Insights

• Costco has a 90% member retention rate.
• Customer reviews have an impact on a product/business and can increase the sales more than a paid marketing ad can.
• According to research by ZenDesk, 88% of customers purchase a product after reading through a review.
• According to Hubspot, 60% of customers believe that reviews are trustworthy. Businesses with accumulated positive reviews can help a client make a purchasing decision and in return, high sales.
• According to BigCommerce, around 50 and more reviews on a product results in a 4.6% growth in conversion rates.

Ways To Get Customers Write a Review

Make it easy for Consumers.

• Some businesses like Heathrow airport sends an email to their customers asking them about the experiences just as they leave the airport.
• Etsy uses text messaging and emails to ask buyers to write a review. According to WSJ, Etsy reported that 25% of all their purchases result in a review.

Incentives/ Reward Consumers who Review

• Some companies offer rewards/incentives to those who leave reviews. Zappo gives out $10 credit or 100 points for every consumer who writes a review. This does not mean to buy reviews, rather can offer points in the business's customer loyalty program.

Pop-Up Forms + Follow-Up Emails

• John Holloway of NoExam states that they use pop-up forms on their business site to get reviews from consumers after they have purchased a product. After two weeks, the company sends a follow-up email address asking clients to write a more detailed review, and they have collected above 1,000 customer reviews using this strategy.
• Fiona Kay from Nigel Wright Group states that the company sends out customer feedback emails every month, asking the clients to fill a 30-second survey. This strategy has seen the company increase the number of reviews on their products.

Explain Why Reviews Are Important

• Educate and inform the customers of why product reviews are important to the business.

Set Up Profiles on Multiple Review Sites

• Set up profiles on all the relevant review sites like Yelp, Google Local, Angie's List, LinkedIn, CitySearch, Trustlink, and Tripadvisor, among others.
• Position the reviews at the front of your e-commerce website, on the homepage, make them visible. If the reviews are for specific items, they need to be published on each product page to be seen by other shoppers.

Criteria for Submitting a Product Review on Costco

• All product reviews are to be submitted on Costco.com and are screened before they are posted to ensure that they comply with the Terms and Conditions of Use.
• The review should focus on specific product details, and the product should be a verifiable purchase from Costco.
• Avoid mentioning other sites/businesses, using inappropriate language/tone, exposing personal data, including a website link in the review, insisting on the delivery/shipping experience, requesting for different models.
• A review goes live within 72 hours of being approved.

Summary