Trustpilot in 2 minutes demo video

Whether you’re looking to improve sales conversions, catch the right eyes in search results, or better understand your customers, reviews can help get you there — and Trustpilot is a great place to start.

Whether you’re looking to improve sales conversions, catch the right eyes in search results, or better understand your customers, reviews can help get you there — and Trustpilot is a great place to start.

## What can Trustpilot do for you?

Trustpilot gives you a credible way to show the world that you love your customers, and they love you right back. 

Whether you’re a startup or a Fortune 500 company, you’ll get real customer feedback that helps you get seen, get sold, and get better.

Here’s how it works:

### Get reviews.

Our simple, one-time setup options can have your reviews rolling in in just minutes.

We’ve helped more than three hundred thousand companies get reviews from customers who would have otherwise stayed silent.

### Get sold.

Make all your [marketing more effective](https://business.trustpilot.com/reviews/build-trusted-brand/what-is-social-proof-and-why-is-it-important-for-marketing) by showcasing Trustpilot ratings and reviews.

Research shows that [87% of consumers](https://uk.business.trustpilot.com/reviews/why-87-of-consumers-find-ads-more-trustworthy-with-trustpilot) find ads with Trustpilot more trustworthy than the same ads without. 

Trustpilot enhances your own website, too. You can add widgets to your site in just a few clicks, and increase your [conversion rate up to 150%](https://business.trustpilot.com/customer-stories/ecommerce/id-wholesaler-leverages-customer-reviews-to-turn-more-browsers-into-buyers). 

### Get seen.

When trying to cut through all the noise online — reviews matter. 

Your Trustpilot profile is a neutral, 3rd party source of information that will quickly rank for key search terms.

Adding stars to your search listings can improve [click-through rates up to 35%](https://business.trustpilot.com/reviews/how-homebridge-establishes-customer-satisfaction-as-a-key-differentiator?utm_source=guru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=sales_outreach_case-studies).

And according to Google, stars on your paid ads improve [click-through rates by 10%](https://business.trustpilot.com/reviews/how-to-calculate-google-seller-ratings-effect-on-adwords) on average. 

Our social media sharing features put eye catching customer testimonials in your social streams with the click of a button.

### Get better.

Trustpilot helps you gain insights from the people who matter most — your customers. 

Our suite of powerful dashboards help you see your performance at a glance, and our AI-driven Insights engine identifies trends and patterns in your feedback, so you can create a better experience for all your customers.

See for yourself why Trustpilot is the world’s most powerful review platform. 

Claim your business profile page on Trustpilot and get started today for free.

Here's what Trustpilot reviews can do for you

Trustpilot in 2 Minutes demo video

Collecting customer reviews with Trustpilot

Watch our webinars and videos where Trustpilot share the latest review insights to enhance and optimise your online reputation. From review collection to optimising your online marketing efforts. 

Webinars and videos | Trustpilot Business Blog

Webinars and Videos

How to Channel Customer Feedback to drive conversions

In this Trustpilot webinar, we talk you through how to implement a proactive review strategy, and how to learn from your feedback to eventually drive conversions.

As you read this, your happiest (and least happy) customers are out there, sharing their experiences with your business on social channels.

Don’t be reactive, constantly searching for feedback online and trying to handle it. Be proactive and implement a review collecting strategy, so you can corral your business advocates, boost your business’ reputation, and grow your sales.

Once you learn how to monitor your customers online, and engage your advocates, the rest is simple.  

“63% of people wish brands treated them like a friend rather than a consumer. The remaining 37% would probably prefer that brands treat them like a human being rather than a click or conversion,” Sara Axelrod, COO of Local Measure, once said.

Make your customers feel like friends, or at least like human beings, after watching our webinar, “How to Channel Customer Feedback to Drive Conversion.”

How to channel customer feedback...

We all realize Q4 and the holidays are right around the corner, so it's vital to ensure that your digital media plan is optimized for increased visibility to convert all the holiday shoppers during the most competitive time of the year. So in this webinar, Trustpilot's Optimizing the Path to Conversion, Leveraging Social Proof to Increase Sales, we will be discussing the impact of user generated content, reviews, testimonials, influencers, and so on, on today's customers.

### Are you currently collecting any forms of social proof? 

What is social proof? How does it work? What are the different types, what is user-generated content, and how does that play into what Trustpilot collects for their customers and for the community in general? We'll go over a number of influencer opinions, how we can help support that with badges, awards, and seals. And then we could talk about live or dynamic data to increase FOMO, obviously.

So a little bit about Trustpilot. We help people buy with confidence. And it's not just about buying, it's also about just making any type of transaction online, obviously. We work with a wide range of customers and we help them harness the power of reviews and provide that third-party feedback and validation for a number of different companies in a number of different verticals. Our big mission is to build trust and transparency by providing that feedback to our customers and that's something that we're really good at doing.

We have over 100 million online reviews globally. We're getting about 1 million new reviews every month and there's currently over 300,000 brands reviewed on Trustpilot currently. So we're quite the presence out there online and we're working towards expanding that right now throughout the globe.

So the holiday season's coming up. I think the first thing you think about when you're thinking about online reviews obviously is, how's this going to affect retail? What's this doing with retail? 40% of retailers experience a 48% average revenue growth during this season. So holiday sales last year increased by 3.8% compared to the previous year. It's only going up online, obviously, as people are migrating to different places to make purchases and make decisions online. So having social proof is incredibly important and having that trust and transparency when you're making a purchase decision is paramount.

So what is social proof? How do we define that? Anything that can influence the actions and attitudes of those around them and have your own behavior, right? So it's a perfect way for marketers to utilize FOMO and build out credibility. When they're trying to either sell something, promote something, or get any type of conversion on a website.

So, why does social proof work? Obviously, this is a concept I think that's been around for a long time. 84% of consumers say they trust peer recommendations above all other sources of advertising. I used to work in email marketing and one of the biggest things we had was the Refer A Friend link when I first started out. And that was simply because getting someone's recommendation over what a marketer's telling you has that power. That's a very strong power. And someone's going out of their way to recommend something, it really helps. So, 92% of people would trust a recommendation from a peer and 70% of people would trust a recommendation from someone they don't even know, simply because there's this concept of, everyone's maybe all in it together or working with each other to make great decisions out there. And if you really care about a product or you really care about an experience that you had, that you're going to want to make sure that other people know about it.

So word of mouth marketing generates more than twice the sales of paid advertising. And the stats are here for that in terms of the number of consumers relying on social media to inform their purchasing decisions. So whether it be on any forms of social networks or on your website itself, having that third-party validation from someone else is incredibly important. And you could look at the ad that we have here for Barbasol from a long time ago, it's including quotes and reviews from other people.

So, just to reiterate, there's many different types of social proof. Obviously any type of user-generated content, a share, a post, an image, a review, case studies and testimonials, influencers talking about products in any way, shape, or form, having sorts of badges and awards, or even having some type of live user data to talk about it. These are all ways that we start influencing purchasing and conversion points across the internet. So that's what social proof is. It sounds like the majority of the audience actually knows what that is so we could continue on forward with that.

So user-generated content is really great in the B2C space. An example of this is Lululemon, obviously 2 million followers on Instagram, there's more sales, a better brand customer relationship. You're looking at this post here and it's a picture of someone, you can see them actually wearing the clothes and getting a sense of what they're doing and how they're working and how things fit. And you have tons of comments on this. So having the ability to see this post and have the additional information about it is super helpful when customers are looking to make a purchase decision.

The other thing to think about here is, this can work in any type of retail environment, whether it's clothes or furniture. Increasing your social media following, it's a great word of mouth strategy and it's got more traffic from social and more sales. So if you show a piece of furniture in its natural environment, it might be more meaningful than say, just looking at it in a catalog because you have a point of reference in how it interacts with the other products.

### Reviews boost customer confidence

So the other thing that I think about here and why I'm talking right now, obviously is reviews and ratings boost customer confidence. So, 92% of consumers now read online reviews. So, it's just the natural part of the purchasing experience right now when you're doing anything online right now. You want to know that other people have gone through this before, and that you can trust what you're doing is actually going to... You can trust the company that you're making a transaction with to actually fulfill on their end of the bargain. So 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation, because someone is going out of their way to leave a review on a company. They want other people to know that their experience was either positive or negative or could have been a little bit better, somewhere in between.

