Most of us have had situations where we wanted to book a hotel room that looked perfect in the photos and sounded perfect in the description... but we hesitated because there were no customer reviews... so we ended up going back to the search results page to find another option.
Can you relate? Well, when you think about your listings on Etsy - are you also missing out on sales from not having enough customer reviews?
We live in a world of social proof, where people look to see what other customers' experiences were like to help them make the buying decision. And when there are 5-star reviews that customers can rely on, it squashes any potential doubts on why NOT to buy your product and leads them to actually BUY it!
If you struggle with converting views and favorites into sales, getting more reviews will give your customers the trust they need to click through and actually purchase. Or, if you even struggle with being seen on the first search result page on Etsy, getting more reviews will give Etsy the trust it needs to show your products to more people. This is the power of reviews!
BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL LEARN:
When you finish listening, I'd love to hear your biggest takeaway from today’s episode. Take a screenshot of the episode you're listening to, share it to your Instagram stories and tag me @monicalittlecoaching - or send me a DM!
While you're there, make sure you follow me so you can see behind the scenes of how I grew my handmade organic skincare small business to multiple six-figures... and how you can grow and scale your business, too.
LEARN MORE FROM MONICA LITTLE
Website:www.monicalittlecoaching.com
Instagram: @monicalittlecoaching
My small business: www.shopplantbasedbeauty.com
Most of us have had situations where we wanted to book a hotel room that looked perfect in the photos and sounded perfect in the description... but we hesitated because there were no customer reviews... so we ended up going back to the search results page to find another option.
Can you relate? Well, when you think about your listings on Etsy - are you also missing out on sales from not having enough customer reviews?
We live in a world of social proof, where people look to see what other customers' experiences were like to help them make the buying decision. And when there are 5-star reviews that customers can rely on, it squashes any potential doubts on why NOT to buy your product and leads them to actually BUY it!
If you struggle with converting views and favorites into sales, getting more reviews will give your customers the trust they need to click through and actually purchase. Or, if you even struggle with being seen on the first search result page on Etsy, getting more reviews will give Etsy the trust it needs to show your products to more people. This is the power of reviews!
BY THE TIME YOU FINISH LISTENING, YOU'LL LEARN:
When you finish listening, I'd love to hear your biggest takeaway from today’s episode. Take a screenshot of the episode you're listening to, share it to your Instagram stories and tag me @monicalittlecoaching - or send me a DM!
While you're there, make sure you follow me so you can see behind the scenes of how I grew my handmade organic skincare small business to multiple six-figures... and how you can grow and scale your business, too.
LEARN MORE FROM MONICA LITTLE
Website:www.monicalittlecoaching.com
Instagram: @monicalittlecoaching
My small business: www.shopplantbasedbeauty.com
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Hello, and welcome to the product biz podcast. This is episode 24. Quick Tip Wednesday how to get more reviews on Etsy. So one thing I'm going to start adding in every so often within our episodes is this Quick Tip Wednesday segment. So I got so much awesome feedback from the few episodes in the past that were super quick and to the point and action oriented. So I want to make sure that I'm bringing this value to you with quick tips that you can take and turn around and actually implement with your business and start to see results. So every so often, we'll be doing this Quick Tip Wednesday, and I'm super excited to be talking about Etsy reviews, the importance of reviews, and how to get more reviews in general, which will help you to build your business and get more customers and get more sales.
