Handling Positive and Negative Reviews of Your Magento Store

Positive Reviews: Why They Matter

We probably don’t have to explain why positive reviews are vital to your brand. Positive reviews help attract new customers and retain existing customers at the same time. They also encourage consumers to convert from browsers to purchasers. Using a data-driven marketing strategy will help you closely track buyer behaviors and reviews so that you can act appropriately. Below are a few ways to influence positive reviews.

• Engage with the Customer — When you get a positive review, it’s important that the interaction doesn’t stop then and there. Express your gratitude, engage with the customer, reward them with a special offer and be thoughtful in your interactions. When a consumer feels appreciated, they’re more likely to share the experience with their friends.
• Leverage Positive Reviews — Don’t be afraid to tout your positive reviews. Whether that means using them on a dedicated testimonials page or adding them to your product pages, positive reviews should be used to help convert other customers at every stage.

Negative Reviews: Why They Matter

Negative reviews happen to everyone, and they don’t mean that your business is bad or headed for doom. Savvy business owners know that there’s an upside to bad reviews. They legitimize your business.

They make your good reviews look great, and they help inform purchase decisions in valuable ways. There are some instances where bad reviews might even help a buyer. For example, if someone is shopping for apparel online, it’s helpful to get sizing information from real customers to ensure the right fit. That will also help your business cut back on returns and exchanges as well.

The key to ensuring that bad reviews don’t compromise the overall image of your brand is to look at every review as a learning experience. Coupled with a good analytics platform like Springbot, you can transform negative reviews into a positive experience that helps improve customer experience (CX) and leads to more positive reviews down the road. Remember: bad reviews happen to everyone, and what sets you apart from the competition is how you handle them.

Three Effective Strategies for Dealing With Bad Reviews

There are a number of different ways you can react when a shopper leaves a negative review, but there are a few salient methods to handling them that outshine the rest. The key is to be methodical but genuine about how you respond and to take every single piece of feedback as an opportunity to become a better business.

• Engage and Repair — Just like with positive reviews, think of negative reviews as an opportunity to engage with shoppers who have something to say about your brand. Respond publicly, if that’s an option, and offer a resolution and a promotion or discount to convert negative reviews into a positive experience. Follow up after the fact and make sure that upset customers are happy with the way the issue was handled.
• Act Accordingly — Think of negative reviews as free testing and prototyping, which, as you know, can be pretty costly. Take every single review as an opportunity to iterate, adjust and adapt to customer expectations. Every time you read negative feedback, ask yourself if there’s anything you can do to prevent such reviews in the future. And then, of course, make those changes in a prompt manner.
• Don’t Try to Have Them Removed — You already know that authenticity and transparency are two of the most important things to consumers in this day and age. Rather than trying to get your poor reviews removed, work on strategies to drown them out with more positive ones. Consumers are amazingly adept at scanning large volumes of reviews to determine the overall feeling of a product or service.

Handling Reviews as a Magento Merchant

If you’re a Magento merchant, we have a few pointers on how to start leveraging reviews on your site. Did you know there are several tools presented by Magneto itself that will help you up your review game? For example, choosing the right integrated review vendor — Yotpo and BazaarVoice are some of the more popular options — and using Magento’s built-in functionality can help you easily manage and leverage reviews. Just like with anything Magento-related, you can really make the platform work for you in a variety of ways.

Image via Magento Marketplace

How Can Review Integrations Help?

They are specifically designed to help you manage, review and publish specific content. Some are even designed to help you craft compelling review emails that actually generate clicks. As far as Magento goes, make sure you’re taking advantage of the default reviews option (coupled with some modifications and integrations) to encourage users to leave reviews and to appropriately moderate and publish them as they roll in.

Springbot can help you use Magento, or the eCommerce platform of your choice, to build and strengthen your online brand. So long as you have a solid strategy for handling customer feedback, no one review should have the power to make or break your business.

Interested in exploring more eCommerce marketing best practices to help scale your online business? Download our latest eBook, The Four Stages of Marketing Maturity for SMB Merchants.