Customers are likely to spend 30% more on a business with excellent reviews. So if you're collecting feedback from your customers about their purchasing experience or about the products, that could add a true amount of value for new potential customers. And 40% of consumers form an opinion by reading one to three of the reviews. So, yeah, it's great if you have 10,000 reviews, but if you do have fresh content in there, that can help you in so many different ways that it'll only benefit your company when additional customers have fresh content to read through.

So here's some examples of some other companies and the Staples example of how they worked on used reviews to their advantage. So it just proves that it's great for B2C and B2B in any situation, if you're making a purchasing decision as a company or as a consumer, this example, it improved a click-through rate on the email because it allowed people to actually see the reviews in here and understand what was going on. It could generate more sales from the web in general and from Google shopping. And it could offer more traffic and engagement from social media. So the thing to think about here is, we have a couple of different examples here of a Trustpilot widget on a website, in Google shopping, and on their Facebook page. So any way you can incorporate these ratings and reviews and this user-generated content across any of the channels that you're working on is something that could greatly benefit your business or your marketing experience in any way.

Here's some more examples of a couple of different other customers. Revel Systems put the review widget on their webpage. And when you click into it, next to a form, they noticed a 16% increase in overall conversions for that form. And the reason for that is a customer doesn't actually have to leave the website to go do research on the company. When you have a trusted third party collecting reviews on your behalf or displaying this third party social proof on your website, the customer can actually do everything within your site and within your ecosystem to ensure that they have the information they need to make an informed decision.

So this can increase the time on site. It can increase your overall conversions. Like it did with Revel and Vivint. And you could also place it in the sales conversion funnel as well. So you can see Vivint and ID Wholesaler, they put it near where their purchasing products were. So, the suggestion is here, the best practice is here, you want to put social proof anywhere where there needs to be a conversion point, whether it's to collect consumer data or to make a purchase of an actual product. And that's what these companies did here. And they saw very large increases in overall conversions and revenue on the whole.

So we have a number of other case studies and testimonials that speak to this. I don't want to say it's a phenomenon, I think it's something that's been going on for a while. And I think it's just clear towards what the experiences are on the internet. I mean, it used to be word of mouth and now it's still word of mouth, but it's just displaying it a different way. So case studies are huge and it shows other examples of what you can do when you're using social proof to your advantage. So it gives you the most in-depth type of social proof, it gives you examples, it gives you stats. It talks about what the scenario is and what worked and what didn't work. And it's great to use when you have a solid customer story.

So I would definitely suggest to anyone who's working with any type of customers with their business to use case studies and testimonials. Because again, if you could get a number of different verticals talking about what worked for them, you could try to repeat those processes. And by identifying a good customer advocate, you will not only benefit yourself, but you will also benefit that customer by providing them with whatever exposure you're able to give them as well.

### Leveraging third-party validation

Influencer opinions are really great as well. Obviously I think this is something that we've seen with the influence of social media over the last few years. It really gives you experts who really know what they're talking about and what they've experienced. The example we have here is from National Geographic Travel. Obviously National Geographic is a bit more of an expert about travel than maybe your standard vacationer or adventure. But you can see this in fashion as well, where there's plenty of influencers now on Instagram, on Facebook, in other verticals and other social networks talking about different verticals and different things like that, like fashion or travel or anything like that. So this is definitely something you might want to consider as well, if you have an influencer you want to work with, and you want to provide suggestions about your product or service, I think that could definitely help you.

The other thing you could do is talk about badges, awards, and seals, seals of approval. Anything like that, to provide more proof and more evidence that you've been verified in any type of way. You'll see an increase in conversion, you'll build more trust, and you'll add more credibility and transparency to whatever experiences you're trying to portray. So you could see a couple examples here of Verisign trusted, or the Trustpilot widget, it's a highly recommended company because it's got an excellent five star rating. Anything that could help push the ball along and help keep customers informed and on your website is only going to add benefit to you.

The other thing you could talk about is, what we could talk about is just live or dynamic data to... I think this is really exciting for a lot of people, if they consider to see the example we have here is from TripAdvisor, right? And if they see live data using the wisdom of the crowd, the number of reviews and total and the very good rating, I think that's really exciting. And in addition to that, you create a sense of urgency. Time-sensitive deals, number of visitors viewing the product, buyers in the past 24 hours, that creates a sense of urgency on the customer side and I think that could be really exciting for a lot of people.

If you'd like to schedule a one-on-one evaluation with Trustpilot, click the link below!


How to channel customer feedback to drive conversions

email marketing + Social Proof - The perfect formula to convert more browsers into buyers

In this webinar recording, Trustpilot gives you key tips to start personalizing your emails to different available segments, often referred to as behavioral emails, and watch your conversion rates skyrocket.

Why is email so powerful? Consider this - email is the highest converting channel, period. Email is also likely the least expensive channel you’re running. Once you start personalizing your emails to different available segments, often referred to as behavioral emails, watch your conversion rate skyrocket.

Behavioral emails work, it doesn’t matter what products you’re selling, how much they cost, or if you’re B2B or B2C.

Learn how to convert more customers, more quickly, by watching this webinar and discovering how to combine social proof and behavioral emails to maximize your least expensive channel.

Email Marketing + Social Proof Webinar

### About Trustpilot 

Trustpilot exists predominantly for two reasons. The first is to help consumers. We help them buy with confidence by being able to see reviews from other people. And it also provides a place where they can share experiences with their peers. Second, and just as important, is that we help companies collect reviews very easily from their customers and leverage them to create trust with their clients, and improve the performance of their marketing.

There's some stats here that just show you a little bit about the size of our platform. We have about 100 million online reviews on trustpilot.com. And we see about 1 million new reviews come in every month, with over 300,000 brands reviewed on Trustpilot.

### About Elite SEM

Elite SEM is an award-winning digital agency. They were founded on Search, overall. And now, they're actually focused on performance-driven digital marketing. So, their expertise spans paid search, SEO, shopping and feed, display, paid social, conversion rate optimization, and now email and CRM. They have an unprecedented 97% employee and 94% client retention rate. So they clearly have a huge commitment to their people and performance. And they are one of the top digital marketing agencies in North America. 

### What is social proof?

To start off, what is social proof? And so what social proof technically is, it's the phenomenon that people are looking to their peers, they're looking to other people, to see what their opinions are and their behavior is, in order to make the right decision on their own. And what this means for marketers is that this is really the tactic that we should be using to ease the mind of worried consumers. It helps you naturally build credibility. Again, you can leverage this concept of the fear of missing out, or FOMO, to help them choose your product and your services.

At this point, social proof is pretty common. While it's still getting defined in the industry, it's very widely used by most businesses to help customers pick their business, and help them make the right decision. There's a lot of different types of social proof, and some of these overlap a little bit. But there's user-generated content, which basically just means what it sounds. It's content that comes from your customers or your users. So this can include ratings and reviews, but it might also include images of your product that come from your customers, as well.

### Ratings and reviews

Ratings and reviews are very common. Again, most customers at this point are looking to ratings and reviews before they make a purchase decision. And we'll cover that more in the later slides. Case studies and testimonials are very popular too, especially for B2B businesses. Influencer opinions are very common for consumer businesses. You have badges, awards and seals that come usually from third parties, again, showing that your business is credible. And then, live and dynamic viewer data is becoming more and more prevalent too. We're seeing this more common on business websites and landing pages. But especially in email, we're starting to see this become more popular there as well.

Here at Trustpilot, we think reviews are one of the most important social proof tactics. And the reason is, is first just because they're really easy to collect. They don't take that long to get reviews from your customers, where a case study might take a lot of time to build out, or same with the user-generated pictures that we mentioned. Those often take time to get a decent sampling size up. But second and most important, is that reviews are just, again, they're really common and consumers expect to see them.

92% of consumers now read online reviews, that's nearly the entire market. And 40% of consumers form an opinion just by reading one or two or three reviews. So again, it doesn't often take a lot of reviews to form their opinion, so it's really important that you have something, and that they are positive reviews, that they reflect your business. Because if those two or three reviews aren't good, obviously that won't bode well for your bottom line.

