Best Practices
Do:
- Increase Organic Traffic: Create a ‘Review Us’ Website feature inside your app. Add your businesses social media and review site pages.
- Use the ‘Best of both worlds’ option here to use a special browser that when opened will maintain the users logged in session to Facebook, Google, Yelp etc! This reduces friction on your end users so it’s far less steps for the customer to review your business.
- Add a Direct Google Reviews URL: See this URL and an example below to assist you in getting that direct review page: https://support.google.com/business/answer/7035772?hl=en
- Follow Google’s steps here to create your businesses direct review URL. https://support.google.com/business/answer/7035772
- You will end up getting a URL like this: http://search.google.com/local/writereview?placeid=ChIJOf5ShuQD3IARDYgCI0IJx-A
- Load this address in your browser to get the following URL: https://www.google.com/search?q=THE+LOT+La+Jolla,+7611+Fay+Ave,+La+Jolla,+CA+92037&ludocid=16196924764521138189#lrd=0x80dc03e48652fe39:0xe0c709422302880d
- Now select the ‘XX Google Reviews’ link, then the ‘Write a review’ button.
If you take the URL from your browser and add a ,5 to it you should see it work! (sometimes its best to load the completed URL on your mobile device) https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=THE+LOT+La+Jolla,+7611+Fay+Ave,+La+Jolla,+CA+92037&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8#lrd=0x80dc03e48652fe39:0xe0c709422302880d,3,5
- ECommerce: Add your social and review site URLs to your food ordering and merchandise receipt emails to encourage positive reviews after your customers interact with your business!
- Get creative! Link your homescreen animated images to the “Review Us” Website Feature or use the News Feature and add custom headlines to scroll through the ticker on the bottom of your homescreen.
Don’t:
- Push Notifications: Be Careful! If you have hundreds, or even thousands of users and send a ‘Review Us!’ push notification linking to a review page on Yelp, Google etc you can cause more bad than good. These review sites will see this as a non organic uptick in ratings/reviews and can flag your account or worse!
- Shilling: This is a huge red flag to all review sites. It’s against their Terms of Service to bribe or pay customers for reviews. Trust us it’s not worth it! You can be friendly and politely ask your customers if they would like to take time to review, but don’t offer them free merchandise for writing you positive reviews!
Future Reviews:
- Incorporate your review site URLs into your invoices to promote more visibility.
- Add icons to your webpage or post them on your storefront windows.
- Showcase your social icons in your email signature.
- Incorporate as part of your sales process.
- Include links to social review sites within newsletters and marketing material.Examples:
- SF Safari is available on iOS
- The website will load in a hybrid Safari browser
- The users login session will be maintained to remove a huge step in friction.
- This means app users can be send straight to the review page