Five Stars: How to Get More Positive Reviews in the BigCommerce App Marketplace
If you’ve ever bought anything online, from shoes to software, you probably understand the value of customer reviews.
Customer reviews are just as important to your software business as they are to any consumer product. If you’re going to spend money on a product, and spend time using it, you’re probably going to seek out social proof.
Customer reviews in the BigCommerce app marketplace are no exception. We get lots of questions from our technology partners on reviews and using input from some of our partners who have been tremendously successful at gaining reviews, I’ll address some of them here.
Why are reviews so important?
Well, first off, two-thirds of software buyers stated that reviews are an important part of their decision-making process (Capterra). And 70% of surveyed customers stated they would happily leave a review, with no incentive needed (ambassify).
Reviews from real customers lend your business credibility, and can even provide a strong feedback loop with your users. You might see common themes emerge, which you can use to help prioritize new functionality or troubleshoot bugs.
Asking for reviews also demonstrates your company’s engagement with your customers — especially if you are able to respond to negative reviews and help resolve problems. We’ve heard stories from tech partners who have saved at-risk customers this way — simply by responding to a complaint and resolving the issue.
Just ask
When I started reaching out to the technology partners with the most reviews in our BigCommerce app marketplace, I was surprised to hear one common theme emerges for all of them: their strategy? Simply ask for reviews. Turns out, not all app partners have built a reviews engine.
One tech partner commented:
“We simply ask for reviews several times in an email drip campaign. We never ask for a positive or 5-star review — we just ask for a review. Also, our support team is measured on number of reviews generated, so they are motivated to ask merchants for reviews following a positive interaction.”
So what’s the secret to gaining tons of five-star reviews?
- Have a great product that’s low investment and easy to try
- Leverage your customer-facing teams
- Include a call to action to leave a review via marketing automation
Let’s get into a little more detail on each of these points.
Low investment, easy to try product
Why would someone take time out of their day to write a five-star review for your product? Even if your marketing strategy to ask for reviews is stellar, if your product experience isn’t ideal, users probably aren’t going to feel motivated to leave you great feedback.
All of the partners I spoke to on their reviews strategy pointed to the ease of getting started with their product as a cornerstone of their success.
Using a real example from the BigCommerce marketplace, ShipStation’s customer reviews are telling in that they are absolutely glowing. This is clearly a product people love.
Let’s take a tour through some of the best ones:
“I am not one to leave reviews unless I am just blown away with a product. ShipStation is one of those products that just blew me away.”
“ShipStation is simply amazing…”
“ShipStation shines with thoughtful features and usability”
What’s the common thread in these reviews? A product customers love, that does exactly what it says it’s going to do.
Leverage your support team
Your customer support and account management teams are the face of your brand for your customers. Every single partner I spoke to about their reviews strategy shared the approach of asking customers to leave a review after positive support interactions. It’s hard to say no to a real person, especially when they’ve just helped you resolve a business-critical problem.
ShipStation has a unique onboarding process in that each customer receives an account manager to assist their set up. That extremely high touch customer support likely goes a long way in ensuring users get to know the product well enough to love it, as illustrated by the glowing reviews we saw above.
Some of our partners really go the extra mile to provide amazing support. One of our highly-reviewed partners noted that their support team asks for reviews at the end of particularly positive customer interactions. They tend to have a high volume of positive interactions since their team is trained to help with anything they are able to assist with, even if it’s not directly related to the product itself.
A third partner mentioned incentivizing support reps who acquire positive reviews, which can help build the muscle around asking for reviews in your team.
However you choose to leverage your team, there’s certainly value in using 1:1 touchpoints with happy customers to gain reviews at the very moment your customers are feeling satisfied with your service and product.
Automate it
Make sure you include a CTA towards reviews in any automated channels you have facing your active customers, including things like drip campaigns and notifications in your product’s control panel.
You may have to experiment with timing and audience to get the desired results. Consider where your customer is in their lifecycle with your product. You probably want to request reviews only from active customers, or upon behavior-based triggers.
This strategy can help support your customer support or account management team’s efforts, too. If you are able to track support interactions, consider prompting customers to rate their satisfaction with the support they received, and then following up to successful responses with a request for an app marketplace review.
Managing reviews
Now let’s assume you’ve built out a successful reviews-generating engine, and you need to manage reviews coming into the app marketplace.
One solution our app marketplace team recommends is to set up a Chrome extension like Distill to help monitor your app listing for changes. You can install that here.
It’s always helpful to contact negative reviewers to see if you and your team can help improve their experience with your product. If you need help identifying any reviewers, you can always contact our app marketplace team by submitting a support ticket within your partner portal.
BigCommerce’s reviews policy
While you build out your reviews strategy, please consider the BigCommerce Tech Partner Program policy on reviews.
Merchant reviews are meant to give other merchants genuine product feedback from our customers. The goal is to capture all the feedback (both favorable and critical) that merchants have about a product.
You can ask merchants to leave reviews, but the request should not encourage or influence them to leave a positive review with suggestive language or offers. For instance, we suggest language like, “We appreciate feedback to help us make our product better. Please let us know how we’re doing.”
A violation of the reviews policy would be language like, “Get 10% off your next month by leaving us a review!”
Conclusion
For further questions about our reviews policy, or general help with the app marketplace, you can always reach the BigCommerce team by submitting a support ticket in your partner portal.