Some things that are important to remember when it comes to reviews is even though I just said it only takes two to three reviews to really influence their opinion about your business, consumers are scanning reviews for keywords. So, it's probably important to have more than those two to three reviews about your business, so they can find reviews that are relevant to their decision. It might be about the fit of the product, or the quality of the product, or shipping. So again, it's good to have some variety there that they can reference.

Second, consumers are strongly motivated to leave reviews by invitation. This is a question we get from businesses a lot, is, "How do I collect more reviews? I see these other companies have tens of thousands of reviews at this point." So the biggest way those companies are usually collecting reviews, is by inviting them to leave a review via email. And if you're not doing this, what's probably happening is people are going online, they're searching for places to leave reviews. And those people are often probably not super happy about your business, so those reviews are going to be negative. Again, it's really important to invite your entire customer-base to get a healthy sampling of reviews.

Last but not least, reviews are more relevant for certain industries. While we're finding that almost all industries, reviews are pertinent to you, if you're in e-commerce, reviews are just critical. Consumers are expecting to be able to find out about your business. So if you're not showing them, they're definitely searching online. And also, if you have a bigger ticket item, or if you're in the finance space, maybe it's insurance or healthcare, those are products that are really important, very impactful. So people are definitely looking to reviews to make a decision, and make sure they're making the right one.

### Email marketing and reviews

So we like to look at reviews based off of how consumers purchase. And This is where email really comes in. In order to help push consumers through their purchase journey, hopefully you're using and leveraging emails to move them along, provide them the right information and help them purchase from your brand. And reviews can play a different role, based off of where they're at in their purchase journey. So in the earlier stages of the buying cycle, you need recognition or product specification. This is probably where you'd want to use product reviews, because this can influence their needs as they're defining their needs. And help influence the type of product that they want to purchase. And ideally, you can influence them to decide that there's specific requirements that your brand just happens to be able to fit.

So later in the buying cycle, when they're starting to look at, "Where should I buy this product from? Is it safe for me to buy from this specific business?" This is where you'd probably want to leverage service reviews is what we call them. And these are reviews that are all about your business as a whole. How is the buying experience buying on your website? How is the customer service if they had to make a return? How is the shipping? Things like that. And then post purchase, again, this is a great place to leverage email, to collect more reviews from your customers. So that you can leverage more reviews, again, with new customers.

Email marketing reviews. I'm just going to go ahead, and throw these all up here. The reason reviews really work in email, and the reason that they help improve the engagement, click-through rates and conversion is because of the reasons here. We mentioned they're user-generated context so they're more credible. And with user-generated content, it's important to show that they're fresh and updated, that they're timestamped. And hopefully, very recent so that they're more relevant to your customer base.

Also, reviews will be using natural language of your customers. This is really important so that we're not just using marketing speak. This natural language is often more effective, getting them to take action. And more effective because they're more trustworthy. And then social proof, again, these reviews because they're social proof feel like recommendations from friends. They're more credible. And again, it's more likely to get them to make a purchase, because they want to fit in with their peers or make the right decision based off of that.

It's important to leverage reviews differently, based off of where they're at in the buying cycle. So you can target them in different ways. And some creative ways we've seen customers see this, is based off of the pages that the person visited last. If they were on a product page, again, for instance, they might want to use product reviews there. And if they were on your shopping cart page, but then abandoned, that's a great place to show reviews about your customer service, about your shipping, these things that people usually worry about before they make their final decision.

Reviews are more credible when they come from a third party. If they're not from a third party, they might just look like they're copied and pasted onto your website. They might not feel as credible or believable. It's really important for your website, for your email, whatever tactic, especially with email, to make sure that they have a third party that they've come from. 

I know we talked a little bit about email and how important it is as far as social proof and reviews, collecting reviews. But overall, just to put it in perspective, email has a median ROI of 122%. So if you think about that, as far as all of the other marketing channels go, it's over four times higher on average than all other marketing channels. That's why we think it's very valuable for you to put that social proof in your email. As it's already a strong marketing piece, you can enhance it.

Whenever you have a new idea, we recommend that you do some testing. Every brand works differently, so if you have something very unique that your audience engages with, that is something you definitely want to move forward with. 

Luckily, we see some enhanced marketing with review content being leveraged across the board. So, people are starting to adapt that and really relating back to their customer's needs. But sometimes, there can be little tweaks that you can make that are different from other brands, or even different from a competitor. Like stars, how many stars on average a product got. Even doing a short review that you have a CTA to click through on there, to read the rest. Those types of things may be different based on the demographic that typically purchases from your brand, or if you're a B2B brand.

Overall, testing, it does seem overwhelming. But if you use these three strategies, you can break it down into something that's a little bit more digestible. So we use champion versus challenger type testing at Elite and I'll explain that a little bit more on the next slide. Range of statistical significance, which is how we measure. And then implementation of successes, which is really a given, but it's the most important part.

For champion versus challenger testing, what this is, is an approach that's a little bit different from AB testing or multivariate testing. It eliminates opinion, uses multiple variants and it has actionable insights at the end that you can implement. How this works is you take an existing experience, match it up to a challenger, and then the new champion matches up to a new challenger and so on, and so on. The most important thing that you can do is having a predetermined implementation timeline. So every month, every quarter, every six months, go and review your test results, implement successes, and then continue testing.

### Implementing success

We see so many brands not implement successes. They're just spinning around and around because they want to be perfect with their test results or have more definity. But really, at that point, if you see something that works or works moderately, then you are leaving money on the table by not implementing. So for example, if you test no reviews in your emails versus reviews in your emails, and you see those reviews work, go ahead and either implement those right away. Or, have a predetermined timeline where you're reviewing things like that, so that you don't miss out on anything.

For success measurement, statistical significance definitely is an intimidating thing. It is very easy, much easier than you think, by using an online calculator. So we have an example here, and you can find a ton online. But overall, you put in your inputs, which are two numbers, and then it spits out some information about how confident those test results are based on the numbers and based on the input. 95% is usually the golden number for statistical significance. If you get to a place where you're 95%, that means that 95% of the time when you have this exact test and these exact variants, you'll be able to have the exact same results.

So if you are using email where you have a big send list and sometimes smaller clicks or smaller opens, or even smaller conversions compared to that initial send number, it will be very tough to get to 95%. So we use sometimes this scale here at the bottom, where it may not be that golden number of 95% like data scientists would typically use for a study in say the medical field. But, we can say that there's more suggestive or less suggestive results, and that will help you at those predetermined times to really say what is the best implementation of the successes that we've had so far in testing.

Another interesting stat for you guys... 93% of email marketers in a recent survey said that testing is important and they test regularly with their programs. So that doesn't mean that they're doing both, but everybody, almost everybody, agrees that testing is important. So instead of just rolling out with something that may not be an optimal experience, or that you could tweak to be an optimal experience, you should definitely test it.

Effective marketing includes brand trust, the "Others like me." mentality, and comparison shopping is definitely the future. That is what we're seeing across the board. I'm sure if you reflect on your current status of what things that you bought in the last, say, week, month, year, you've probably done some comparison shopping for yourself. So by putting in the comparison shopping into your marketing focuses, reviews could definitely help with that.

It will set your product and a competitor's product that may look on the surface exactly the same, it will set you apart. It may even set your brand or service apart. So if you have the same product, but maybe you offer free shipping or fast shipping, or great customer service or even more education than another brand selling a similar product, that could set you above the rest and really help that person make this conversion choice.

81% of shoppers conduct online research. So that includes reviews or comparison shopping before buying. Personally, I think this number is probably even higher as we get into the holiday season. So if we can give them the online reviews that they're looking for, and that social proof, it will help then drive the conversion to your brand.

91% of respondents from a recent survey said that the review influenced a buying decision. So how powerful that is, is exponential. If you take 91% of the people that come to your website and know that if they see reviews, if they like what they see, it will help them purchase, it is tremendous. So just take those numbers and do some quick math in your head. But overall, having reviews is going to drive those conversions and it's going to drive loyalty. So it creates that, "Like me." mentality, like we talked about before and increases the amount of conversions and brand trust that you have right out the gate with first time purchasers.