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So let's dive right in to this Quick Tip Wednesday. First, let's talk about the importance of reviews. And why does this really matter. And I think this is such an important part of running a business that a lot of people don't place enough emphasis on. But reviews can really impact how many sales you get, because what reviews are at the end of the day, is a way to build trust with your customers. If you don't have any reviews, then what's potentially happening is people are seeing your listing and seeing your product and coming across it. But they don't have that social proof. They don't have that review and trust from other customers that their experience is actually going to be what they hope it to be. So let's talk about this. And another example to see how important this is. Think about if you're on expedia.com or airbnb.com. And you're about to book a property for a vacation, and you come across this listing that has beautiful photos, a great description, the price is right, everything looks perfect, but they don't have any reviews at all. And I want you to stop and think what is the actual first thought that pops into your head? If you imagine yourself at the computer about to book this hotel, but you scroll down and there's no reviews at all? I know for me personally in that situation, the first thought that I think of is, Do I really trust this like is this a risk for me to book this? What if I show up in the hotels not even there? What if I show up in the room looks so much different? What if I show up and there's actually no parking even though there looks like there's parking like there's so many potential What if situations that can come to mind when you don't have that reassurance from reviews and other real life customer experiences. So for me in this situation, when I'm booking a hotel, what I would actually do is I would go back to the search results page and find a different property that still looked right felt right have the right information had the right price, but actually had reviews. So this shows how impactful reviews really are for the customer buying decision. We live in such a world where we want to understand what other people experienced, and have that really confirm our expectations and build trust. Before we make that final purchase button. Click. So that's one reason why reviews are important. You're really building that trust with your customers in another avenue. So we talk about trust a lot. You can build trust through your photos, you can build trust by having the right information in your description. But you have to have trust on all three levels, the photos, the description, and the reviews, because your photo can show what the product looks like. And your description can explain what the product looks like. But your review has to actually show the true customer experience to be that cherry on top where it's a no brainer that they're going to buy this product and love this product. And there's no concerns. There's no What if there's no secondary reason why they would hesitate because all the information that they need, and all the trust that they need is right there. So people look to reviews to confirm, you know, how is the shipping experience? Is it actually going to ship on time? Is it going to arrive in one piece? If there's a shipping issue? How is it handled? If there's a issue with the actual product? How is it handled? Does it actually give the results that it says it does in the listing? How's the actual experience of using it? Do people actually like receiving this as a gift? All of these questions are answered in your reviews without the people who are leaving the review even knowing it right but they're allowing to share their customer experience so that another customer who may be wondering like yes, this looks like a perfect gift. The description sounds so right with what I want to give to my friend the photo looks beautiful. And then they say a review that says got this item from my friend. She absolutely loved it. Now that
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person is just gonna be like, okay, awesome, I know this is going to meet the expectations that I have add to cart purchase right away. So if you are seeing a lot of views and a lot of favorites on Etsy, but you're not actually getting the transactions that correlate with that, then it can be that you're missing trust in either like the description, the photo or in the review. And one rule of thumb that I like to share is, based on how many orders you have, you should have about 20 to 25% of reviews. So if you have 100 orders than 20 to 25% of that is 20 to 25 reviews, that shouldn't be your benchmark of how many reviews you have on Etsy, if you have at least that then you're good, it should be super easy to get that amount, it should be super easy to get so much more than that amount to. But that's a good baseline of where you should be the other side of why this matters, why are reviews so important. Not only are you giving trust to the customer, but now you're giving trust to Etsy. And this is going to help you show higher and higher and higher in the algorithm. So a lot of people struggle with not being seen on Etsy. And you have to think about Etsy as a business. Their goal. At the end of the day with any business we have all sorts of dreams and goals. But the end of the day, the point of a business is to make money, right. And we're making money either to support our own lifestyle. We're making money to support causes that we agree with and are passionate about, right. But the end of the day, a point of a business is to make money. So when you think about Etsy, when they see a product that has multiple five star reviews, they know that the customer is having an awesome experience. And the customer is going to remember oh yeah, I bought this awesome item on Etsy. And they're going to come back and buy from Etsy over and over and over and over again. Etsy also knows if a customer has a bad experience and leaves a one star review, then that customer is probably going to have a negative view actually of Etsy, like, oh, yeah, I bought this item on Etsy. And it showed up and it was just completely different than what the photo look like. And it's just I feel like I can't find anything of good quality on Etsy. That could be someone's train of thought, if they have one bad experience purchasing from a small business on Etsy. So it's interesting because Etsy gets the recognition as either providing awesome products or providing a product that led to a one star experience. So if Etsy knows this, and if Etsy wants customers to keep coming back, then Etsy knows to promote and put higher on the search results, the listings that are getting a lot of five star reviews. So you can totally boost the algorithm by getting an influx of reviews to show Etsy that you have an awesome product and that they will make money because customers will love it and come back to buy more. So now you're giving trust to ad see that you are also a credible business with an awesome product that customers will love. So reviews have two main benefits, you're giving trust to the customer, to squash any doubts. And now they're ready to buy. And you're giving trust to Etsy that you have a great product and you should be shown higher on the search results. Because you are giving a great experience to customers and you are making money for Etsy as well. So once you know the importance of reviews, now it's super important to actually get those reviews right. And this is such a simple concept that I just want to break down for you. So you can easily implement it this week, this