How do you create interest and trust in a product that someone can only see a picture of? For e-commerce retailers, customer reviews on their company website or social media pages has become a big part of answering this question.

In my last post, 3 Reasons Why Your Online Store Should Embrace Customer Reviews, I highlighted the importance of customer reviews. Today, I’m going to share with you how to encourage customer reviews.

Friendly E-Mails

The best time to capture a product review is when the customer has just received their new item and is still excited about using it. When customers receive a request to leave a review, they often don't want to have to click through several links to do it. Allow your customers to write and send their review from within the request e-mail. You can do this by manually tracking replies or finding a solution to automate the process.

Reviewing Should Be Easy

Encouraging customers to leave product reviews is all about making the process as simple as possible. Customers aren’t going to read or leave comments if they don’t know they can, so it’s important to think about the placement of product reviews on the page.

Incentivize the Process

Chances are, if you’ve been to a restaurant recently, you have seen an offer on your receipt for a chance to win a cash prize if you call in to do a review over the phone. This same strategy can be applied to online reviews as well. Offering a coupon or discount in exchange for a review is a very effective strategy. It rewards a customer for writing a review, and gives them a reason to come back to your store.

Now it’s your turn. How do you get your customers to write or record reviews about your company?