Best process for asking customers to leave reviews?
-
This might be too off-topic for Moz, but I think many of us might face the same issue, so I thought I would ask.
Love them or hate them, we get 90% of our business from being #1 on Trip Advisor. My biggest competition is trying very hard to take over that #1 spot, so we are working to keep it.
Has anyone found a seamless way to ask customers for TripAdvisor reviews? We email, text, ask over the phone. But here the problem, Trip Advisor is not the easiest site to leave a review on. If you are on your phone, they want you download the app. Some people don't like to download apps. Or, if they have the app already and click "yes" to open the site in the app, it goes to the app store instead. There doesn't seem to be as much of an issue on the PC, but most people do everything from their phones now. And if something is a little bit hard, people are less likely to go out of their way to leave a review.
So, here's my question. Has anyone found a better way? Maybe a form on my website? Or a process that seems to work better?
This does have some SEO implications in that my Trip Advisor page does show up in search results quite a bit as well as much home page. Sometimes they are #2 and #3 together.
-
Can you please tell a bit more on "make it fun" part?
-
Make it fun. Make it something all your employees take pride in! And make sure all of your customers know how important a review is.
Once I started doing that along with rewarding my employees when they get a 5 star review my reviews starting coming in. I went from having a small number to have a ton. Customer come in and comment on them.
If you need any other help let me know.
Scott
-
You may have already looked into this, but I would dig into this if I was working with TripAdvisor:
https://www.tripadvisor.com/TripAdvisorInsights/n2159/complete-review-express-guide
-
Ah, I see. Well, it's definitely best to adhere to their guidelines if there's risk of a penalty.
I'd review your process for asking customers for a review. What can be improved? Have you tested different copy to see if it affects conversion rate on reviews? Maybe breaking down the process and illustrating it for the customer could help? Get creative!
-
Also, I've tried to call Trip Advisor... no luck... they don't have a phone number. I've tried emailing them, no luck there either. Its a black hole.
-
Incentives are technically against Trip Advisors policies.
I don't think you are even supposed to offer anything in return, 5 star or not. I usually try to play by the rules because getting burned can be worse sometimes. Was thinking about having a contest... but that seems to be against the rules too. -
Incentivizing is against Trip Advisors rules.
They don't want to you to even offer something in exchange for review. And you certainly can't ask to offer anything in return for a 5 star review.Yeah, honestly... I'm not sure how you can change a business based on tourism to not be reliant on Trip Advisor. I don't really like them to be honest with you. It is a headache managing the reviews and the process. I rank well on all organic searches .. 1 to 3 on most of the terms I track. But, its the market dynamics right now. Most people go to Trip Advisor to find things to do while on vacation... or at least check out your reviews. And if there is someone that out ranks you, then they will go to their webpage regardless of finding you first.
Do you have any suggestions, because I am all ears...lol!
-
Agree with previous response - incentives are the best way. We are struggling with getting reviews a lot, and we are "in-person" business. If you are strictly online - it gets even harder. My car's dealership offered $150 gift card for a 5/5 review. If you can do something like that, you'll get bunch of reviews for sure.
-
Are you in a position to incentivize them to overcome the friction in the process?
I'm not familiar with the workings of TripAdvisor, but perhaps they can offer some suggestions on how to streamline the process?
Personally, I'd be asking the question: How do we make it so we're not 90% reliant on TripAdvisor for business?
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Should I publish Amazon reviews on my own site/products? Do I need to worry about duplicate content or anything else?
I'm redesigning my site expected launch early January. I'll be selling some products that are currently are only available on Amazon; and those listings have thousands of very positive reviews. I'm seeing apps that are available that will sync reviews from my Amazon seller account listings to my products on-site. I'd love to start my site off with the great validation these reviews are sure to provide customers, but I wonder how concerned I need to be about duplicate content or any other cons.