weekend whenever you have 2030 minutes. So what I do on a monthly basis is I have a templated message. I log into Etsy and I reached out to all the customers via Etsy messages who have purchased from me in the last month in this message what it says and I don't have it in front of me. So this is kind of verbatim, basically it says thank you so, so much for supporting a small business. I hope you know how much it means to me that you are supporting a small business that makes handmade skincare that's good for you and good for the environment. Then what I say is, I would love to ask you to leave a five star review on Etsy based on your experience. And if you are able to do so I will give you a 20% off promo code for your next order. Then what I end with is, if there were any issues with the order, please let me know directly so I can handle it and take care of anything that may have happened. So basically what I'm doing here is I am thanking them for being a customer. I'm asking them specifically to leave a five star review. I'm not asking hey, can you leave a review I'm saying hey, can you leave a five star review? being super specific? I'm giving them an incentive by saying in exchange I will give you a 20% off code off your next order. And then I'm like
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didn't know, if there were any issues, let me know. Because I want to make sure I'm providing great customer service. So if someone used a product and they didn't love it, I want them to tell me directly so I can handle it and fix the situation and rectify the situation. without them feeling like they need to go and vent on a review. That's me just being proactive and saying, Hey, I will fix the situation. If there was a problem, just let me know. So this type of outreach is that extra nudge, just to get customers to leave a review, a lot of customers will love your product, but they will forget to leave a review. Or maybe they're just not like big review people. I mean, I'm sure we can all relate that we've bought something on Amazon that we really loved and like going to leave a review wasn't the first thing that we did. I don't think I've ever left a review on Amazon, even though there were products that I really enjoyed. On the flip side, though, if you actually get a message from someone, and it's totally different to on Etsy, because you're a handmade small business owner. So that message means so much more versus getting like a message on Amazon asking for a review, right doesn't necessarily work on that platform as how it does on Etsy. But if a customer gets a message from a shop owner who made a handmade item who's asking for a review, that customer may be like, Oh my gosh, yes, of course, I love this product, I totally forgot I didn't even think to leave a review. I loved it so much. They're asking me for a review, I am going to 100% log on and leave that review. So you're nudging them, but you're also giving them that incentive. So a reason why. And that incentive is also beneficial for you. Because now not only are you getting the review, but you're also giving them a promo code where they can come back and buy from you again. So now you're creating a repeat customer. So this is how you start to see this one topic of reviews actually has such a web of impact across the board. Not only are you impacting customers, by giving them trust, you're impacting the algorithm by giving at sea trust, you are incentivizing your customer to leave a review and you're giving them a promo code to come back and buy again. So this one small act of reaching out for reviews impacts you on so many different levels. And you really can boost the algorithm by just getting an influx of reviews. So if you haven't reached out for reviews on your own, what I would recommend to do, anyone who's purchased from you in the last 100 days can leave a review as soon as it's been 101 days, as he doesn't allow the customer to leave a review because they probably think like that review is outdated, right, it's been 101 days, it's been almost four months, it's been some time, so the review was no longer accepted by Etsy. But if you've never done outreach for reviews, I recommend for you to go back to all customers in the last 100 days and send them that type of message and just start to see what comes in. And then either on a bi weekly basis, or a monthly basis, put it on your calendar for you to do this type of outreach. And how quickly you do this outreach, if it's bi weekly or monthly really depends on the type of product that you have. So if you sell items like a bath bomb, where it's literally people try it and their experience has been completed. And then you can reach out to customers on a bi weekly basis. So anyone who's purchased in the last few weeks, and really pull up those reviews, and increase your potency on the algorithm and increase your potency with customers viewing your listings. For me, since it's skincare and people usually need to try it for a while to like see the results with my serums or my face masks. I opt to do this once a month because I feel like people need to experience it a little bit longer. And I've actually had feedback when I was doing this sooner people were like, oh, yeah, I will add a little bit I still need to try it out for the longer. So think about the experience of your product. Is it a candle where people light it right away? Is it a bath bomb, where they use it right away? Is it a greeting card where they see it and love it and like their experience has been completed, right? They send it to a friend. Think about how quick your lifecycle is for your product. And that will determine how often you do this outreach. That's really as simple as it gets. For me, I'm plant based beauty with over 5000 orders on Etsy. And I think I have like 1300 reviews. That's been 100% One of the main reasons I've been able to get higher on the search results page to get more sales. And also just build that trust with customers to get more sales to. So if you're struggling with getting seen, if you're struggling with converting views and favorites to purchases, this is one of the answers of what you can do to really increase your exposure and get more sales. So with that, I want to say thank you so much for joining me on Quick Tip Wednesday. I hope this was impactful for you and you're going to actually go and do this and start to see the reviews come in. Not only is it great for your listings and for your sales, but now you can share these reviews on social media
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Media. Now you're building more confidence in yourself by getting these awesome reviews. So this is something that is just such a great exercise to do. Our next quick tip Wednesday will be in a couple of weeks and I'll be talking about what to do if you get a one star review or a four star review with no text in it because that happens frequently on Etsy too. So we'll be diving into that on our next quick tip Wednesday. But for now, thank you so much. I would of course absolutely love it on the topic of reviews if you are able to leave a five star review for the product based podcast. We all know the importance of reviews. So this helps me get in front of more small business owners help more people and I appreciate your support and helping me get the word out by leaving a five star review.
Thank you so much for your time and I will talk to you next week.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
reviews, etsy, customers, star review, product, trust, listing, experience, message, purchased, giving, awesome, wednesday, outreach, search results page, situation, quick tip, photo, build, higher