When making purchasing decisions, customers love getting recommendations from real people. They frequently turn to trusted, reliable platforms to find informative and authentic reviews. These platforms include Google, Facebook, and top industry-relevant review websites.
If your brand doesn’t have adequate reviews on these channels, you run the risk of being overlooked and undervalued by interested customers. To make sure customers remain engaged and impressed while researching your brand, let’s look at how to get more reviews on the platforms that matter to your customers.
Why Should You Get More Reviews?
From influencing decisions to building trust, reviews are essential for engaging and converting customers at all stages of the buyer’s journey.
- 93% of customers say online reviews impact their purchasing decisions.
- 91% think reviews are important enough to sway their purchasing decision.
- 78% of people need to see at least 100 reviews to trust a business.
The more reviews your brand has, the better. Consistently getting new customer reviews reinforces consumer confidence and can even boost your review ratings.
Pro Tip: Many businesses see review ratings improve when they collect more reviews. A larger number of reviews covers more of your audience, which provides a more accurate evaluation of your brand and balances out negative feedback.
Image source: Jabio by Sitejabber
What to Do Before Collecting Reviews
To start sourcing reviews for your business and its products or services, you’ll need to set up a way to connect with your customers and ask for feedback. To help, we’ve simplified the system into three steps:
- Identify where your reviews matter the most for your business
- Decide which methods to use to collect reviews
- Create a strategy for getting new reviews
Here’s what you need to do for each step.
1. Identify where reviews matter the most for your business
While it can be easy to get overwhelmed by all the places to collect reviews, you first need to understand which review websites your target audiences are researching. Then, you can prioritize your efforts to collect reviews where your business has the most visibility and can make the most impact.
Get more reviews on your website
If your website gets significant traffic or is a primary source of potential customers, you’ll want to display reviews there to increase your conversions. You can develop a way to source these reviews yourself, but a big downside is that a lot of consumers don’t trust reviews from the same company advertising its products. You can also check to see if your website hosting platform has a review feature, but businesses most commonly use a third-party review widget for more functionality.
A best practice is to find a review platform that includes review collection tools and website widgets. Review platforms are also more likely to provide advanced display formats that are flexible and consistent with the look and feel of your website.
For example, in addition to review collection, Sitejabber for Business provides free ways to display reviews like review tabs, featured reviews, carousels, and trust seals that you can implement by simply pasting code. And, as your business grows, you can customize your widgets and manage your reviews from different sources, all on a single dashboard. Check out the section later in this post on review tools and review management platforms to help you select the best software for displaying reviews on your website.
Get more reviews on review platforms
Are your customers going to review websites to research you and your competitors? Run a search to see what review websites show up for your brand and industry. You’ll want to find out which review platforms are ranking high on the search engine results pages (SERP) – the higher the review sites are positioned, the more visibility you (or your competitors) are going to have.
Image source: Google via Sitejabber
To make your list, consider both general review sites as well as industry sites that are targeting customers in your industry. These may include:
Niche
- Yelp
- Open Table
- TripAdvisor
- Angi
- HomeAdvisor
- Nextdoor
- Clutch
- G2
- Zocdoc
General
- Sitejabber
- BBB
- Amazon
- Trustpilot
Once you identify your desired review sites, you can give customers direct links to each platform so they can and write a review. We get into how you can send these review requests out in step two.
Get more reviews on Facebook (Meta)
Consider social media platforms like Facebook that display business reviews. According to Meta, businesses that show reviews on their page get an average of 78% more page visits a month. Most of your customers already have personal Facebook accounts, so it’s a seamless way to increase conversions.
Image source: Facebook
To collect and display Facebook reviews, you can turn on the reviews feature in your settings. Log in to your business page, click “Settings” then “Privacy,” and go to “Page and Tagging”. Toggle the slider for “Allow others to view and leave reviews on your Page,” then toggle “Allow reviews on your Page” to ensure this feedback is viewable by the public. Hit save.
Image source: Facebook
Get more reviews on Google Business Profile
Customers can leave reviews on your Google Business Profile, and it’s very important that they do. Google reviews create an immediate first impression. Reviews are prominent on SERPs and show up as a sidebar modal with prominent review stars.
Google Business Profile reviews are especially important for brick-and-mortar businesses as reviews can help boost visibility in local search. Star ratings and review volume contribute to what Google refers to as prominence, which helps determine how highly a business ranks on the SERP.
