June 24, 2022

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How to Build and Maintain Good Reputation for Your Ecommerce Store

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A sound ecommerce store reputation not only helps you grow a loyal customer base but also brings in more and more potential customers to your store. But what does a good reputation mean? How do you know what your current reputation is and how do you better it? Reviews, testimonials, recommendations, comments, questions, complaints and appreciation – anything and everything that is said about your brand on an online, public platform, reflects your ecommerce store’s reputation. While you cannot control what people write about your ecommerce store, across platforms, and it may not be possible for you to know what, who and where someone wrote something – you can actively manage and build your online reputation. Before we answer the ‘How?’, let’s understand ‘Why?’

Why is it important to manage your ecommerce store reputation?

You may wonder how a few negative comments or some not-so-positive online opinions about your ecommerce store affect you. Well, search engines index all the negative feedback, and most people today rely on search engines to find new businesses and rely on reviews shared by existing customers. So, while you may not be able to stop someone from sharing a negative review, how you manage it and ensure positive reviews alongside it makes all the difference. Here are some critical reasons to manage your ecommerce store’s reputation:

Top Reasons to Manage Your Ecommerce Store’s Reputation

Positive feedback, reviews and opinions directly impact conversions and ranking for your ecommerce store
A sound reputation allows you to build a strong brand identity
Customers today rely on the experience of other customers to make buying decisions
A healthy ratio of more positive reviews for every negative review will help balance out the overall effect of negative reviews
You can see, manage and avoid your ecommerce store from being included in any unwanted online listings

Now that we know why it is important to manage your online store’s reputation, let’s look at how you can do so.

5 Tips to Build and Manage a Good Reputation for Your Ecommerce Store

You’ve put in a lot of effort to build your ecommerce store and design it in a way that helps your customers easily do business with you. Your products are great, and you are constantly trying to offer more and more to your customers – don’t let a bad reputation take that away from you. Here are some tips to monitor, manage and build your ecommerce store reputation:

1. Create quality website content

Your website content plays a critical role in not just helping your customers shop easily but also helping search engines show up your website as a search result. Using the right keywords, sharing accurate and complete information, writing effective product descriptions and highlighting key content helps minimize an unsatisfactory ecommerce experience. It’ll help customers know exactly what to expect and as a result minimize complaints, returns and negative shopping experiences. This can thus help you create a better shopping experience and get positive reviews.

2. Keep track of what people are saying

Setting up Google alerts for your ecommerce store, using social listening tools and keeping a watchful eye on your brand profiles across online platforms is very important. Not only does this help you boost customer service but also ensures that you can actively and correctly address issues – managing negative reviews, detecting unwanted content about your business, etc.

3. Ask for reviews

The best way to get positive reviews is to ask for them. Never populate false reviews or even worse, buy them! Work towards genuinely boosting customer service and building a positive relationship with your customers. You can then ask for reviews, knowing that your customers are satisfied with your products and services. Create a simple review form and request your customers to share their experience, make sure you make it easy for them to do so and let them know why this is important for you.

4. Address negative reviews

If you truly want to build a positive reputation for your ecommerce store address negative reviews. It’s okay to get negative reviews, but the worst thing you can do is ignore them or worse challenge them. Try and see how you can help the customer who had a negative experience, can you offer a solution? Can you offer a refund/discount code? This will not only show potential customers that you value reviews, but you may also be able to get a customer to come back and shop with you again. Be transparent, accept if you’re in the wrong and go beyond your way to turn a negative experience into a positive one.

5. Be accessible and responsible

Your ecommerce store will grow and flourish when you take the responsibility to do so. You don’t only want to gain more and more customers but also keep the ones you already have. To be able to do so, you must take the complete onus and be always accessible. Whether someone is asking for more product information on a social media platform, a customer is asking for delivery-related information via email, or a potential customer is calling you to know more about your products – take the responsibility to actively respond across channels and offer your full support.

Get, Set and Sell

Setting up strategies to monitor everything that is being said about your ecommerce store not only allows you to positively respond but also shows that you take complete responsibility. This allows you to build a positive reputation, offer a better customer experience and ensure that existing and potential customers know that you’re always accessible. For more tips on how to build, manage and grow your ecommerce store, head to our WordPress Tutorials page.

Aastha Sirohi

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