watchamakalit: How to Get Positive Ratings and Reviews

watchamakalit: How to Get Positive Ratings and Reviews: Today's Internet is largely driven by peer-to-peer interaction. When making a purchase, consumers seek out the experiences of others. This...

How to Get Positive Ratings and Reviews

Today's Internet is largely driven by peer-to-peer interaction. When making a purchase, consumers seek out the experiences of others. This includes reading online ratings and reviews that are posted by other consumers, which can increase overall engagement and drive sales.

With that in mind, here are four ways merchants can improve their ratings and reviews. 

1. Include Review Forms on Product Description Pages

Providing customers with the option to write a review directly on the product description page is one way to encourage such activity. A number of companies provide easy-to-use rating and review software designed for use on product description pages. 

Shopper Approved is a rating and review software that boasts increasing the results of those who participate by more than seventy times. They offer a free trial and a one-size-fits-all low monthly price for unlimited pages, views, and reviews. 

2. Ask for a Review

The simplest way to get customers to write a review is to ask them. One way is to conduct periodic customer surveys. You can always entice customers to participate by offering them a special discount or entry in a free drawing or sweepstakes. 

3. Make It Simple to Submit a Review

Simpler is better when it comes to ratings and reviews, even if that is nothing more than a one-question comment box accompanied by a request to write a review. Most rating and review software companies have a three-step process.

First, site visitors see a button on the product page encouraging them to rate the product.

Second, clicking the button takes visitors to a page, showing previous reviews and a five-star rating scale, along with a statement requesting that the visitor submit a review. Sometimes step two reveals previously-written reviews and ratings.

Third, once the link is clicked, the visitor is taken to a form where he or she can rate the product and write a review. It should only take a few minutes to do all of this once consumers log onto the site. 

4. Make Reviews Social

There are a number of ways to leverage the use of social media to increase reviews. For example, if you use Facebook or Twitter, occasionally ask Fans and followers to submit reviews and include a link to the review form. 

Facebook Pages include an app called “Reviews,” which allows Fans to write reviews for display directly on the Fan page. However, I would be reluctant to use the app for this reason – the Page owner has no editorial control over reviews. In other words, once a review is submitted, there is no way to edit the content or delete the review. 

Increasingly, rating and review software providers are including the ability for users to share reviews with friends on social networks, or bookmark reviews using Digg, Reddit and other social bookmarking sites. 

In today’s social Internet, the power of consumer-generated ratings and reviews to influence purchase decisions is very strong. Rather than fight the trend, merchants should embrace it. The benefits can lead to increased trust by the consumer and, subsequently, increased sales as a result.

watchamakalit: Five Types of Social Influence

watchamakalit: Five Types of Social Influence: If you’re a digital startup, building and highlighting your brand is the best way for new users to learn about you.  Engineering your pro...

Five Types of Social Influence

If you’re a digital startup, building and highlighting your brand is the best way for new users to learn about you.  Engineering your product to generate social influence through social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Tumblr, YouTube, Pinterest and others can multiply the discovery of your product and its ability to sell.  Think of it as building the foundation for massively scalable word-of-mouth.  Here’s a break down on various forms of social proof, and how some savvy digital companies are starting to measure its impact.

1) Expert social proof – Approval from a credible expert, like a magazine or blogger, can have incredible digital influence.  Examples:

• Visitors referred by a fashion magazine or blogger to designer fashion rentals online received a 200% higher conversion rate than visitors driven by paid search.
• Mom-commerce daily offer site Plum District found that customers referred by influential digital moms shop at 2x the rate of customers from all other marketing channels.

2) Celebrity social proof – Up to 25% of U.S. TV commercials have used celebrities to great effect, but only a handful of web startups have to date.  Some results:

• In 1997, Priceline.com was one of the first web startups to use a celebrity endorser – William Shatner – not a travel expert, but seemingly obsessed with saving consumers money.  It has been a huge win; Priceline now has a $23 billion market cap, and the fee Shatner took in shares is estimated to be worth $600 million.
• ShoeDazzle launched with celebrity Kim Kardashian as chief stylist. Her involvement helped leapfrog the company to an estimated $25m in 2010 and $70 million in 2011 sales, plus a recent $40m financing. 
• Celebrity endorsement by Jessica Simpson and aesthetician Nerida Joy recently helped Beautymint attract 500,000 visitors in the first 24 hours of its launch.
• The most authentic (and cost-effective) celebrity social proof is unpaid. Celebrity use on Turntable.fm by Sir Mix-A-Lot and producer Diplo generated viral buzz, helping the company skyrocket to 140,000 users in just 4 weeks.