Get reviews for Google Seller and Google Product Ratings
Another way Google showcases ratings is through Google Seller Ratings and Google Product Ratings. These ratings are different from Google Business Profile ratings and are especially important for ecommerce sellers.
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Google Store Ratings display a rating out of 5 stars next to your paid and free search listings. You must have a rating of 3.5 or higher to display store ratings. To get those star ratings on your ads, you’ll need to collect a sufficient amount of qualified reviews. This number can vary depending on business types and verticals, but the requirements are typically:
- At least 100 verified reviews within the last 12 months
- An average star rating of 3.5 or higher
- At least 100 reviews per country where you want stars to show
- Reviews must come from Google reviews or a third-party partner (like Sitejabber)
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You can check if you have seller ratings with this URL: https://www.google.com/shopping/ratings/account/lookup?q={yourwebsite}
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Google Product Ratings display a rating out of 5 stars on listings and ads for individual products. For star ratings to show, you must have at least 50 reviews across all of your products, and your “product review data source must be uploaded at least once a month and contain updated reviews.” You must submit a product review feed to Google, either via the Merchant Center or through a third-party partner.
Review stars help you outrank and outshine competitors in both organic and paid search. A great star rating can improve click-through rates (CTR) by as much as 35%, and studies show that review stars on PPC (pay-per-click) ads that display on the SERP increase CTR by as much as 24%.
Image source: Google via Sitejabber
Both store and product star ratings are sourced from Google reviews and supported review partners.
🧠 Pro Tip: Partnering with a Google-approved review partner like Sitejabber simplifies this entire process—they format, validate, and submit your data to ensure compliance and visibility. We’ll discuss more about review platforms tools in a later section.
Get reviews in AI answers
Search isn’t the only way customers look for information anymore. Many people use AI tools, such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Google’s Gemini, to ask questions as they research products and companies. Having a large number of reviews can make your brand appear more in AI answers.
Reviews on your website and other top review platforms helps AI gather context and content to share in responses to user questions. For example, if many reviews mention a restaurant's amazing vegetarian food, the brand might be more likely to show up in a query for, “What are the best vegetarian restaurants in [city]?”
Just as you use SEO (search engine optimization) to ensure your brand shows up in search, you can use AEO (answer engine optimization) to ensure your brand shows up in generative AI conversations and answers. You can leverage reviews to optimize your brand for AEO:
- Keep an updated stream of recent reviews to show AI that your brand is active and relevant.
- Get reviews on multiple sites so AI models can ingest more content and cross-reference information, to see your brand as an authority in your space.
- Incorporate good feedback questions that encourage customers to leave detailed reviews. With the right prompts, reviews often mention keywords or provide more context associated with your business.
2. Decide which channels to use to collect reviews
In the first step, you’ve identified where you want to display reviews. Now, you can ask customers for reviews using a few different methods.
The first way to get more reviews is by asking over email, since emails are an easy way to reach out to your customers. Taking care to include personalization is a good best practice that can lead to 6x more conversions.
Chatbots
If you have chat support on your website, make sure you add a request to leave a review at the end of relevant customer interactions.
Phone/SMS
In some situations, it’s also appropriate to ask for customer reviews over the phone. Maybe a customer is thanking you for your help. Express your appreciation for their business and casually ask if they’d be willing to write a review. Or use automated text blasts to send opted-in customers a link to your review platform of choice.
Social media
Some brands choose to take to their social media profiles to source reviews, providing the link where any current or former customers can share their thoughts.
In person
If you have a physical location, you can get reviews in-person, too. There are many clever ways to ask for reviews – such as utilizing a QR code customers can scan with their phone, giving cards or flyers with the review link, or personally asking them to write reviews online while at your brick-and-mortar location or events. You can also do a combination of these by setting up multiple touchpoints to ask for reviews.
On your website
If you’re looking to collect reviews on your website, you’ll need to embed a review form, which might sound complicated, but if you choose the right tool, is easy to do.
You should ideally choose widgets that help you both collect and display reviews on your website. For example, Sitejabber offers free widgets for registered businesses, which can take care of all your basic review functions.
Review tools and platforms
The most comprehensive option is to find a reviews platform that provides a complete set of review collection tools, including widgets for your website. These platforms allow you to scale your review strategy as you grow. We’ll get more into how to choose a reviews platform in the following sections.
