Most brands lose sleep over their first 4-star review (or maybe it’s lower than 4 stars!). They think it’s the end of their reputation and will kill their brand. According to experts who’ve worked at Amazon, the customer psychology is actually quite different.
Let’s be honest, we don’t live in a perfect world and savvy customers recognise this. If your product or service is sitting there with a perfect five stars, the “scam radar” goes off. Customers are really looking for honesty over perfection.
That’s not to say that poor reviews can be just be left alone, but what customers are looking for is how you as a company deal with problems or when things go wrong. Customers will often go looking for the bad reviews, the 1-star and 2-star ones to find out what happens in the worst-case scenario. Often the complaints are trivial or subjective (“the delivery arrived a day late”) and this can actually increase the confidence in the product itself.
When there has been a genuine issue, customers’ confidence can be increased by a polite response to show them how you dealt with the issue. A professional, empathetic, and solution-oriented response to a negative review builds more trust than 100 faceless 5-star ratings. This is a case of “social trust” over “social proof”.
I discuss this point with Coach Danny D, founder of Content on Easy Mode as we explore the world of website optimisation.
Insights from the session
If you’re struggling to turn visitors into customers, it’s time to rethink your website strategy. A beautiful site might look great, but if it doesn’t convert into sales or customer, what’s the point?
You need to address your visitors’ pain points and guide them to take action. This means clear calls to action and showcasing how your product service can solve their problems.
We dig down into social proof and how reviews can make or break a sale, and as mentioned, don’t shy away from them.
We also discuss the importance of understanding your data. And how making “informed” tweaks over hunches, you can significantly improve your conversion rates.