While reviews are indispensable to the online shopping experience, obtaining them isn’t always easy. Customers like reading reviews but they are more reluctant when it comes to writing them. Also, customers who have a bad experience are more motivated to leave a review compared to those who have a good or an “ok” experience. 

Therefore, if you don’t actively encourage customers to leave a review, you might end up with an excess of negative reviews which isn’t good. There are a few methods you can use to obtain reviews (see BPs #64 and #145) but just asking is one of the easiest.

 

Ask, and you shall receive

When customers return to your website, you ought to ask them for a review of a product they purchased on their last visit if they haven’t left one already.

How? You could have a section at the top of the homepage, and/or a notice in the header, or a popup. It can also be highlighted in the account dashboard.

 

Some nuance

One of the members from my Ecom Convert group added some thoughts:

Check at login, if the registered customer had purchased products and if the said products have not been reviewed, then present them with a page that asks them to review the products they purchased. This would be an account page, if there is more than one review required. If it is only one product, then the actual Write a Review page would load for that product with a message at the top saying we noticed you have not yet reviewed this product, so git ‘er done!