Ecommerce customers love reviews. That in itself is a great thing. A customer who makes a purchase after thoroughly researching the product in question is going to be satisfied and will be less likely to suffer from post-purchase regret. 

Satisfied customers also tend to turn into repeat customers so you have that to look forward to. There is just one little problem: they only pay cursory attention to the glowing reviews and go hunting for the scathing ones.

 

Users seek them out

52% of users specifically seek out the negative reviews for products they are interested in. You can’t really blame them. With the recent plague of fake reviews, negative reviews are the only ones everybody can trust. At least they can be sure you didn’t pay someone to leave those. In fact, if all your reviews are overwhelmingly positive, customers are going to be very suspicious and actually trust you less.

While not remotely helpful, negative reviews are not a death sentence. Since suppressing them can get you into legal trouble and ruin your credibility even if you manage to avoid the fines, there is only one viable recourse left: respond.

 

Respond

37% of users positively factor in any site responses to negative reviews. It shows you care about customer concerns and leaves the impression that you have excellent customer service. A well-crafted response and an honest attempt to address issues raised by a negative review could win you a lot of new customers.

 

Feature some reviews

Highlight positive and negative reviews at the top of the reviews section. The idea is not to feature the worst review, it is to highlight the positive and negative reviews that most people found useful, to help them make up their mind about the product and build trust.

 

Style your responses

Add indentation, a box or a different background color, and your logo. This helps your response to stand out from the sea of other reviews and responses. If you were to just blend in, a good number of customers won’t know you actually responded.

Examples