What are the best ways to manage product reviews and ratings in e-commerce?

Here is a strategy to consider. Reviews are a great way to increase your ARPU. Offer discounts for reviews. When customers review your products offer them a discount on their next purchase. This keeps them in your ecosystem and encourages another purchase. Builds personal relations with customers in digital first way. Cannot emphasise enough helps with SEO. Take reviews seriously for 1 year and you'll see a significant growth is your business.

Organizations that care about positive reviews need to implement a review management system and develop a proper strategy for connecting with customers. Timing is everything and contacting customers during the “honeymoon phase” can yield amazing results. With this strategy, you reach out a few days after they received your product or service and are experiencing the benefits of what you offer and ask them for a review. Having an automated system that manages the process is crucial. Customers with negative sentiments should be sent to your customer service team for follow up. Positive remarks can be sent directly to your website of choice, allowing you to spread your reviews across multiple networks.

Managing product reviews and ratings in e-commerce effectively enhance your brand’s credibility: Ask for Reviews: Request feedback from customers who have recently purchased products/ services. Make it Easy: Simplify the review process. Moderate Reviews: Implement review moderation to ensure the feedback is genuine. Display Reviews Prominently. Leverage SEO: Integrated review system can have positive SEO implications. Respond to Negative Reviews. Use E-commerce Platforms: Shopify, BigCommerce, or Magento have built-in tools or apps to manage reviews. Product reviews are powerful source of social proof that builds trust in your brand, can influence customer perceptions, improve SEO ranking, and increase your conversion rate & sales.

So there are a number of platforms and plugins available. For example yotpo app for shopify is one of the best plugin available for reviews and its very easy to install.

Use automation intelligently. Select products that can auto-moderate user generated content (UGC), such as reviews, using filters for specific language, topics, and sentiment. Do not let the system automatically approve reviews based on the number of stars alone. Many customers know how to game these sorts of systems. You can tell when a merchant is auto-moderating this way when the products have 5-star reviews and happy headers, only to devolve into a rant in the body of the review. Always have some level of human oversight in the loop to catch these issues before they become visible on the site.

- user progress bars, numbers, colors and other easy to navigate and understand - use pictograms - keep the introduction short - show product pic related to the review you are asking for - motivate them with discount/winning some prices etc. - pick the review timing strategecly

In case a review is rated low, we need to call back the customer to understand his concerns - whether it is product related or service related - based on which corrective and preventive (CAPA) - is to be taken.

In my experience, the ultimate phase of taking action and enhancing based on customer feedback holds immense significance. Expressing gratitude to customers for sharing their thoughts not only signifies appreciation but fosters a deeper connection. Handling negative feedback involves sincere apologies, tangible solutions like compensation, and transparent communication on preventive measures. The process of scrutinizing reviews through analytics, surveys, and feedback loops is more than data collection; it's a strategic effort to consistently refine products and services. This iterative approach forms a dynamic cycle of improvement, showcasing a dedication to customer-centric evolution

Unfortunately many product reviews receive poor scores not due to the product itself (quality, fit for purpose etc), but due to poor service in the purchase or post purchase phase of buying the product. It's common to find poor product reviews because the delivery was late or the carrier delivered it to the wrong address. These are not product review issues, they are brand / retailer operational reviews. Unfortunately most reviews platforms do a terrible job of segmenting these types of feedback. When I read a review I want to see product related feedback separate from brand / operational / customer service feedback.

If you are on Shopify use Apps like Yotpo or Judge.me or similar that comes with an ability to moderate the reviews received.

- listen to customer and take them seriously. It sounds obvious, but there are still a lot of companies don't follow this. - Happy customer = free and endless advertisement for you. -Map all your business processes to measure time and resource investment needed to fix issues -automate as much as possible (needed) of recurrent processes like refund/return/payments etc. These are a big part of CS topics everywhere