A couple of visuals for success stories, you can see here. In email reviews are very seamlessly integrated. This particular version you can see as the star rating, it has, "Hear what our customers are saying." So it's very clear that these are customer quotes, not quotes from the company or quotes from a manufacturer, these are customer quotes. The people that actually have the product, spent their own money on the product, and reviewed the product. It is a tremendous approach for anyone who is a new customer, or maybe even into exploring different categories of your business that they haven't purchased from before.

And another rendition here, you can see the star rating, it's nice, it pops. And it gives that appeal of a great product, a product that people love, because it is that aggregate of multiple people scoring systems. And then it has a little bit of a quote from one of the easy and beautiful reviews that we have here. It is seamlessly integrated. It has the information that you need. And in one glance you can see absolutely everything that you need to see that this is a loved product, that it's not going to be something that they're going to be disappointed when they get it home.

### To sum up...

So overall, just a quick summary. If you take nothing else away from today, most consumers, if not all, are using reviews to make purchase decisions. And that number increases every single day, especially as we head into holiday. Email's an impactful place to add reviews because of how many people you email, that reach, and also the ability for you to put things like star ratings and curate that information to be really specific to what the consumer is looking for or what the prospect is looking for.

And test to find those optimal experiences. Remember, every brand is just a little bit different. And so is every demographic – so if you test to find those optimal experiences, your unique customer base will also respond very well. 

If you'd like to learn more about reviews and conversions, check out our guide below.


Email Marketing + Social Proof: The perfect formula to convert more browsers into buyers

customer reviews equals revenue

In this webinar, you’ll learn how to optimize the customer feedback cycle from Zendesk, learn how Skyscanner was able to use reviews to grow and improve upon their company, and learn how Trustpilot can help you begin the review collecting process.

__Here's what you need to know:__

- SEO Service Review TrustBoxes no longer display Review Snippet stars (this impacts service reviews from all providers, not just Trustpilot).
- Product Review SEO TrustBoxes and Google Seller Ratings (GSRs) aren't affected by this change.
- Business Profile pages on Trustpilot.com will still display Review Snippet stars. If you'd like to find out more, please read [Trustpilot's explanatory blog post](https://business.trustpilot.com/reviews/google-rich-snippet-update-what-it-means-for-businesses).

### How Customer Reviews Benefit Your Business

Customer reviews do more than just provide feedback. They can shape consumer behavior, improve your SEO, increase your conversion rate, and most of all, they increase trust - a quality that all companies can improve upon.

However, customer reviews can also increase your revenue by driving up the value of your brand, your marketing, and your customer experience.

In this webinar, you’ll learn how to optimize the customer feedback cycle from Zendesk, learn how Skyscanner was able to use reviews to grow and improve upon their company, and learn how Trustpilot can help you begin the review collecting process.

Check out our webinar recording below.


Turning customers reviews into...

Trustpilot's guide to conversion rate optimization

Turning customer reviews into real revenue

Improving your online reputation with reviews

In this Trustilot webinar, we discuss the important of online reptation, how to build it from scratch, improve and monitor it, and capitalise from a positive online reputation.

Are you worried that negative reviews are hurting your bottom line?

Are you using your positive reviews to improve conversion rates?

In this webinar recording, you'll learn:

- Why your online reputation matters 
- How to monitor your online reputation 
- How to build your reputation from scratch 
- How to change a negative online reputation from zero to hero 
- How to capitalise on a positive online reputation.


Why ignoring your online reputation

Trustpilot tips and tricks: leveraging reviews to build a trusted brand

leveraging reviews across channels

In this Trustpilot webinar, we talk about the importance of social proof today, and talk you through how you can share your customer’s voice across all channels, including social media, to boost confidence and reduce scepticism.

In fact, it's growing so fast that it has now become essential for companies to implement social proof into their omni-channel marketing strategies. Indeed, online customers feel much more comfortable purchasing from a store when presented with evidence that others recommend it.

That’s why in this insightful webinar, two Trustpilot experts share some key concepts that you can start implementing immediately in order to power your business forward.

Watch the recording today, and learn how you can share your customer’s voice across all channels, including social media, to boost confidence and reduce scepticism.

Marketing & Reviews 101

### About Trustpilot

We were founded in Denmark in 2007. The reason it all started was because our CEO's mum was basically shopping online. She was looking for a washing machine. And back in 2007, buying a washing machine online was something that doesn't happen every day. So she was looking at various different websites, they both sold the same product, but she couldn't decide whom to buy from, because there was no way of knowing which website was most trusted. That's where it stemmed from, the lack of trust for consumers online. And since then, we've had over $173 million worth of investment. That's basically gone into growth to make sure that our product stays at the forefront of reviews. We now span 150 countries, 35 different languages, seven offices with over 800 employees around the globe. We've collected over 100 million reviews for 400,000 businesses around the globe.

### Why are reviews important today?

Reviews do really have an impact. 92% of consumers read reviews before making a buying decision, 44% think the number of reviews is important and 63% of consumers are likely to make a purchase from a site which has user reviews. So you can see, reviews are really important when consumers are looking to buy from you. We find that a lot of consumers will actually do a search on the company. So like company name plus reviews before they make that buying decision and that's where actually the majority of our traffic comes from.

So authentic content. Obviously back in the day, it used to be the brand would tell everyone what the brand should appear as, but this has basically changed now. Consumers are looking more and more for user-generated content. And this basically leads on nicely into the next part.

### Reviews and social proof

So, we've just heard that reviews have an impact on those buying decisions. So now I'm going to talk through the different types of reviews and how you can use these in your business. There are two different types of reviews, there's a service or your brand focused reviews, and then there's product focused reviews. And together, these provide a twofold view of social proof down the entire sales funnel.

There are also two types of reviews within that, that consumers can leave. There's an organic review or there's a verified review. Verified reviews are the ones that give consumer confidence on the authenticity of the review, that is, that it's come from a genuine experience. And another thing about the verified reviews is that they are easier for the consumer to leave. And on top of that, it helps qualify your brand for Google seller ratings, the gold stars that show up against your paid ads.

Now, the way in which we're asking for reviews, is very important and there's many different flexible methods out there. So I'm going to run through a couple of what Trustpilot can offer. So to start with, we need to, of course, understand and follow the consumer through their journey of identifying their need, making a decision, making a purchase and therefore having an experience. And that's when we're going to send that invitation.

### Collecting reviews

So we don't have to wait for people to come to your review profile or to your Facebook page to leave an organic review anymore, we can go to them. And so, there's multiple ways that we can do this, but some of the most popular ways, and for good reason, is how we can do it through our automation method called Automatic Feedback. Sorry about that siren, let's wait a minute. Yeah, is our Automatic Feedback Service. So this is triggered from your CRM or your emailing platform, or you might want to look into using one of our eCommerce plugins like Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce, but we can also help collect verified reviews on your site or even through your own SMSs or emails.

So now, understanding how we can collect review, we need to think about when is best to do so. If we go in too early, we risk a lower conversion rate or misconstrued feedback as it can all be a bit too vague, as the experience isn't yet complete. That being said, asking too late is also not the best thing to do. This can also give us a lower response rate or even worse, they don't remember their experience well enough to give us that qualitive review that we're after. But when we get them in the right spot, we get meaningful and relevant sentiment. Our customer facing teams get a chance to get in early, to turn anyone around and overall the customer is still riding high on the experience.

There's more than one way to help improve review conversions, but here are some of the most effective that we have found. 

Inviting absolutely everybody to leave a review. We don't have to wait for them to come to us, we go to them. This is more than likely to help us get more reviews.

There's also the option to send them a reminder. People do get busy and we forget that we've got an invitation sitting in our inbox. So no one minds getting a small little once-off nudge to leave that review. And then, if none of this works, which it shouldn't, but we can always A/B test, to see what is going to work for your unique set of customers.

### Incorporating social proof throughout the buying journey

We're going to look at a couple of examples of social proof throughout the journey. We'll look at some stats to validate social proof, that is something that we should be considering. So 92% of consumers read online reviews, 84% of consumers say that they trust peer recommendations, but only 22% of brands are actually trusted. So this could be a great gap you're currently missing with your marketing strategy, and a really easy and effective way to be implemented.

