One of the leaders in establishing social proof in e-commerce, REVIEWS.io: joins forces with Bold Commerce to develop deeper relationships with D2C brands seeking to drive conversions and retain customers.
REVIEWS.io solutions allow e-commerce brands to display online reviews on their websites to enhance the shopping experience and help customers choose products that suit their needs. Customers can review the entire brand or individual products. Working with over 10,000 brands, UK-based REVIEWS.io has processed over 25 million reviews to date.
The fast-growing company helps “use the power of customers to highlight how great a brand and its products are in the eyes of those who buy from them,” said Joe Fox, vice president of partnerships at REVIEWS.io.
Brands need a streamlined solution to collect business reviews and display them on Google and across the web. Brands using REVIEWS.io can display star ratings for, say, their latest product, showing customers they’re trustworthy even before the customer lands on your site, Fox adds. “Reviews are word of mouth online, and every retailer knows the power of social proof can power sales and convert website visitors,” he notes.
Establishing brand trust is the foundation of social proof and online reviews. Poll by Podium suggests that 93% of online customers say that online reviews influence their purchase decisions, and according to research that Import90% of consumers read online reviews before making a purchase, and 88% trust those reviews as much as a personal recommendation.
Essentially, with online reviews, customers can engage in subscription brand marketing.
Subscriber brands looking to highlight customer feedback with REVIEWS.io can rest easy knowing that the company is an officially licensed partner with Google, allowing them to submit reviews to Google Search, Google Ads and Google Shopping. to whom In Google Reviews, those stars are extremely important, the company’s website emphasizes. According to Google, displaying stars next to ads can increase CTR by up to 17%.
REVIEWS.io has also built powerful AI technologies into their solutions. Their developers have built a powerful integration with OpenAI that leverages ChatGPT as a review response tool. A free upgrade for all REVIEWS.io customers, this layer of generative AI allows brands to use ChatGPT to automatically generate review responses, which can save time for companies that are particularly burdened by review channels.
The integration of REVIEWS.io and Bold Commerce is complementary for both brands, Fox says, because forward-thinking retailers in the subscription space can get tremendous value by leveraging reviews. Because customers who shop at subscribed brands often stay loyal to a business for months and years on end, the REVIEWS.io system allows brands to invite reviews over, say, three months.
A review from a subscriber can also add more weight behind it. After all, these are customers who are deeply familiar with the subscription brand’s offering, having used the products or services for several weeks and perhaps months. One-time customers may not have the same relationship with a brand as repeat customers.
“Requesting feedback can take many forms,” notes Fox. It can be placed via email after purchase, via SMS, or in a brick-and-mortar store if the subscribed brand has a physical presence.
One of the more interesting ways to generate reviews is through user-generated content, Fox adds. “We’ve seen this a lot in fashion, where brands will encourage someone to take a video of a dress they’ve bought, which will include a review. It makes the review more engaging and enables the brand to use these videos in marketing and promotional materials.”
Shoppable galleries are one potential opportunity for brands using UGC reviews. As a REVIEW.io blog post notes, their UGC Gallery and Publishing feature allows brands to turn Instagram posts and UGC from reviews into shoppable galleries that can be published to their own Instagram feed, website and email campaigns through their Klaviyo integration. With Bold Subscriptions in the technology stack, brands can also add a “Subscribe” button to shoppable content, moving customers from product discovery to a subscription offer.
That post also offers other tips for brands bringing REVIEWS.io content to their e-commerce platform:
- Creating unique flows for subscribers opens the door to creating custom email journeys based on specific sending conditions and user interactions. When reaching out to subscribers with review requests, REVIEWS.io recommends that you do so with flows structured around the subscription journey. This might look like a company review after the first shipment, and a product review after the third or fourth shipment, when the customer has had time to fully experience the product. If the subscription introduces new products each month, brands can choose to generate a new request for each shipment.
- Enabling comment tagging can result in stronger email segmentation. As reviews come in, brands can choose to tag them as from a subscriber, as well as indicate how many subscription products they’ve received.
- Asking questions when initiating reviews can allow brands to gather data on how to improve their subscription models. Questions about increasing shipping schedules or removing packaging or offering more personalization options are examples of questions subscribing brands can ask to add customer data that can better drive improvements around their solutions.
What Fox and the REVIEWS.io team have found compelling about partnering with Bold is the ribbon of passion throughout the company. “We’ve seen such a consistent focus between Bold and REVIEWS.IO to deliver high-quality products to customers, so it’s a great fit,” he says.
Together, Bold Commerce and REVIEWS.io are ready to partner with enterprise brands to succeed.