Google also uses reviews to determine the credibility of websites when providing search results. Therefore, reviews will improve your site’s search engine optimization (SEO).
But does responding to reviews help SEO? Yes, it does. Google encourages business owners to respond to customer reviews promptly because it improves their credibility, which in turn makes their sites more likely to appear in search results.
Therefore, always respond to all your reviews, including the negative ones, to help your website rank better. Collecting and responding to customer reviews can be difficult, but there are tools, like the best review plugin, that can help.
Another common question is, can I use Yelp reviews on my website? The answer is yes. But there are several conditions to this, including seeking permission from the reviewers to publish, not paraphrasing the reviews, and not altering the Yelp logo.
Where Should You Place Customer Reviews on Your Site?
Many businesses place a few featured reviews on their homepages for visibility. This is a perfect spot to place your reviews, especially if they are positive, because they will boost your customers’ confidence in your products or services.
But there are several other ideal places on your website to display your customer reviews, including landing pages, product pages, contact pages, under blog posts, in the sidebar, and in exit-intent pop-ups.
However, you can’t know which parts of your website are good for your reviews until you complete the following tasks.
Monitoring User Navigation
There are various user behavior tracking tools that can help you monitor your visitors’ movements throughout your website without violating the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Tracking tools help you know where the visitors are coming from, the pages they visit, where they click, and how they interact with different elements of your site. It will also show you the areas of your site where each activity takes place.
Where customers interact with your site is the perfect place to display reviews.
Testing Different Places
Test different parts of your website for user engagement to determine exactly where to place your reviews. You do so by publishing the reviews in different areas and reviewing their engagements after a while.
Did review display option A perform better, or was option B superior? This test will show you which pages have more user engagement near the reviews.
Common Customer Review Formats
Online customer reviews come in four main categories: testimonials, badges and widgets, featured reviews, and review streams.
These formats are intended to attract attention to your site, increase the time visitors spend on it, and boost potential customers' confidence.
But you have to choose a format that works best for your online business and boosts your online presence.
Testimonials
Testimonials are the quintessential review among online businesses today. The best way to prove that your testimonials come from reliable sources is to link them to the reviewer’s social media page or a case study.
Review Badges and Widgets
Embeddable badges and widgets invite visitors to rate your business on various review pages like Yelp and Google.
Some of these review sites offer badges that allow you to link the reviews to your website. These badges can be customized to match your website's style and layout.
Featured Reviews
These reviews are designed to offer a more detailed response to the questions and concerns raised by your customers.
Therefore, they are long and include embedded links to your clients’ websites and external review sites like Yelp and Google. This type of review is very good for improving your site’s SEO.
Review Stream Widgets
A review stream widget is an automation tool that helps you gather reviews from different review sites and post the most recent ones to your website.
If your site is built on WordPress, Joomla, or Drupal, a review stream widget will automatically collect the most recent reviews and present them with schematic markup.
Finally, showcasing your customer reviews on your website offers insight into the experiences of both satisfied and dissatisfied customers. It shows potential clients they can trust you to deliver the best experience.
