How to Attract More Product Reviews in Magento 2

Today, it is impossible to imagine an ecommerce store without a review section. This is a place where visitors can address their misunderstandings or just share their experience of using a product. Professional and tolerant guidance can help users finish a purchase faster, ultimately boosting customer experience. Moreover, 93% of customers read online reviews before making a purchase, highlighting the crucial role reviews play.

However, not all websites have established review sections filled with customer feedback. So, providing a user-friendly space that encourages feedback is necessary. Let’s discover how to make it happen.

Why Customer Reviews Matter

Nine out of ten people choose reviews as guidance when making a purchase, but why is it so? What makes them so effective?

1. Social Proof Effect
   The opinions of others have always been an effective factor in influencing decisions. People tend to trust those who are similar to themselves. Reviews provide a field for sharing or gaining experience from real people who have used the product or service. This information helps visitors make the decision and gives them confidence in the product.

2. Addressing Information Gaps and Uncertainty
   When buying a new product, customers often face problems with limited information to confirm it meets their expectations. This may cause uncertainty and hesitation, but implementing product reviews in your Magento 2 can address this informational gap. They give firsthand feedback about the product’s functionality, potential drawbacks, and overall user experience, helping visitors make informed decisions with greater confidence.

3. Emotional Connection
   Reviews are more than just information — they can influence how people feel about a product before they even use it. For instance, reading about the positive experiences of using the product creates an amiable attitude toward it. The same goes for negative reviews: they translate bad experiences, ultimately warning people about potential drawbacks and establishing biased views.
   
   So, to maintain a good attitude, always promptly and politely address all complaints or misunderstandings.

4. Building Trust and Credibility
   A large number of positive product reviews creates a sense of credibility and trust, especially for online retailers. This is very important for ecommerce stores, as their interaction with customers is only virtual. In this case, reviews act as a form of validation, ensuring that the product aligns with expectations.

How Review Analysis Drives Success

One of the ways to succeed in the ecommerce sphere is to read and analyze customer reviews. This approach will help you gain valuable insights while leveraging user satisfaction.

For example, product reviews in Magento 2 work for businesses as trend identifiers. They help you understand your audience’s needs or preferences, which can guide your product development and inventory decisions. For example, thanks to reviews, you can reveal what features customers appreciate, what they find frustrating, and what they would like to see offered.

Moreover, reviews showcase a business’s reputation. Brand reputation plays a part in ecommerce, as people are more likely to buy from brands they know, trust, and respect.

Most importantly, product reviews could guide you in improving and developing products or services. Addressing customers’ concerns or implementing their suggestions creates a feeling that they are heard and valued. This ultimately boosts customer satisfaction and leads to sales.

6 Tips to Get More Product Reviews in Magento 2

Reviews should ideally be filled with positive feedback to drive conversions. However, people are busy, and they may forget to leave a review. Here, we prepared 6 effective tips that can help to attract and encourage customers to write a product review in Magento 2:

1. Carefully Incentivize Reviews

One of the most effective ways to foster reviews is to offer discounts, loyalty points, or other rewards. This is a great motivator for people to take some desired action. However, be careful while using this tip not to make reviews seem like they’re bought.

2. Always Respond to Reviews

Communication with customers is also an important part of a good relationship and trustworthiness. It creates a feeling in visitors that they are heard and understood, boosting overall satisfaction and personalizing the experience.

However, to create a transparent environment, you should respond to all product reviews, either positive or negative. Be careful when responding, write thoughtfully and professionally to address the feedback, and encourage further communication. You can also ask questions and take part in discussions to foster and attract more reviews.

Remember, each interaction communicates the value you place on your customers and their experience within your store.

3. Enhance Review Forms

Many people omit review writing just because of inconvenient or too complex steps to finish this process. So, try to make them fast and easy to finish by offering social log-in. Also, keep the form short and concise, but ensure that it includes a product rating, title, and a text field for comments.

You can streamline the process of review writing by offering prompts that will help customers in writing and future buyers in making a purchase. These prompts help the customer describe their experience of using the product or just give a clue about what to write. For example, ask consumers about the pros and cons of the product or ask about the specific features they liked or disliked.

4. Schedule Reminders

People tend to forget to leave a review and share their experience with the product as time goes by, especially when their experience is positive. A gentle reminder can prompt them to share their recent feedback with other customers.