3. Create a strategy for getting new reviews
Now that you know where and how you want to get reviews for your business, it’s time to collect reviews! Set up a consistent flow to ask for reviews. This helps ensure you accumulate a steady stream of valuable user-generated content (UGC).
To help you develop a plan for collecting reviews, we’re sharing our top four strategies for getting more reviews on Google, Facebook, and other top review sites.
Strategy I: How to Get Reviews On Your Own
*Image Via Google *
Some companies choose to reach out and ask customers for reviews on their own. This approach has both pros and cons. Depending on your situation, it could be a good way to gather the first few reviews for your business and get some momentum going.
Pros
- Low starting cost
- Flexibility
- Direct control
Cons
- Expends a lot of resources
- High maintenance cost
- Hard to scale
- High likelihood the strategy won’t be optimized
- Difficulties navigating FTC compliance
When you first start out asking for customer reviews, it might seem like a daunting task. Many companies are nervous to reach out to customers directly to request reviews. But you might get a better response than you think: According to review statistics taken from over 5,000 consumers, 87% of people are willing to write a review of a business. When you’re wondering how to ask for a review, the key is to just ask!
Here are some review collection methods you can try on your own:
- Send individual follow-up emails. Ask for ratings and reviews directly as an email reply, or set up a link to a form.
- Send text messages/SMS. If you collect phone numbers as part of your checkout process (and have customer consent), these reminder messages can trigger after a product has been confirmed as delivered, or when a service has been completed.
- If you run a brick-and-mortar business:
- Ask customers to fill out a brief form in person
- Use signage to remind customers to leave a review on your website or a specific platform (and hope they remember to)
- For reviews on Google:
- Send customers your Google reviews link (accessible via your Google business account)
- You can also access your link by visiting the Google Place ID finder, entering your company name, and copying your place ID into “https://search.google.com/local/writereview?placeid=”
As you might imagine, this is very difficult to maintain and manage on an ongoing basis, particularly as your business and customer base grows. Let’s look into more viable, long-term review collection strategies next.
A note on offering incentives
Some companies offer an incentive — such as a gift card, a discount code, or a free product — in exchange for customers to write a review. However, this isn’t necessarily recommended: Some review websites require customers to certify they have not received any type of payment or incentive from the business in exchange for writing a review. If they suspect a business of offering incentives for reviews, they may flag the business’s website or even remove it from their platform altogether.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), an organization that protects America’s consumers, regulates incentivized reviews. If you decide to offer a reward for reviews, tread carefully and make sure you know the regulations for whatever platform you’re using.
When asking for reviews, the key is to make leaving a review as easy and painless as possible — and, of course, to ensure that your customers have a great experience so they can truthfully say wonderful things about your business.
Strategy II: How to Get Reviews Using Review Tools
Review tools are another way to get customer reviews. These are defined as review software that don’t have a public-facing reviews site or platform. Oftentimes, they are product review sites, survey tools, or reviews widgets that serve a specific service or industry. For example, Podium, Power Reviews, Yotpo, TurnTo, Reviewbox, and Feefo all fall under this category.
Pros
- Full suite or specific features of review collection and display tools
- Can serve a specific niche
Cons
- Less visibility because they don’t have a public-facing reviews page for your brand
- Can be limited to features in niche
- Many are not Google Review Partners, meaning collected reviews are not eligible to count towards your Google seller rating
Here’s what you need to know if you decide to use these product or business review tools to get customer reviews.
How to Choose a Review Tool
As you set out to select a review tool, there are a few key questions you can ask yourself to figure out what tactic is best for your business.
- What kind of UGC does your business want? Consider whether you’re looking for product reviews, brand reviews, Q&A, images, or something else entirely. This will help you narrow down to which tool will work best for you.
- Will the reviews be published on desired platforms? Make sure you know whether a review tool under consideration can help you display reviews on highly visible places, particularly where you want reviews to show up – anywhere from your website, to third-party review sites, to ecommerce platforms like Walmart, to social networks like Facebook. The capability to boost your Google seller rating and product star ratings is important, too.
- How much does the review tool cost? Look for the right pricing structure — many review tools are outfitted with enterprise rates. Most of these tools charge either monthly or annually.
Strategy III: How to Get Reviews Through Review Platforms
A review management platform offers a full suite of feedback tools and review software (everything review tools have), as well as a public-facing reviews website. They often include additional toolsets for reputation management, marketing, and analysis. Some of the most popular review platforms include Sitejabber, Reviews.io, and Trustpilot.