3) User social proof – Direct TV marketers are masters at sharing user success stories. Companies mastering this digitally include:

• More than 61 million people visit Yelp each month to read user reviews.  Reviews drive revenue. A recent HBS study showed that a 1-star increase in Yelp rating leads to 5-9% growth in sales.
• User-generated videos (UGVs) are a growing and important social proof phenomenon.  Early visitors to Shoedazzle watched more than 9 UGVs on average, helping catapult sales; and user testimonials on YouTube drove a 3x conversion rate vs. organic visitors for Beachbody, the makers of P90x fitness.
• Negative user social proof is also important to track. The first negative user review on eBay has been shown to reverse a seller’s weekly growth rate from 5% to -8%. It also hurts pricing; a 1% increase in negative feedback has been shown to lead to a 7.5% decrease in sale price realized.

4) Wisdom of the crowds social proof – Ray Kroc started using social proof in 1955 by hanging an “Over 1 Million Served” sign at the first McDonald’s.  Highlighting popularity or large numbers of users implies “a million people can’t be wrong.”  Some digital examples:

• Fashion e-tailer Modcloth enables its community to “Be the Buyer” by voting on which styles they think it should sell in the future.  Shoppers take strong cues from the community; styles with the “Be the Buyer” badge sell at 2x the velocity of un-badged styles.
• Ratings and Review genius software Shopper Approved allows customers to rate and review companies allowing 70x more ratings than their nearest competitor. That means more that there are crowds of happy customers telling new visitors that buying from a Shopper Approved website is a good idea.

5) Wisdom of your friends social proof – Learning from friends thru the social web is likely the killer app of social proof in terms of 1:1 impact, and the potential to grow virally.  Some examples:

• Friends inviting friends to play through Facebook and other social networks helped Zynga grow from 3 million to 41 million average daily users in just one year, from 2008 to 2009.
• Moms, arguably the most valuable demographic on the social web, rely heavily on friends and family recommendations.  A recent Babycenter study showed moms rely on the wisdom of their friends 67% more than average shoppers; and they rely on social media 243% more than the general population.
• Friends referred by friends make better customers.  They spend more (a 2x higher estimated lifetime value than customers from all other channels at One Kings Lane); convert better (75% higher conversion than renters from other marketing channels at Rent the Runway); and shop faster (they make their first purchase after joining twice as quickly than referrals from other channels at Trendyol)
• They also make better contributors.  People who see content from their friends on Trip Advisor contribute personal content to the site at 2x the rate of others, and are 20% more engaged than other users.

Now that you know the five types of social influences, choose which one(s) will work best for your product and industry.

What is Social Proof?

One never-ending challenge for business owners everywhere is the battle for consumer attention.  I’m increasingly convinced the best way to cost-effectively attract valuable users is by harnessing social proof, a relatively untapped gold mine in the age of the social web.

What is social proof?  Put simply, it’s the positive influence created when someone finds out that others are doing something.  It’s also known as informational social influence.

Wikipedia describes social proof as “a psychological phenomenon where people assume the actions of others reflect the correct behavior for a given situation… driven by the assumption that the surrounding people possess more information about the situation.” In other words, people are wired to learn from the actions of others, and this can be a huge driver of consumer behavior.

Consider the social proof of a line of people standing behind a velvet rope, waiting to get into a night club. The clubs could let people in faster, but then there wouldn’t be a line. The line makes most people walking by want to find out what’s worth the wait. It breeds interest. Professor Robert Cialdini, a thought leader in social psychology, has many more such examples. 

In one study, his team tested messages to influence reusing towels in hotel rooms.  The social proof message – “Almost 75% of other guests help by using their towels more than once” had 25% better results than all other messages.  And adding the words “of other guests that stayed in this room” had even more impact (also an example of how A/B testing of small details matters). 

In another study, a restaurant increased sales of specific dishes by 13-20% just by highlighting them as “our most popular items”.  Social Proof also works on your subconscious – it’s the reason why comedy shows often use a laugh track or audience; people actually laugh more when they can hear other people laughing.