To make review reminders the most effective, send them via email and allow customers to submit a review directly from the email inbox. This time-saving approach significantly increases the number of reviews on ecommerce sites.

However, it is important to consider timing when scheduling review reminders. Sending them immediately after purchase may irritate or discourage customers, while waiting too long may result in irrelevant feedback.

Harvard Business Review identified the best time for sending requests: sending review reminders 13 days after the product is delivered increases the likelihood of reviews being posted.

5. Collect Reviews on Third-Party Platforms

Reviews on independent platforms can significantly boost the trustworthiness and transparency of your brand and products. That’s because they showcase genuine feedback from real people. So, to stay competitive and widen your reach, you can offer different platforms for leaving a product review.

Choose platforms that are familiar to your customers. As a starting point, select Google due to its widespread recognition and trust. Independent websites such as Trustpilot and Yelp also build confidence and create transparency in your business.

6. Emphasize the Value

To make reviews work effectively, you need to show their value to you and others. Let customers know how their reviews help others choose the product or help them with issues. For example, showcase how past feedback has led to positive changes: “Thanks to customer feedback, we recently added a new feature that…” It ultimately leverages customer satisfaction and drives revenue growth.

Must-have Magento 2 Tools for Better Product Reviews

#1 Magento 2 Advanced Product Reviews & Reminders

Magento 2 Advanced Reviews & Reminders extension helps upgrade product reviews on your site. This module provides additional features to the review form, which makes it more attractive and informative to other customers who want to learn about the product experience of other shoppers. Here are the most useful features you will find in this extension:

Advanced Review Form: The module expands the review form with dedicated fields for pros and cons, and a review summary. It also allows customers to upload media files (photos and videos). Additionally, website visitors can now rate reviews for helpfulness or report abusive content. These features make the review more informative and trustworthy for customers. Just compare the default Magento 2 customer reviews with the upgraded reviews using this extension:

Review Reminders: Since users are busy today, they hardly look for review forms to complete. The Magento 2 Advanced Reviews and Reminders extension allows admins to schedule automatic reminders after the order is placed. It allows customers to complete the review form directly in the email, which significantly saves time and increases the likelihood of feedback writing. Moreover, уmail remains the most effective channel for review requests, with a 32% success rate, compared to 28% for in-person requests and 27% for social media.

Gain trust: Let users rate other reviews for helpfulness and, if necessary, report abuse. Additionally, the Magento 2 Product Reviews extension offers verified purchase labels that indicate that the user has bought the product, adding credibility to the review left. Also, admin replies are available here, so you can engage customers.

Social login/share functionality: This Magento 2 product reviews extension uses a convenient social login option to streamline the process of writing reviews. By default, there are 2 popular social media platforms for login: Facebook and Twitter. Also, you can widen the choice by using the Social Login extension, which provides 50+ of the most popular social networks, including Google and Apple.

In addition, the merchant can add social share buttons to each review: it allows users to share feedback on social media platforms, ultimately bringing more traffic and visibility to the store.

Widgets across the store: Displaying product reviews in multiple places across the store is an effective way to boost visitors’ trust and confidence. The extension allows you to display product review widgets on the Homepage, Category Page, Product Page, and anywhere on the store. Flexible review widget configurations provide multiple options, filters, and conditions to showcase customer feedback where necessary. Moreover, merchants can choose what specific product reviews to display in the widget, which is a great way to promote products.

#2 Google Customer Reviews

Using the Google customer reviews extension in Magento 2 is a great and effective way to boost trust in your store. According to BrightLocal, Google remains the most-used website for reading online customer feedbacks (81%). Thanks to this module, you can collect these Google reviews and display badges across the website, increasing the store’s traffic and sales.

Easily collect Google reviews: The module asks customers to opt-in for a one-minute Google survey. There, users can share their experience with the product and rate it with 1 to 5 stars. It is essential for enhancing the website’s overall rating and visibility.

Showcase your Google rating: To add more credibility and trustworthiness, the Magento 2 Google Customer Reviews extension displays a badge on the website featuring your Google rating. The module also showcases the rating on other prominent platforms, such as Google Search ads, Shopping ads, and free listings. This can significantly boost sales and brand awareness of your store.

Configure details: The module allows you to choose groups to participate in a survey, adjust the position of the customer review badge displayed, and select a language. You may also set up the estimated delivery date for an order to help Google send a request on time. All these configuration opportunities keep you flexible and enable you to tailor the review process to your specific needs.