Reviews and Ratings | | VaporApparel2 -
3rd Party Reviews - Schema Implementation
Hi, Currently my client displaying Ratings & Reviews from a third-party (TripAdvisor) service and only displaying 5 reviews but not showing "Read More Reviews" button to TripAdvisor page. Now I would like to use Rich Snippet schema markup code on these rating & reviews but below are my few concerns, could you please guide me: 1. Can I use Rich Snippet Schema markup code on widget of TripAdvisor Rating & Review. 2. If I apply schema markup code, Do I need to maintain TripAdvisor link for "Read More reviews". Below are the URLs which contains TripAdvisor rating & reviews after big image: https://goo.gl/DLpDXE https://goo.gl/EHVG7o https://goo.gl/ok6cYp Please let me know if you have any questions. Thanks, Satla
Reviews and Ratings | | TrulyTravel0 -
Client wants to delete Google My Business Due to Bad Review
My client has received a bad review on Google and although has other good ones, wants to delete the current Google My Business page and open a new one. I disagree with this strategy but need some evidence to back it up. They are ranking well and so I don't want to upset the cart. I need reasons not to in terms of potentially harming rankings. Am I right that this could impact?
Reviews and Ratings | | AL123al3 -
Marking up an iframe with reviews schema. Possible? Ethical?
Hey there fellow Mozzers! I work with a broad variety of clients, many of them local businesses, and they in turn sometimes find a vendor that stumps me. This is one of those special cases, where the vendor is doing some shady stuff with reviews schema. First, they're taking reviews from third party sites and filtering them to only show 4 and 5 star reviews (red flag #1), then they're asking us to post them to the website (red flag #2) and finally they are marking them up with schema (red flag #3). If this were my vendor I would have fired them when they started telling me Google doesn't care, doesn't enforce the guidelines, and all that other nonsense, but hey, I'm not the client and I have to make good for them. I did flat out refuse to place these reviews as they asked, but they came back with a "solution", that I'm not sure I trust. They're telling me they can't remove the schema (red flag #4), but they can iframe it onto the website. Their logic, which is wrong, is that Google can't/doesn't crawl iframes so therefore the reviews can be displayed without any negative consequence. I obviously have some ethical concerns with this, but I have to provide the service to my client whether or not they share my values. However, I can object on professional grounds if I think they will take on undue risk. My only problem here is that I have no documentation for how this proposed solution would work. Working through this logically still leaves me with a gap, and that's where you folks come in!
Reviews and Ratings | | brettmandoes
A) We know that Google crawls iframes
B) We know that Google can apply schema within iframes (works with YouTube embeds)
C) We know that content within an iframe is technically on another website, so it doesn't normally apply to your website
D) I don't know how specifically reviews schema would interact with an iframe
E) I don't know if this would result in Google triggering an alarm and blocking the business I'm hoping you guys can help me figure this out. Ethics aside (making me cringe to type that) is this technically feasible without risk, or would this still be a risky move? For the record, another client tried filtering their reviews while marking up with schema against my recommendation and got caught, and received a penalty alert. They were removed from results until the problem was fixed.0 -
Google crawling item page reviews
Hi Moz community, I've been trying to do some on-site work and noticed that our product pages reviews may not be totally optimized. It used to be that all of the text from the reviews appeared in the actual code of the page, but now none of that text appears, so it may not be getting crawled. The change was most likely released when we had an item page redesign. However, when I Google a review snippet, it does seem to come up, so maybe Google is crawling that data despite it not being SEO optimized. Is this really an issue if the review snippets are showing up in search, there's been a lot of talk that Google is now better at crawling javascript. Thanks
Reviews and Ratings | | znotes0 -
How can a business turn off the Google+ review feature?
Is there a way to disable the review feature on our Google+ page whilst still retaining the rest of the Google+ features?
Reviews and Ratings | | CostumeD0 -
Indeed reviews
Hi guys, Is there any way I can respond or have a review deleted from one of my clients' profile on Indeed.com? Is there a mediation process of any sort? Thanks.
Reviews and Ratings | | echo10 -
Re Posting Reviews
I would like to re post a couple short client reviews on the home page of my site. The reviews are from avvo.com. What is the best way to accomplish this without getting flagged for duplicate content? Should I make an image containing the review text and then link it to the original review on avvo?
Reviews and Ratings | | eddiejsd0
