The Benefits of Using a Product Review App on Your Shopify Store

Due to the rapidly increasing number of e-commerce stores available today, customers are spoiled for choice when it comes to buying products online. With so many options available to them, consumers are becoming increasingly meticulous about the entire buying experience, including exceptional product quality and excellent customer service.

In order to decide where to shop, consumers will rely on any information that indicates that a seller is trustworthy. So, in order to run a successful e-commerce business, you will need to gain consumer trust. There are many ways to do this but one of the most valuable methods of gaining customer confidence is by using a product review app on your Shopify store.

What Are the Benefits of Allowing Product Reviews on Your Store?

Product reviews are important in e-commerce because they allow potential buyers to read the true life experiences and insights of previous buyers. Customers are much more likely to trust the unbiased opinions of their peers than they are to believe what is said by the sellers of the products themselves, making product reviews a great peer-driven marketing tool that can greatly influence a consumer’s decision of whether or not to buy a product.

Product reviews, whether positive or negative, show consumers that a seller is willing to be transparent about their products and services by allowing others to leave their own opinions and experiences on their website. Product reviews can, therefore, often help position a seller as credible and trustworthy, if used correctly.

Many new retailers tend to shy away from product reviews in fear of receiving negative feedback on their products or customer service. However, negative reviews should be seen as an opportunity to demonstrate your customer service skills and commitment to customer satisfaction. By responding to bad reviews in a professional and competent manner, potential customers will see that you are willing to be held accountable and prepared to correct your mistakes.

Product reviews are not only for the benefit of potential customers but can, in fact, provide useful insights into your current products and identify shortfalls in your offerings, allowing you to continually adjust and improve your offerings and business as a whole.

Why Should You Use a Shopify Product Review App?

Many of the Shopify product review apps available will not only allow customers to leave reviews on your store but may also encourage them to leave reviews through post-purchase email campaigns or surveys. Typically, the more reviews you have on a product, the higher the conversions for that product will be.

Using a product review app can also help improve your store’s search engine optimization (SEO), as these reviews will become visible in Google search results and drive organic traffic to your store. Product reviews are a great way to create a lot of user-generated content on your website that is typically full of relevant keywords which can further help to improve your Google rankings.

Pros and Cons of Using Product Review Apps on Shopify

There are many advantages and a few disadvantages of using a product review app on Shopify. Here’s a breakdown of the main ones:

Pros

• Positive or negative, customer reviews showcases to visitors that a your business is willing to be transparent and honest about their products and services.
• Negative reviews can actually help your store. It shows a willingness to improve and gives you a chance to respond to criticism. By the way, many product review apps for Shopify will actually allow you to remove any super negative or troll reviews.
• Many product review apps for Shopify are set and forget. The app will automatically ask customers for store reviews, that way you can sit back and relax as the social proofing of your brand increases.

Cons

• Some product review apps for Shopify can be quite expensive, particularly as more customers make use of your review system.

Fake Reviews

When kickstarting a new online business or endeavoring to increase site traffic and conversions, there is a temptation to make use of fake reviews. Fake reviews may seem like a good idea in theory, although in the long run, they can actually work to hurt your store and your customer’s trust.

Why?

Well, often fake reviews sound disingenuous and most customers are fairly savvy to this kind of underhanded approach. Ultimately, this is more likely to hurt your store’s image than help it.

With that in mind, fake reviews are best avoided. It’s better to have no reviews on your product pages than ones that are clearly manufactured.

Which Shopify Product Review App Is the Best?

Finding the right product review app for your store will depend entirely on your store’s required functionality and features. Some of these apps allow customers to rate your products using a simple “Star Rating” system, while others allow for more detailed descriptions along with the ability for customers to add images to their reviews.

The majority of the product review apps allow for a high level of customization, seamlessly integrating the product review features into your Shopify store.

Here are some of the best-rated Shopify product review apps available:

Yotpo

Yotpo is a cloud-based content marketing tool that specializes in fostering user-generated content (UGC) from e-commerce customers. The app integrates with a wide range of CMS platforms and third-party apps, it’s fairly simple to set up, and it showcases text, photo, and video reviews in an engaging and captivating way.

Pricing:

• Free Plan
• Growth Plan - starts at $29 and scales with use

» Discover what Yotpo alternatives you can use for hassle-free reviews and UGC

Judge.me

Judge.me is a highly regarded marketing tool that seriously takes the hassle out of managing site reviews and socially proofed leads. Simply set, forget, and sit back and relax as Judge.me automatically adds rich snippets to your review content, boosts site traffic, and manages everything from social media posting to email, push notification, and SMS marketing.

Pricing:

• Forever Free Plan
• Awesome Plan - $15 USD/month

» For a side-by-side comparison, check out our Yotpo vs Judge.me article

Stamped.io

Stamped.io is a highly-rated marketing platform, featuring a wide range of integrated tools aimed at helping capture and showcase high-impact user-generated content (UGC). Stamped.io's features include the ability to display and showcase written, photo, and video reviews on product pages, category pages, and social media channels, plus facilitate the addition of helpful on-site Q&A sections.

Pricing:

• Free plan
• Basic plan - $19 USD/month
• Premium plan - $39 USD/month
• Business plan - $99 USD/month
• Professional plan - $249-999 USD/month

Loox

Loox aims to help e-commerce merchants foster UGC through their review and referral-based Shopify app. The apps accomplish this by specializing in, what they term as, “photo-centric” reviews and referrals. Or in other words, super engaging and social media-esque photo reviews.

Pricing:

• 14-day free trial
• Basic Plan - $9.99 USD/month
• Advanced Plan - $29.99 USD/month
• Pro Plan - $59.99 USD/month
• Unlimited Plan - $99.99 USD/month

Product Reviews by Shopify

Product Reviews is not only a free product review app offered directly by Shopify, but the app also allows users to both import reviews and export reviews from third-party review services. This is facilitated by formatted CSV spreadsheet files that site managers can use to easily transfer and showcase high-converting UGC onto a new, remodeled, or relocated store.

Pricing:

• Absolutely free

Final Verdict

Quickly and easily gain customer trust, boost brand outreach, and ultimately boost revenue by following the above tips and using one of the great Shopify product review apps mentioned within this post.