How to Implement Customer Reviews on Your Website

There is little doubt that customer reviews and testimonials about the goods and services you provide help to:

•          promote your standing and reputation amongst potential customers;

•          answer some of the questions customers may have about your products and services; and

•          allow customers to see how others have made use of your products and services; an

•          how they have rated the standard of service received from you.

If you have any lingering doubts about the effectiveness of including customer reviews and endorsements on your website, consider the fact that the government’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has estimated that a whopping £23 billion a year in customer spending might be influenced in some way or another by online reviews.

If you want a slice of this action, therefore, it is more than worthwhile persuading your website design company to include some focus on testimonials, reviews and endorsements.

How might a website design company such as us here at CSI Media implement customer reviews on your website? There are probably two main criteria.

The quality of reviews

Any visitor to your website is likely to be asking themselves whether the reviews and endorsements that appear are genuine. In fact, research has shown that the majority of customers find online reviews even more convincing and authoritative than personal recommendations.

In order to maintain this credibility and respect from your customers, there are some things you might want to avoid:

•          writing fake positive reviews or having fake reviews written for you – these may serve no better purpose than to mislead your customers, who sooner or later are likely to realise that you have faked endorsements. The CMA has also said it will take action against companies who create fake reviews;

•          posting fake negative reviews about your rivals’ products and services – these are also designed to mislead and misinform potential customers of course. Not only is this unfair trading but it might also backfire on you if and when the deceit is discovered;

•          cherry-picking positive reviews and suppressing negative reviews – this may produce an unbalanced and lopsided feel to the webpages containing reviews and endorsements of your products and services. Overdo things and, once again, you are likely to be caught out by any deceit; and

•          exercising all due care and fairness when selecting which reviews and endorsements to publish on your website – some selectivity is almost certain to be involved, but is should be done in a fair and even-handed way.

Reviews and search engines

The second of the important criteria about implementing customer reviews on your website relates to that all important question of search engine optimisation (SEO).

SEO is a critical marketing tool and helps to drive visitors to your website according to the search terms which they have entered into their web browser’s search engine.

You might want to bear in mind that major search engines have particular rules and criteria for ranking websites based on either national or local search terms. Naturally, you are likely to want a top listing but one that also reflects your particular target market and whether this is likely to be best served by national or local level results from web search terms.