Because of social proof and despite a shaky economy, many web companies are in hyper growth.  This is reminiscent of the five-year period over a decade ago when companies like Amazon, Netscape, eBay, Yahoo, Google and PayPal were built.

There are several types of social proof. To get the word out to the masses, you need to know about all of them – and then chose those strategies that work best for your industry and product. Many companies have found that a “mixed salad” of various types of social proof is most effective. The beauty of the web is you can test, learn and retest quickly to find what works best.

The Best Examples of Online Social Proof

The internet has leveled the playing field, allowing for upstarts to play ball with the big boys by moving us to ask what other consumers think of the product instead of blindly buying based solely because of a company banner, commercial or advertisement.  

If you think about it, we’ve always looked to our friends and family for advice on trusted and knowledgeable mechanics, experienced and caring dentists, and understanding and inexpensive teachers for dance or piano lessons for our children.

But the internet has taken it to a new level. Here are five examples of how online social proof is winning the marketing battle.

Facebook Sponsored Stories

Last year Facebook rolled out its Sponsored Story feature. It allows advertisers to elevate likes, check-ins, posts and actions within custom applications to a sponsored status, seen on the right-hand side of your friend’s Facebook screen.

The story is only shared with friends you know. But then Amazon grabs the post and makes it a “Sponsored Story” that shows up your feeds. One Facebook engineer said that the feature increased brand lift, namely ad recall and likeness to recommend, among their pilot partners, again proving that recommendations for products that come from friends are worth more than those that come straight from the company itself.

Klout

The social app KLOUT went head-long into the expert social proof space by creating a tool that measures people’s relative influence. I say relative because Klout cannot measure those who are not a member, so it really becomes a game among those inside. Furthermore, it only measures those social sites in which you share information.

As inaccurate as Klout may be, you have to give it to them: their appeal to our vanity makes adoption of the product easy. Who doesn’t want to know how he or she measures up to Jeffrey R. Holland, Lady Gaga or Arianna Huffington?

Your Klout score also serves as a feedback loop. When you see your Klout score drop, you are motivated to use social media more. 

Yelp

The user site Yelp is designed to help people living in cities to find interesting and fun places to eat, shop and drink as well as lame and awful places to avoid. The premise is simple: users leave reviews and check these reviews before they go somewhere.

If it sounds like Facebook for the food junkie, that’s because it is, kind of. But it’s also a place where people go to make decisions about where they want to eat, drink or shop…so it’s social proof at its core.

 Subscribers

Social proof is all about the wisdom of the crowds, so it’s no surprise that bloggers started picking up on the value of promoting the number of subscribers they have. The more you have the better.

Prospects will look at your site, evaluate whether they should subscribe or not based upon many factors, one of them being how many other subscribers you have.

Endorsements

Imagine you are deeply in debt. Hate your job. And are freaking tired of skimpy. You jump on the internet, and read about a guy how has a “I can make you rich” site. It is endorsed by all the leading TV news programs, Oprah, Mitt Romney, and even the Pope. Everybody who is anybody is singing this guy’s praises.

So here’s my question: Are you going to use this guy’s system? Of course you are. That is because people who you respect respect him. That is social proof on steroids.

Testimonials

Positive comments about you, your company or product are social proof. While it’s not from a friend or family member, it’s another endorsement that says this person or product is trustworthy.

Stick a picture of the person, or better yet a video of the person giving the testimonial with his or her full name and address on your testimonials page, and you’ve got social proof. 

Business Verifications

One day you go to a site to buy something you really want. But you have never used the site before and neither have any of your friends. You see a small “Business Verified” image from a third-party security company that you know and trust. 

You click on the seal to find that the company is a legitimate business and that if there are any issues, you have many ways to get in contact with them. Because trust seals come from another business, they aren’t as powerful, perhaps, as other types of validation, but several blind studies have shown that they are much stronger than doing nothing at all.

Five Star Ratings

Customers who have already experienced the benefits of a particular product or service have the opportunity, through social proof businesses like Shopper Approved, to rate the level of service they received. When website owners display these ratings, consumers visiting the site for the first time can see exactly how others have been treated by this company. Testimonials included as part of these ratings and reviews often persuade new visitors into taking the final step towards purchasing a product.

Social proof is here to stay. We can be certain that TV programs will still have commercials and that billboards will still display advertisements, but more and more of us are turning towards the internet where friends, family and other like-minded consumers can help us make informed, educated buying decisions.