So you've got the header. So as soon as people hit the site, they're met with reviews that fills them with the confidence and it shows them that they can trust in your brand, straight from the get-go. And then they're able to just easily scroll through the reviews on site, make an informed decision and decide whether they want to proceed to the next step. You've got the footer, so as you can see, Safe Financial use social proof, it's huge to them. They have all their social platforms in one place, and then dedicated to building their brand reputation. Another great way for consumers to keep them engaged throughout the website.

So Bridgestone, they do more location based reviews, which is something a little bit new to us. We just brought that out, it's pretty cool. So you can obviously understand where potentially, which one's performing best in terms of location. And there could be a particular location that's not performing too well. But more specifically, it gives you again, that social proof on each of your locations. So if someone is looking to potentially come in store, they're then given that extra nudge with all these fantastic reviews, showing that they're going to get great service. And the location based reviews are also pretty good for localized searches, so we can mark up key landing pages and drive click through rate with review snippet stars.

So that was sort of the more service brand focus, but we can jump down into the product reviews. So at that point where the consumer has made a product choice and a selection, displaying product reviews from their peers basically, of what they also thought of the product, is a really good option. It helps generate that FOMO and drives them to make that decision that we want them to, which is to put it into checkout and purchase the chair.

We all have FOMO. But a lot of this has been focused on acquisition and it doesn't just have to be. Reviews can be used, and they should be used, to help turn your customers into returning customers. And we can see here in these retargeting emails, that's exactly what they're doing. Electricity Wizard, being a comparison site, is calling out how many reviews and trusted customers have had an experience with them. The same for rental of Omega Car Rentals.

We also see ads every day that we're on social media. So using trust marks, such as the Trustpilot stars alongside your customer's own words, is also another great way to re target. We know that social proof does help boost that click through rate when it's used across all of the marketing channels.

### Boosting conversions with trust signals

So having reviews on-site can help build your brand reputation and create consumer confidence, but we've done a lot of testament to the companies that we actually work with and so actually displaying reviews throughout the journey. And we've proven that you can convert up to 130% more, but as well, you can actually increase sales up to 315%.

Obviously, that would depend on the amount of traffic that you've got coming to your website. But either way, if you have two identical websites next to each other, one's got loads of fantastic reviews from a third party like Trustpilot, the other one's got no reviews, you're obviously going to choose the one that's got reviews. Pretty simple.

So top of the funnel stuff, so you can integrate the reviews on some of your key landing pages. So you could pick where you appear really well in organic search and basically mark them up with what we call review snippet stars, so they're basically just the stars that appear in organic search. You can also have product reviews, so again, product reviews allow you to integrate the review snippet stars onto each of your product landing pages, but as well, product reviews are actually hosted on your site, so it helps build your SEO for each of your product searches. And obviously, those stars are going to increase click through rate.

And then, last but not least, obviously the PPC, which I would imagine majority of you spend on. We can basically help you achieve the stars within your paid ads as well, because we basically have a license agreement with Google, and on average that will increase your click through rate for your ads by 10%. 

If you'd like to find out more about the importance of social proof to convert browsers into buyers, check out the report below!

Marketing & reviews 101: Leveraging your reviews across channels

Importance of reviews in offline advertising

In this Trustpilot webinar, we cover how impactful ratings and reviews are in advertising and marketing, and highlight how ratings and reviews also affect consumer trust, sentiment, and even their intent to make a purchase.

The report also highlights how ratings and reviews affect consumer trust, sentiment, and even their intent to make a purchase.

To celebrate the launch of this report, we’re excited to invite you to an exclusive webinar on May 17th, 11am BST/12pm CET where Trustpilot, Gain Credit, and London Research will showcase key results and highlights from our London Research report. 

Gain Credit, one of the brands featured in the report, will provide an in-depth look into how ratings and reviews have made an impact on their marketing and their company. We’ll also offer additional examples of how our clients have made the most of their ratings and reviews in above-the-line (offline) advertising.

Watch the webinar recording below:

### The methodology of the research

Let's start off with the methodology for the research. It's obviously worth saying that the aim of the research was really to learn more about the impact of ratings and reviews as a general level, and also to explore awareness of Trustpilot and various elements of the Trustpilot brand. In terms of the methodology, we did two surveys. We did a survey of more than 300 Trustpilot business partners and prospects. To complement that, we also did a survey of 2,000 UK consumers. The business survey was more global, but the consumer survey, we focused here on the UK market. We also did some qualitative research in the form of interviews with brands already harnessing Trustpilot in their offline advertising.

Finally, we did some statistical analysis using our part of the bottom line analytics to really get under the skin a bit more of the consumer motivations and to understand a bit more deeply the impact of different touch points, such as rating reviews in the customer journey. Also, to get a bit more nuance about the different elements of the Trustpilot brand. For example, the logo and the stars and trust for, more about that later. To look now at the objectives of the research, which I've already covered briefly. But essentially, this was around, as I say, a general understanding of the importance of ratings and reviews in the decision making process. That's the third bullet there. Then also looking at the use and benefits of Trustpilot in offline advertising, and, also, awareness of Trustpilot. I think it's worth saying for the uninitiated, above-the-line advertising, or ATL advertising, essentially overlaps quite a lot with offline marketing, so I guess, historically, its above-the-line was distinct from below-the-line advertising, which was more things like direct mail. 

Then the distinction has come to mean as well now more offline marketing as opposed to digital channels like online display or search advertising or social media. We're talking about more conventional media such as television, radio, print and billboards. Although, it should be noted that the lines are certainly blurry than actually a lot of these offline channels such as a billboard and TV, and even radio, have become more digital. 

### The importance of ratings and reviews

Okay, so if we look now at the first key finding of the report, and so looking at more the general research we did about the importance of ratings and reviews. What we found was that reviews and ratings, which we looked at separately as touch points, emerged as the most important sources of information when consumers are interested in buying something. When they're in buying mode, and we can see from this chart that reviews and ratings are actually at the top of the pile now in terms of how they're viewed as credible sources of information. 

That's partly to do with a lack of trust generally in information on the internet, whether that's through phenomena such as fake news, or a bad reputation that some aspects of display advertising have got over the years because it's not targeted. But not to say that all this advertising is bad in any way, but there is this general lack of trust in people looking for authenticity that reviews and ratings can provide. 

You can see here the percentage of UK consumers who are saying that each of these different touch points is either very important, important, and so on and so forth. Customer reviews, 40% of consumers regard these as very important. As you can see for consumer ratings, it's 38%. Then you can see in descending order the impact, or the perceived impact, that consumers think these have on their purchase decisions. It should also be noted that actually some of the other touch points, whether e-commerce sites or company websites or, as we'll see, even TV advertising can actually themselves have reviews. There is some overlap between these different touch points. 

Another key finding of the UK-focused consumer research was the high awareness of Trustpilot. We saw from our consumer survey that 58% of UK consumers are aware of Trustpilot. 

### How are consumers engaging with reviews?

There are two or three ways that the consumers interact with the reviews. 
Firstly is by leaving a review themselves, and not just actually leaving a review, but we've seen in a number of reviews, customers commenting on other reviews. For example, "I wasn't sure about borrowing from you, but I came and saw some reviews, and I'm really glad that I did." That's always a good positive first to come through. Apart from collecting feedback through Trustpilot itself, we have a number of internal mechanisms for collecting customer feedback, and again, we've seen some verbatim comments in there saying, "Wasn't to sure about it at first, but actually really pleased with everything that's come through, and really glad with what I've seen and everything else."

### Does your Trustpilot score help you build trust?

The next part of the findings we're presenting here is we wanted to test the hypothesis that a good Trustpilot score helped brands build trust with consumers and increases conversion rates in terms of online and offline sales. We had a couple of questions, we shall see here, as part of the consumer survey. We asked the extent to which they agreed that a good Trustpilot score made them more likely to trust the brand, and 76% either strongly agreed or somewhat agreed that that was the case.

We could also see the extent to which consumers agreed that a good Trustpilot score makes them more likely to buy from a brand, and 72% of Trustpilot aware consumers, should stress that these are consumers who were aware of Trustpilot, said that they agree a good Trustpilot score makes them more likely to buy from a brand.