Both review management tools and review management platforms typically get reviews by implementing advanced customer feedback systems that ask customers for reviews in various ways. Review platforms also have the functionality of displaying reviews on your own business website, as well as on their review website. In some cases, they will distribute customers to leave reviews on other platforms, too. If you’re looking for both business and product review websites, review management platforms are your best all-in-one option.
Pros
- All the benefits of review tools under one roof, with a public-facing reviews webpage for your brand
- More visibility and lead generation
- Opportunity for possible Google syndication
- Accreditation from a trusted third party
- More robust online review management and marketing functionality (scales your efforts while saving you time, effort, and extra resources)
Cons
- The robust functionalities of review platforms means pricing can range greatly — make sure you’re choosing the right fit for your needs and budget
How to Choose a Review Platform
Not all review platforms are created equal. Carefully select a review platform that will get you a high volume of reviews in all the places you need them, consistently and automatically. You can use the following criteria, which includes some of the same criteria you’d consider when choosing a review tool:
- What kind of UGC does your business want?
- Will the reviews be published on desired platforms?
- How much does the review platform cost?
Here are some additional questions to consider:
- Is the platform a Google review partner? Certified partners can help you enable Google seller ratings and seamlessly funnel over reviews, improving ad performance and bringing you stronger leads. Sitejabber is a supported review partner.
- How high does the platform’s review pages rank in search engine results? If a platform has a strong online presence, you can leverage that to quickly gain more visibility with new customers. For example, businesses with a managed Sitejabber review page usually rank very highly in search.
- Does the platform distribute to other review sites? t’s key to spread your reviews out across multiple review sites. Choose a platform that can simplify or automate the process of review distribution. Sitejabber’s Reviewer Distribution feature helps you push out reviews to sites like Google, Meta, Trustpilot, and more.
- What other tools do they offer? Based on your needs, you may want to keep an eye out for additional features, too. There are some review management software on the market that include tools like analytics, marketing, or video reviews. Depending on what you want to track, make sure the platform you choose has what you need as you plan for growth. Sitejabber’s suite of tools and tiered pricing structure fits businesses at various stages of growth.
The ideal review management platform will be able to collect different types of UGC (brand and product reviews, social media posts, market research, etc.), display reviews on various platforms, make sense with your budget, be a Google review partner for seller ratings, provide great visibility, and include other necessary tools for your business.
Strategy IV: How to Get Reviews with Online Reputation Management Services
Online reputation management services work more like agencies, and help you with crisis management, and frequently include PR tactics. While companies like NetReputation and Reputation focus solely on reputation management, others like Thrive offer it as just a part of their services. A reputation management company can either build a positive reputation from scratch or repair a bad one. Online reputation services do this through content creation, search engine optimization, online reputation monitoring, traditional platforms, and other tactics.
Pros
- Personal consultation – strategies are tailored to your brand’s needs
Cons
- Usually very cost-prohibitive
- Difficult to determine cost-efficiency
- Difficult to determine if their reputation strategies will fit your business
- Results may not be noticeable for some time
How to Choose A Reputation Management Company
If crisis management is what you’re looking for, and collecting reviews isn’t a top priority, a reputation management firm may be right for you. Here are a few important items to check off.
- Does the service have a good reputation itself and a list of happy clients? One underrated thing to do is to talk to a few of the reputation management firm’s references. They should have a long list of happy clients that are willing to chat with you.This is proof the company knows what it’s doing.
- Does the team communicate well? Make sure the reputation management firm has an actionable plan to help you move forward.
- Does the reputation management company claim instant results? If so, be wary. Reputation work happens gradually over time — you won’t see an immediate impact. Any company that promises the opposite probably isn’t completely legitimate.
Review Strategy Comparison Chart
Use the chart below to help you understand a few of the main differences between review tools, review platforms, and reputation management services, so you can choose the one that best fits your goals.
Get More Customer Reviews
Now that you understand the different ways you can get reviews, it’s time to take action! Customer reviews take your business to the next level — building your brand’s online reputation, boosting visibility, and attracting new customers. Choose the right strategy for you to reach out to your customers and get more customer reviews that will sustain your business long-term.
Still not sure where to start? Get a leg up with Sitejabber and register your business for free.
Want a personalized, free consultation of your review collection strategy? Let’s talk!
