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What Is An Online Marketplace?
An online marketplace is typically a multichannel e-commerce website wherein you can list your products and services along with other brands or businesses. Online marketplaces are an excellent avenue for streamlining the production process as the marketplace operator processes the transactions from your customers, and you, as the participating wholesaler or retailer will fulfill and deliver the orders. So, the online marketplace as an app or a website can only facilitate shopping, but the operator does not own any inventory - the primary purpose of the site is to present your products and services to a wide range of customers and facilitate each transaction.Why Are Marketplace Reviews Important?
As a consumer yourself, do you go ahead and buy stuff online or ask recommendations from family and friends and then read customers’ feedback on online marketplace reviews first? I bet your answer would be asking recommendations and reading business reviews first. Besides that, here are the top 5 reasons why marketplace reviews are important:Online Marketplace Reviews Make You More Visible
This is also one way of saying that online reviews can boost your SEO. You see, most online shoppers will search the Internet when they are about to buy something to help with decision-making - they go to Google, YouTube, Bing, and even Facebook. Now, these websites have different ways of indexing and showing content on their search results pages, but the most common thing that these search engines value is an original, fresh, and trustworthy content - customer reviews help build the kind of content that any search engine would love to show to users, so the more valuable online marketplace reviews you have, the more visible you are to your target audience.Marketplace Reviews Build Your Reputation
It’s no secret that a customer would instead choose a store with multiple good marketplace reviews, even though it is relatively more expensive, over a shop with several negative customer reviews regardless of how low their prices are. You see, a steady stream of positive business reviews build your shop’s credibility and trust - these qualities could turn one cold customer to a raving fan almost instantly. In fact, the stars rating that often represents online reviews is a driving factor for consumers in choosing a business. According to the survey conducted by Bright Local, shoppers avoid businesses that have ratings below 4 stars. On the other hand, shops with a good reputation on online reviews for businesses, get substantially higher traffic and sales. [caption id="attachment_24783" align="aligncenter" width="750"]
Image source: Bright Local[/caption]
Online Reviews Can Boost Your Sales
One study at Harvard Business School found that business reviews and reputation can significantly impact your business - brands with positive customer reviews get more sales. They also found out that an improvement in star rating correlates with an increase in sales - a one-star improvement on Yelp has led to up to 9% boost on sales in just a short period. Another study by Revoo revealed that online marketplace reviews could boost business sales by 18% - this includes repeat orders, increase in order sizes as well as improved conversion rates.Customer Reviews Are Essential For Decision-Making
A survey conducted by Social Media Today showed that 50% of consumers would look for online reviews before deciding to purchase from a business thereby making marketplace reviews a crucial part of a consumer’s decision-making process when choosing to buy products between you and your competitors. [caption id="attachment_24785" align="aligncenter" width="750"]
Image source: Social Media Today[/caption]
With consumers flocking to review websites and other online marketplace platforms before making a purchase, it is essential that you get a steady stream of positive customer reviews so that you will more likely appear in search results when your target customers are making their next buying decision.
Business Reviews Allow You To Engage More To Your Consumers
You see, this digitally-driven era has given businesses and their customers a lot more opportunities to interact with each other. So, consumers nowadays expect to get a response from businesses when they post their online marketplace reviews. So, you can use your online marketplace platform as a forum to respond to your customers regardless of how bad or good their online reviews are - rectify a poor review and make sure that you show your consumers that you truly care, and remember to reinforce positive feedback with gratitude and even some promos. Take MedQuest, a medical company, for example - they were able to improve their online reviews rating as well as its volume by responding to both negative and positive customer reviews - they got 23% more business reviews on Google and 163% increase of Facebook reviews. They made it a focus to monitor and personalize their responses to their patients’ feedback, especially those with something negative to say. [caption id="attachment_24787" align="aligncenter" width="750"]
Image source: Reputation[/caption]
Now that we laid out all the top reasons why online reviews are important, it’s time to talk about how to get plenty of positive customer reviews from your online marketplace platform as well as from other review websites on the Internet.
Top 4 Ways To Get Plenty Of Good Online Marketplace Reviews:
The first thing that you should do is to list your products and services on several popular online marketplace platforms in your country and even internationally if possible - this is given, but we’ll talk more about this later on. For now, let’s start with the easiest and arguably most effective way to get more marketplace reviews. Ask your customers for a review & consider giving some incentives Indeed, asking for online reviews is the single best way to get more of them - another survey from Bright Local revealed that 50% of consumers will willingly leave a business review if they are asked to do so. [caption id="attachment_24789" align="aligncenter" width="600"]
Image source: Bright Local[/caption]
So, get to work and set up an automated email to your customers 2-3 days after their orders are delivered - this will give them time to spend with your product and test. By communicating with them first, this will give you a chance to prevent any nasty feedback in case they received a defective product.
Also, you can spice things up by offering an incentive to customers who will leave any feedback by giving them a discount coupon for their next order. A caveat though: make sure that you use clear words conveying the message to your customers that you want honest feedback and that you are not bribing them.
Make It Easy For Your Customers To Review Your Business
Get more online reviews by making it easy for your customers to leave you feedback. Here’s how you do it: ● Make sure to ask them to leave their feedback, especially after every positive experience. ● Don’t forget to offer incentives to customers who will leave honest online reviews as well as to your employees who get customers to leave feedback. ● Make sure to add review sites badges to your website and product images if possible ● Add links to review websites from your shop or website ● Add links to review sites on your invoices and receipts ● Add links to review websites to your email signature This may sound like hard work, but just like any notable success, it’s only more challenging at the start, and once you gain momentum and streamline your process, it’s all worth it.Find Affiliates or Influencers
Remember that online reviews outside your online marketplace platform can boost your search engine rankings. So, look for the active voices in your industry and send them your products in exchange for an honest review in front of their many followers - make sure that your objective is clearly defined when communicating with your affiliates. With the exposure that you get from these active voices in your community, you are also relatively increasing your chances of getting more online marketplace reviews and sales. Here’s how to find your affiliates: 1. Look for bloggers, YouTubers, and Instagram influencers in your niche to immerse more in your community and build your list. 2. Email each of these target affiliates and ask them if they will be willing to provide honest feedback if you ship them free products. 3. Build a long-term relationship with an affiliate who has helped you gain more customers and online reviews.Engage More With Your Community
Keep in mind that your online marketplace platform will likely also have a Questions & Answers section, other than the reviews section, allowing you to respond to customers' concerns. So, take time to respond to each question posed by a potential customer and show your community that you care and you give great importance to customer service thereby attracting more customers as well as the coveted positive online marketplace reviews.Takeaways
Now that you have the fundamentals of getting more positive business reviews, let’s take a look at several popular online marketplace platforms wherein you can list your products and services. Here are the top online marketplaces around the world for listing your products (in no particular order)- Clutch
- Good Firms
- G2
- Amazon
- eBay
- Walmart
- Google Shopping
- Facebook Marketplace
- and much more!