We wanted to look now at a couple of the statistical models we used as part of the research. The first one is really around the role of or the impact of different touchpoints including ratings and reviews in the consumer purchasing decision making process. What we've got here is a four quadrant where we've mapped the different touchpoints against their perceived importance and the impact on likelihood to buy, which is the X axis. We've used for this, or should I say, the statistician used for this multivariate regression modeling.

The most influential touchpoints are consumer reviews and ratings. This is something clearly that is in the interest of brands to use. The next most important quadrant is the 'maintain' one, and these are channels which are regarded by consumers, relatively speaking, as very important the search engines, company websites, and eCommerce. And I should stress here that all these touchpoints can certainly play a role in the influencing the customer journey, but we wanted to establish some kind of a pecking order here. In the bottom left, we can see channels such as direct mail, TV advertising, online display. One of the conclusions of the research is that the ratings and reviews can be used actually within those channels to make them more effective. And also, that those channels in isolation should really be monitored over time to see what their impact is on the consumer decision making in terms of trust and ultimately propensity to purchase. 

We found that there are things like the Trustpilot logo and Trustscore, the stars, the reviews, that ultimately directly drive trust, and it's the trust in turn which then drives propensity to buy. The elements of the Trustpilot identity, they do have an indirect or subsidiary role in actually driving buy, but it's actually earlier on in the decision making process where they come into play most importantly to really build that trust.

### The research's key takeaways

One of the really key findings of the report was the missed opportunity for many brands to harness Trustpilot in their above-the-line, offline marketing and advertising, and this part of the evidence by the survey we did of Trustpilot partners and business. For website, the vast majority of Trustpilot partner's customers use the brand, but when we look at the bottom of that chart for above-the-line channels, it's only eight percent we are using, but 16% are considering using it, and then the rest or around three quarters, no plans to use. It should be pointed out, some of those Trustpilot partners don't really do much above-the-line advertising, but there's a decent chunk of them who do so, and not yet leveraging ratings and reviews.

I think one of the things from the interviews that we've seen, generally in terms of the way Trustpilot's used, is that it's been a differentiator from other brands, particularly in the offline space, but over time it's becoming more of a hygiene factor, where brands need to be visible in that respect.

At the moment, there's still only a small portion of companies, relatively speaking, using Trustpilot in offline advertising. I think over time, and there's still very much an opportunity there, it will move from being a differentiator to a hygiene factor or table stakes as some people describe it.

And the survey of businesses also, when we looked at the perceived benefits, in the blue there, portion of respondents from the business survey, describing these benefits as major. There's a good consistency with the consumer survey in the building trust, creating more customer friendly brands. I think brands about very savvy that that's where the opportunity really lies and the indirect benefits around increased revenue, which is really what it's all about. In terms of conversion online and offline, there's a really wise benefit, I think, around integrating just offline activity to have that to appear to be seamless in your marketing or advertising as a brand that it can tie up have that consistency of the ratings and reviews figure both online and offline.

People ultimately use the Trustpilot logo and the stars as a by word for quality, and it's a quick way to get that message across and then be able to deliver on other things. There is a bit more to it than just plunking the stars and the logo on the ad, but by integrating that into campaigns, it can really help power any business forward. 

If you'd like to learn more about the importance of displaying trust signals both offline and online, check out the report below!

The psychology behind trust signals: Why and how social proof influences consumers

How reviews in offline advertising impact consumers and brands

Reviews and SEO - a complete Trustpilot guide

In this Trustpilot webinar, we explain how to make sure any reviews you collect are contributing to SEO, how to measure the SEO benefit from your reviews, and how to best leverage them in your marketing.

The eternal pairing of reviews and SEO has always been the subject of scrutiny. 

Do reviews help SEO?

How do they help SEO?

Do all reviews help SEO?

Watch our webinar recording below, and learn:

- How to make sure any reviews you collect are contributing to SEO
- How to make the most of your reviews in your marketing
- How to get more reviews
- How to measure the SEO benefit from your reviews.


Reviews and SEO...

### About Trustpilot

Trustpilot is a leading online reviews platform. We're built on openness and collaboration. Our platform is open to all consumers and all companies, while we remain independent of both. Our mission is to become a universal symbol of trust, and we do this by tapping into people's desire to share experiences and make things better. For consumers, we're a place to share, discover, connect with and influence great businesses and awesome experiences. For companies, we're a platform of progress. A way to impress, improve and innovate by simply engaging and collaborating with consumers. All of this means Trustpilot is more than just a rating. The Trustpilot star signifies to the world that a company has nothing to hide, loves its customers and shares our mission to create ever improving experiences for everyone.

Here's some data that backs up how we are a leading online reviews platform. Firstly, our online reach is huge. We have over four billion impressions a month, so this means the Trustpilot brand is seen online over four billion times, and this doesn't even count the offline appearances. We're in the top 1% of most visited websites globally and we have over 18 million reviews to date. We add to this number by over two million reviews every month. For those that know the Alexa rank, by way of traffic, Trustpilot is ranked as the 393rd largest website in the world, which is not too bad going. That number is reducing day by day.

We've talked about Trustpilot's goal, to be a universal symbol of trust. This all revolves around our powerful customer feedback software, but how does this actually help businesses? Well, it brings together three key pieces. We help businesses get better. This means genuine consumers' feedback with insights to learn from and to improve with. It's the ability to see your business from your customer's eyes. By listening to this feedback and acting on it, you can improve, which leads to selling more. As the feedback comes in and your Trustpilot rating improves, you can show off to the world and get seen more too.

So let's move on to how we work with Google. 

### Trustpilot is a Google Review Partner

Trustpilot has a licensing agreement with Google, which makes us one of their review partners. This agreement means that [Google recognizes us as a trusted source of transparent, legitimate customer reviews](https://uk.business.trustpilot.com/reviews/get-seen-in-search/why-does-google-care-if-your-business-has-online-reviews-in-2019). These reviews are what Google uses within its search results to help consumers make informed, confident buying decisions. We'll talk about a few of the places online where Trustpilot reviews can be used by consumers.

So this partnership with Google enables businesses to achieve two key things when collecting reviews with us. The first one is Google seller ratings, and these are the stars on Google Ads campaigns that you've probably seen when you search online yourself. Product ratings in Google shopping, and these are the stars that appear next to specific products in Google shopping and on Google product ads. We'll go into more detail on each of these shortly.

Quick disclaimer, and it's important for anything Google-related, not just reviews. But obviously we have no control over Google and what happens and where things appear. As we've all experienced, the algorithm can be adjusted at any time. The recommendations we make are always in line with the best practice and guidelines set out by Google. So with that being said, let's move on to service reviews and take a bit of a closer look there.

### Service reviews and SEO

Service reviews appear on your business's profile page on Trustpilot and can also easily be placed on your website. Typically, these reviews will relate to the business and overall experience the customer has had, so they're not product specific. Other consumers can then read these reviews when considering whether or not to buy from you. So typically there'll be aware of what they want to buy, but they're still deciding on where to buy it from. Service reviews help consumers make a confident buying decision, especially if it's the first time they're buying from you. Any business can have a profile page on Trustpilot for free and start collecting feedback pretty much straight away. As you start gathering review content, it's super easy to then integrate this content throughout your customer's buying journey on your website. So it's a great way to tell your customer's stories and build confidence in others to buy from you.

### Acquiring Google Seller Ratings

Let's take a closer look at [Google seller ratings](https://uk.business.trustpilot.com/reviews/get-seen-in-search/why-wont-my-google-seller-ratings-show-up-and-4-other-gsr-questions). So firstly, to achieve Google seller ratings, there is some criteria that you need to hit as a business. So you need to achieve 100 verified reviews with an average star rating of three and a half stars or more. This would need to be within a 12 month period and it needs to be within each country that you advertise in. All of these reviews need to be service reviews. So typically once you've hit this criteria, within a few weeks, the Google seller ratings will appear on the relevant text ads. As you can see here, you'll probably recognize this from search results you've seen, it's the gold stars that appear within the paid ads on the Google search engine results page.

