Taking Full Advantage of Product Reviews on Your Vape Shop
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The importance of product reviews for vape shops cannot be overstated. They boost sales, improve SEO, and build trust with your customer base. While you might think that they are inconsequential, ask yourself, when is the last time you purchased something online without first looking at reviews?
Reviews play a massive part in your success as an e-commerce vape shop; that's why you need to understand their importance, make the most of them, and encourage your customers to leave them on your site.
Table of Contents
- The Importance of Product Reviews for Vape Shops
- Do people really read reviews?
- Making the Most of Reviews
- How To Encourage Customers To Leave Reviews
- Conclusion
The Importance of Product Reviews for Vape Shops
Online reviews are essential because they boost sales, create trust, help customers during the buying journey, and improve SEO.
Reviews boost sales
Think back to word of mouth; how many products have you purchased because a trusted friend or relative recommend them? Reviews work the same way, but they're even more powerful. According to research by Speigel Research Center, the purchase likelihood of a product with five reviews is 270% greater than the purchase likelihood of a product with 0 reviews. That means that an e-liquid with just five reviews has a 270% higher chance of being purchased than an e-liquid with zero reviews.
Reviews create trust
There's also the concept of social proof. According to Robert Cialdini, who coined the term in his 1984 book “Influence,” social proof is when people follow others' actions to obtain the same results. This, in turn, creates trust that they are making the right decision.
Reviews are a form of social proof that leads customers to trust your brand or vape shop. With reviews, they can try to replicate a great customer experience, for example, someone who received their box mods in less than two days with no mistakes or someone who wrote that he received the wrong e-liquid but was immediately refunded.
All of these small reviews speak volumes of your vape shop and serve to create trust between customers and your eCommerce vape shop, which is incredibly hard to do online where there are no in-person interactions.
Reviews help customers during the buying journey
Reviews are also helpful because they guide customers during every step of the Buying Journey. Some might think that reviews are only used in the selection step. According to TrustRadius, in a poll of 680 customers, 76% of customers use reviews in the discovery step, 69% use reviews in the evaluation stage, and 43% use reviews in the selection step.
What this means is that your customers are using reviews to find their new favorie new e-liquid, box mod, or vaping accessory, and they are using reviews again, to review each item (perhaps by how many five star reviews the e-liquid has), and finally use reviews to purchase and select the item.
Improve SEO
Finally, reviews are great because they are considered content by Google. One good source of content will help you rank higher on search engines and bring more traffic to your eCommerce site. Google also rewards e-commerce websites that are continually creating new content, so the more frequently you can get reviews on your site the better.
Do People Read Reviews?
They do. In fact, according to Neil Patel, 97% of people read reviews before making a purchase. And they're not just reading positive reviews but also negative ones. A single bad review could drop your sales from 5-8%, but there is a silver lining; some consumers seek out negative reviews since reviews that are too positive make customers skeptical. These customers have a 67% increased conversation rate. That's why it's so important to make sure that your eCommerce website has a review section, at least on the products section.
Making the Most of Reviews
Now that you know the importance of reviews, it's time you learn to leverage them to your advantage. The first step is to make them as visible as possible and sign up with as many review websites as you can.
Review Websites
When it comes to reviewing websites, there are many websites you can sign up with that will allow people to leave reviews about your e-commerce site, your service, and your products. We suggest signing up with Google My Business, Facebook, and Yelp. These are the holy trinity when it comes to reviews.
You can also reach out to some vape review pages, some of the pages that do reviews are:
- Vaping360.com
- Versedvaper.com
- Ecigarettereviewed.com
- Vapingdaily.com
Highlight Excellent Reviews
You can also use reviews to your advantage to create an internal advertising campaign with the most positive reviews. You could easily make a banner of your best-selling or best-rated e-liquids on your site and put the best review left by a customer next to them.
You can also do this in your about section, selecting the best reviews that talk about your customer service and quality of products, or as a section that continuously scrolls from left to right showing only the most positive reviews.
How To Encourage Customers To Leave Reviews
If customer reviews are so critical, what can you do to get more of them naturally? Well, there are plenty of tactics you can employ to get your customers to leave more reviews. You can ask for reviews, offer rewards, or engage with the reviews.
Ask for reviews
Most of the time, if you ask customers to leave a review, they'll comply. You can do this by automating follow-up emails that go out a month after every purchase to see if they are enjoying or have enjoyed the e-liquid or device they've purchased. If they had a positive experience with the product and with the company (for example, the shipment arrived on time), they are bound to leave a review.
Offer Rewards
Perhaps the best tactic you can use is to offer rewards to your customers for leaving reviews. These rewards can take the shape of discounts, free products, or loyalty points (if you have a loyalty program). For example, for every customer that leaves a review on a JUUL device, you can offer them free JUUL pods.
Engage with the reviews
Another way is to actively engage with your customers' reviews whenever they leave a review, answer them, and try to address their pain points or thank them for leaving a review. This action not only helps with SEO (as you will be adding more content), it also lets readers know that you care about their opinion and are actively working to become a better vape shop.
Conclusion
Now that you know that reviews create trust, help customers convert, and improve your SEO rankings, try to spend more time responding to them, rewarding customers for leaving reviews, and above all thanking them for taking the time to help your store grow.
