Stand out this holiday season: 3 steps to better ratings & more reviews

 The holiday season is the biggest time of year for retailers, with many making 20-30% of their annual sales during this period.

But holiday sales are only projected to increase 1.8% this year, according to eMarketer. That means individual retailers hoping to stand out will have to do more to increase sales in 2016 and beyond. Meanwhile, advertising costs are skyrocketing — nearly doubling from 2012 to 2015, and projected to rise 90% in the next five years (source: Forrester).

However, there is something you can do to address both issues: boost your ratings and reviews, which will increase your visibility and decrease your CPM.

myHermes, a ResellerRatings client, recently found that after one year of implementing the ResellerRatings review management platform, in conjunction with our sister company ForeSee, they achieved:

• A 10-fold increase in the volume of reviews (from 5,000 to 50,000)
• A jump in its star rating from 3.4 to 4.1
• A CPC lowered by 15% and a conversion rate increased by 36%

(For a closer look at the results, download the myHermes case study.)

So, how can you leverage these powerful results in time for the 2016 holiday shopping season?

Step 1: Drive thousands of reviews to your Google paid ads.

Driving more reviews to Google paid ads will help:

• Distinguish your organization from competitors that are using the same key words
• Increase traffic to your website (by an average of more than 17%), which means more sales.
• Lower ad spend by an average of 10-15%, thus saving money that can be well spent on many other marketing activities during the holidays.

Step 2: Minimize complaint sites and boost representative reviews.

ResellerRatings has a 15-year track record of  superior SEO authority within Google, which means customers searching for your reviews will find ResellerRatings reviews, representative of the real customer experience, rather than complaint sites.

Step 3: Learn to manage negative reviews.

No company is perfect, and there are going to be negative reviews. Instead of being afraid of them, use those negative reviews  as an opportunity to respond, change minds, and maybe even inspire those customers  to change their reviews. After all, 90% of customers that had a negative experience will return to purchase again if their issue is resolved in a quick and timely manner. The ResellerRatings review management portal can email customers who had a negative experience — turning an angry customer into a long-term, loyal one. You can also run reports on how many of these customers came back to update their review to show that customer service efforts are working.

In today’s trust-based economy, your customers share their experiences whether they are happy or not. You can’t control customers, but you can control how you collect, analyze, answer, and syndicate the stories they tell across the most visited and influential sources — something that  matters more during the holidays than any other time!

Even if you already have a ratings and reviews partner in place, it’s not too late to leverage ResellerRatings’ powerful review management platform for the 2016 holiday season. Contact us to learn more or schedule a demo.