So when you do achieve seller ratings, the great thing is that your click through rate can improve by an average of up to 10%. So your ad becomes more relevant to the consumer who is considering buying and builds trust even before they've clicked through to your website. So imagine if this is combined with review content on the landing page, the likelihood to convert for your consumers can dramatically increase.

### Product reviews in search

Taking a closer look at product reviews now. They're slightly different to service reviews in that the consumer has the opportunity to review the specific product they've bought, instead of talking about the service and the experience itself from buying from you. So this content does not appear on the Trustpilot profile page. Instead, you can easily make it part of your product pages. By having product specific review content on your product pages, you're adding relevant content to each product page, helping consumers make a more confident buying decision. There are also some requirements to hit when it comes to product reviews. So you need to have at least three reviews per product. Across your product range, you need to have at least 50 reviews in total. This review content must be shared with Google regularly, which is something that's that's automatically done by collecting product reviews through Trustpilot.

Another great benefit of collecting product reviews is the ability to have these gold stars appearing in organic results. So these are part of review snippets, which is basically an enhanced line of text that you can see here, that can include stars like this, and it can include the number of reviews as well. So the great thing here is that when a customer does a product related search, it can really help your business stand out amongst the competition and help your consumer make a more confident buying decision from the results page even before they've clicked through to your site. So how powerful are product reviews really? Well, according to some research by Shopify, 79% of consumers trust a product review as much as a personal recommendation, which I think we can all relate to.

### Reviews and Google Shopping

[Google Shopping is another place where review content populates](https://uk.business.trustpilot.com/reviews/get-seen-in-search/what-the-new-google-shopping-updates-mean-for-reviews). This counts for both service reviews and product reviews are visible on Google shopping results. I'll show you a couple of examples shortly. So consumers searching in Google Shopping typically have an idea of what they're looking to buy. The reviews give them some extra direction and context to their decision-making all in one place. As we covered, the criteria for Google Shopping is actually very similar to the product review criteria in that you need to have at least 50 reviews across your product catalog and to have product reviews showing in Google Shopping you also need to have at least three product reviews per product.

### Review snippets

[Review Snippets are an additional line of information](https://uk.business.trustpilot.com/reviews/get-seen-in-search/google-rich-snippet-update-what-it-means-for-businesses) in organic results we had a look at a second ago. The great thing about our Trustpilot profile pages is the amount of authority we have in organic search results. So due to the sheer level of traffic we have, the amount of content we have by way of reviews, it means that all of those factors coming together enable our profile pages to rank very highly in organic search results. A great benefit of having us rank that highly means that your brand can be visible from a third party perspective as in your profile page, and each profile page can also have gold stars showing underneath them. So these are gold stars in organic results, and these stars relate to your service reviews, not your product reviews, so it's a great way to have gold star showing in search results for your brand that relate to your service reviews that you've collected. Those link directly through to your Trustpilot profile page, where customers can actually read some of that review content.

Organic results can be tricky to stand out in. Consumers are always looking for the most relevant results based on what they're looking for. The great thing about review snippets with product reviews is we do the heavy lifting in that they're super easy to integrate on your website and those gold stars can start showing pretty quickly. Then when it comes to review snippets on your profile pages, those are actually already set up when you sign up with us, so there's absolutely no development work or integration work for you to do on your side.

You can have review snippet to show in organic results for specific product pages, as we've mentioned. This is really useful for consumers who are doing product specific searches. Then the other place that we've just covered where you can get review snippets is on your Trustpilot profile page. So two really powerful places to have those gold stars appear for the products that you're selling and for your brand in particular.

### Why reviews in search can help you convert more

Did you know that review stars in search can improve your click through rate by up to 35%? Imagine the kind of impact that could have on product specific pages where you're showing review snippets, and also for allowing consumers to read service review content on your profile pages, by having the Trustpilot service review snippets visible there as well. It's a pretty impressive uptake in traffic.

The purchase likelihood for a product with five reviews is 270% greater than the purchase likelihood of a product with no reviews. Just bear in mind this isn't just about having five star reviews and having loads of them, this is just about collecting some product reviews. So just by starting to collect product reviews, and service reviews, even when you've collected a few, you're going to see the impact kicking in pretty quickly.

Let's have a quick look at social proof. So you've probably seen that there are a lot of brands using Trustpilot in their advertising now, and we do get asked quite often, why are so many companies doing this and does it really have an impact? Well, the short answer is yes, it does. We decided to do some social proof research ourselves and what we found was according to customers, the three most effective trust signals when making a purchase were positive star ratings and reviews, positive star ratings alone and positive customer testimonials. Those being the top three, you can see the importance that sits in having review content and ratings across your customer's buying journey and especially within social marketing as well.

Another stat for you here, 66% of customers said that the presence of social proof in particular, increased their likelihood to purchase a product. Here's an example of it in action. So Monzo tweeted this and you can see, it's just an image of their current rating, the number of reviews they have and their overall four and a half star rating. It's just a great way to, and a very simple way to showcase their Trustpilot star rating and how many reviews they have and for them to show that they're proud of what their rating is.

### To sum up...

It's important to make it easy for people to find your reviews. You can do that in multiple ways, through having review snippets displaying organic results, through collecting reviews to achieve Google seller ratings, as well as collecting reviews and having your profile page on Trustpilot to start with. 

If you were to acquire the Google seller rating stars, you can improve your AdWords performance as a really valuable byproduct. Ultimately, by having these star showing in both paid and organic results, you're going to get more traffic from Google, which obviously is going to be of value.

If you'd like to learn more about reviews and SEO, give this quick guide a read:

How to use reviews to build your visibility in search engines

Reviews and Google: How do they work together?

the rise of voice search and reviews

Voice search is getting big. In this webinar, we walk you through the rise of voice assistants, and what that means for SEO and AEO - answer engine optimization.

According to an Amazon Press Release, Amazon sold “millions more devices” worldwide in 2017 compared to last year’s season and mentioned that its best selling device was The Echo Dot. The press release also mentioned that millions shopped with Alexa and that Alexa usage on Fire TV was up 889%.

It was also found that sales for Amazon’s Echo grew 5x from Q3 2016 to Q4 2017.

So Amazon’s doing well. What about Google?

They announced, in a blog post, that since October, they have “sold more than one Google Home device every second.” If The Verge did their math correctly, that amounts to over 6M devices by early January. Looks like Google's doing well too.

And if we consider Apple’s iPhone products, HomePod, and the number of Android Devices carrying Google Now, we start to get clear on what’s happening with consumers and search.

__Voice is getting big. Real big.__

22% of consumers are already using voice assistants to help them make purchases and while voice takes up 20% of all searches, a sizeable amount, it’s estimated that by 2020, voice will make up 50% of all voice searches.

What does this all mean for you, exactly?

We have just the webinar to show you.

In this exclusive conversation, Jason Barnard, SEO extraordinaire, and Chee Lo, Head of SEO at Trustpilot, will walk you through the rise of voice search, voice assistants, and what that means for SEO and AEO - answer engine optimization.

It’s a brand new space that presents a major opportunity for any company, large or small. The world of voice search is changing quickly and affecting SEO. We have some excellent tips to show you how you can prepare for the rise of search while improving your SEO now.

Check the webinar out below.

What companies should do in the face of voice search

Optimizing customer journey from SEO to CRO

Trustpilot and EliteSEM partner up to bring you a webinar based on the newest SEO updates you need to be aware of, optimizing your site and landing pages, and updating your search strategy to ensure you’re aligned with consumer behavior.

This is best exemplified in customer service, where companies should be meeting (and exceeding) expectations to keep retention high. However, this line of thinking is also true when it comes to the customer journey.

The customer journey is increasingly impacted by search and mobile. Over 81% of eCommerce shoppers research online before making a big purchase and mobile traffic surpassed desktop traffic for the first time during Q4 2016. Because of these new consumer-driven trends, Google’s search algorithm updates have shifted to benefit companies who are optimizing their sites accordingly.

However, with this move towards mobile, the challenge of converting consumers has also increased. Over Q4 2016, mobile conversion rates increased slightly to 1.55%, a paltry number compared to desktop’s much higher 4.14% conversion rate. This means companies need to optimize for mobile conversions even more than desktop conversions.

Fortunately, Trustpilot and EliteSEM have partnered up to bring you a webinar based on the newest SEO updates you need to be aware of, optimizing your site, optimizing your landing pages, and updating your search strategy to ensure you’re aligned with consumer behavior.

Check out the webinar recording below!

## From Search to Purch(ase): Closing customers quickly



Optimizing your consumer journey

5 Reasons why customer experience is the pulse of every business

Optimizing your customer journey, from SEO to CRO

Bad Reviews Happen - how to respond

Reviews Happen - how to respond

In this Trustpilot webinar, we discuss the importance of responding to all reviews, good or bad. If you’d like to learn all the best practices, tips, and tricks for responding to reviews, watch the recording.

If you don’t have one, facing a barrage of customer feedback can be overwhelming. 
 
It doesn’t need to be. We simply have one main tip: respond to your negative reviews. Respond now. 

If you’d like to learn all the best practices, tips, and tricks for responding to bad reviews, watch our webinar recording below.

## Bad reviews: how to handle them and why they're better than you think

So firstly, an introduction to Trustpilot. Trustpilot is a leading online reviews platform. It was launched in Denmark in 2007 and launched in the UK and the US in 2013. In that time we've become the top 1% of most visited websites globally. We get over 4 billion brand impressions every month, and we currently sit in on 100 million customer reviews!

We aim to be a universal symbol of trust and for a trust symbol to be trusted, you should work for both companies and consumers and be independent of both. That's really important because our vision has always been to help companies and consumers, not one or the other. And that's what separates us from other review sites. They are about reviews as an eCommerce tool, we're about that too, but it's about trust and open collaboration that creates trust.

The three pillars of the business through our powerful customer feedback software are get seen, get better and get sold. That's our value proposition, and it's pretty simple. 

### Negative reviews happen

I think the first thing to say is essentially, I'm sure we all know this as either just being a consumer or working for different businesses that no business is perfect.

So naturally, by inviting people to leave feedback, you are going to get a few negative reviews in there, just by the very nature of being in business. But actually what you can see on here from these stats from the different research and studies that we've done, is that's not actually a bad thing. What consumers want in the UK in particular is they're looking for a real, authentic, good company that cares about their customers.

Most consumers now understand that it'll almost impossible for brands to have only five-star reviews. Being a real, authentic company, and just accepting that you are going to get few bad reviews in there, is the first step to success.

### How to handle negative feedback

Over a third of consumers expect a response to their bad reviews. If you think about it, you've asked them to leave a review, they've taken the time to do that. So the least you can do is respond to it.

When people leave feedback, they're not just having a rant online about their bad experience. They're leaving that door open, and want you to respond, engage, and start a dialogue with them. They're hoping you'll listen, help, and learn from it.

### What kind of response do people expect? 

64% of consumers would actually prefer to buy from a business that's responsive over one that just potentially seems superficially perfect. People want real responses. Everyone's human. They just want a real human on the other end of that business, responding to them and they just want you to be understanding, and helping. Consumers are actually three times more likely to buy from a company that has made a mistake if they responded to their review quickly, and tried to rectify their mistake.

So, if you think about your own business, what effect that could have on your bottom line? If more consumers are three times more likely to buy from you just because you're showing how much you care about their experiences by responding to all of their reviews, good or bad, you'll likely convert more, and get more repeat, loyal customers. 

You've got a few bad reviews, you've responded to them, in a real, honest, genuine way. That means 55% of people would actually shop with you again. 

And that's not it. One in four people would actually go out of their way and recommend the company if they took the time to fix the problem. So, even if the overall experience may not have been fantastic or seamless, just from being a real, genuine company that obviously cares about their customers, well, one in four would actually recommend the company. Isn't that fantastic?!

### Tips and tricks to respond to bad reviews

So, this just hits on more about the relationships with basically their consumers and companies or brands have now. And I think more and more, especially with obviously the rise of social media, 

- Consumers want the brand to be as human as possible. It's important that you're not just responding like it's an automated message, but taking the time to understand their issue and to them.
- Using their name and signing with yours is important too. 
- If you can personalize the message further, that's great.

Oasis Fashion is a great example of a brand which responds to every reviews. They just send their customers a very quick, very simple response, just thanking them for their great feedback, which is always great for the consumer to have. If they are to receive a negative review and they frame it up in a very professional, very swift, very effective manner. They do not engage in an argument with the consumer because from a new consumer's perspective, looking in, that's only going to come across as negative.

So, they front it up, they apologize and they offer to speak to the reviewer privately. And that's really important. And it's a really, really good example of how you can turn a negative into a positive and how you can learn from it from a business. And you can keep that customer.

### To sum up...

Just going to run through in summary now why it's important to keep your current customers happy for the lifetime value of these customers. So the four top tips, first things first, yes, you should respond to reviews. There's nothing worse than burying your head in the sand and expecting them to go away. It's crucial you respond to your reviews.

Your Trustpilot profile page is a valuable marketing asset for your brand. By responding to your reviews you can showcase excellent customer service, reward your customers for leaving back and encourage future interactions with your client base. So, positive, personal interactions with customers increase brand loyalty.

Secondly, online versus offline. So we recommend that you leave one response to every review, don't turn it into a chat thread. If you want to continue the conversation with the consumer, let them know you'll get in touch with them privately, or provide them with an email address or phone number to contact you.

Thirdly remain professional, keep it professional. I know it's really difficult if you've got a review that's completely bonkers, but if you lower yourself to using rude, hurt or offensive language, it's going to reflect really poorly on your brand. You should also avoid sharing too much personal information. Save that for the private correspondence.

Finally retain the relationship. So you view your response as an opportunity to acknowledge the reviewer and to save them as a customer. According to LinkedIn, it costs between four and 10 times more to acquire a new customer than it does to keep an existing one. So, strategically and financially it's best for your company to actively work on the upkeep of your existing customer relationships.

And by responding to reviews, warmly, and professionally, you could improve the buying experience. You can reaffirm your relationship with your customers and you can show the transparency of your brand. And that builds trust the Trustpilot way. 

If you'd like to learn more about Trustpilot reviews and how they can help you build trust with new customers, check out our newest guide below!

Bad reviews happen: A strategy of when and how to respond

How to make customer satisfaction your key differentiator

In this Trustpilot webinar, we discuss the importance of reputation, and why it can be the deciding factor on whether or not a customer ultimately decides to buy from you.

Managing your reputation and understanding how and why customers feel the way they do about your company takes a customer-first approach. By considering your customers in nearly all aspects of your business, you’re ensuring all decisions are being made to accomplish the same goal: making customers happy and keeping happy customers.

In the mortgage lending industry, customer trust and satisfaction is an absolute. Prospects coming to mortgage lenders are making a major life choice and they can’t afford to make the wrong decision. With such an intimate and life-changing opportunity, how a customer feels about a mortgage lender should be considered across an entire company. This kind of thinking is what led HomeBridge, one of the top 10 mortgage companies in America to come to Trustpilot to start collecting reviews.

HomeBridge adopted a customer-first strategy and identified three major goals:

- Establishing credibility with clients
- Streamlining customer success processes
- Track benefits accrued from an improved reputation 

## Learn How Trustpilot Can help You Increase Your Organic Search Traffic

By working with Trustpilot to automate their review collection, HomeBridge was able to learn from their customers’ feedback, improve their service, customer experience, and also gain tangible benefits such as an increase in traffic and an improved reputation.

To learn how HomeBridge was able to achieve success this way, check out the recorded webinar below!

4 Things every business owner should know about the state of reviews

staying on top of your reviews

In this Trustpilot webinar, we share best practice tips on responding to good and bad reviews, and show you how doing so can help amplify your customer satisfaction.

Online reviews and customer ratings have become a real testimony of how your business will fare in the market.

Negative reviews are inevitable, but that doesn't mean it's the end of your reputation.

In our new webinar, '50 Shades of consumer: how to stay on top of your reviews', we'll discuss how you can benefit from the feedback you received, both negative and positive, and drive your business forward. 

Watch the recording, and learn:

- The benefits of responding to reviews
- How to respond to positive and negative reviews
- 8 Tips for improving customer satisfaction
- Reporting for the right reasons
