What is the first thing you do while making a purchase? Check reviews to find out what other users say about that product or service, right? Opinion of existing users has the strongest influence on purchasing decisions. Let’s see it from a website owner’s perspective: social proof is one of the most important things to sell something online. Having some good user reviews can definitely help to boost the sales.
Why You Should Put Reviews on Your Website?
This is a fact that customer reviews definitely help increase your sales. Different businesses have different advantages of putting reviews. However, there are a few common benefits that all types of businesses get by putting customer reviews on their website.
- By collecting positive feedback from your customers, you are also getting free advertisement. You can put user reviews either on Google Reviews or on your product pages. According to a recent study, more than 93% of buyers look for online reviews of a product before making the purchase.
- When you keep your customers happy, you automatically form a long-term relationship with them. To keep your users satisfied, you have to know what they think of your product or service. Reviews definitely help you in knowing your customers better. Their feedback gives you useful information that can be used to change things about your business.
- What can be a better proof of the quality of your product or service other than genuine positive reviews. Over the years, it has been observed that people are more likely to make a purchase if they see that other users approve of the product or service.
- Having online customer reviews shows how transparent your business is. You try to provide every single detail on your website but still there are cases when you miss something. Customer reviews sometimes provide the information that may not be shown on your website.
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At this point, you must be wondering how to ask people to leave a review on your website. The answer is very simple, using a user review form is an easy way of asking users to share their reviews. In WordPress, all you have to do is install a review plugin to create one. Now that you know user review forms are required to collect feedback from customers, let’s dive deeper and discuss a few good options for review plugins in WordPress.
What to Look for in a Review Plugin?
Different review plugins have different features but there are a few key features that have to be present in your choice of plugin:
- It should have the ability to embed the reviews on your website and provide a review form for customers using which they can provide their feedback.
- A rating system is another must-have. This helps your users to give you a rating on the basis of their experience.
- Options for uploading pictures and videos.
- A sorting feature so that the users can decide if they want to see bad or good reviews first.
- It should include a search bar so that users can find reviews containing certain keywords.
- A clean dashboard for easy management of the comment section.
- Seamless integration with the WooCommerce plugin. This helps you in getting reviews on individual products.
Best WordPress Review Plugins:
Having multiple options to choose from is always good but sometimes it also makes things difficult for you. There are so many review plugins available for WordPress that it gets difficult to pick one. For your convenience, here we have compiled a list of top 5 WordPress review plugins:
WP Customer Reviews:
If you are looking for a free reviews plugin that comes packed with features then you can definitely go for WP Customer Reviews. With this plugin you can accept reviews anywhere on your website. You have two options, either you can collect general customer reviews about your business or place the review modules on individual product pages.
The best thing about WP Customer Reviews is, it is easy to configure and comes with a basic dashboard using which you can accept or decline reviews. You can also decide how many reviews you want to be displayed on one single page.
Main features of this plugin are:
- There are shortcodes available that you can use to place the reviews on several areas of your website.
- All the fields are customizable.
- You can make required changes in all the submitted reviews from the WordPress dashboard.
- Admin can respond to all the reviews received from customers.
- There is an option to limit the number of reviews shown on each of your pages.
Google Reviews Widget:
The Google Reviews Widget is a popular review plugin which is used for a different purpose. Unlike other plugins in this list, it is not used to accept reviews from your customers. This plugin takes all of your current Google business reviews and then displays them on your website.
As the name suggests, this plugin works as a widget so that you can place your reviews in a header, footer, or sidebar. This plugin is free to use but it has a limitation of five Google reviews and three Yelp reviews. If you want more reviews and some additional features like filters, rich snippets, and the ability to merge certain reviews then you can purchase the premium version. The pricing plans start as low as $85 per year.
Main features of this plugin are:
- The Google Reviews Widget offers support for websites that have dark themes as well.
- You have different options of themes to choose from. This way you can customize the online appearance of your reviews.
- This plugin supports multiple languages so that you can accept reviews from anywhere in the world.
- Some formats include unique elements like sliders, grids, and trust badges.
- If you do not want to use the widget, you get access to shortcodes as well.
WP Product Review:
WP Product Review is another powerful plugin that you can use on your WordPress website. Using this plugin, you can give your customers the option to leave a review about services or products.
The free version of this plugin is WP Product Review Lite. It comes with basic tools for accepting reviews and changing the colors on them. The paid version has more advanced features. Pricing plans start at a price of $59 per year.
Main features of this plugin are:
- It has pros and cons fields.
- This plugin supports affiliate links. You also have an option to integrate with Amazon. This will make using affiliate links in user reviews easier.
- You can place the review modules anywhere on your website and also organize them to keep good ones on the top.
- You get a variety of customization options and adjust things like the border, width, and colors.
- If you run an affiliate website, there is an option to import certain Amazon information including image and product name.
- You can create comparison tables on the basis of existing reviews on your website.
- You can break down your product specifications and then your users will be able to rate each one of them.
- There are different layouts that you can use.
- There are several options for custom rating icons.
WP Business Reviews:
WP Business Reviews is not just a plugin, it is a complete powerhouse. It comes with a wide range of features. The best thing about this plugin is, you do not have to do any work to display the reviews received from your users on your website. Once installed, it only requires you to connect different platforms including Yelp, Facebook, and Google.
After that, this plugin will pull in any current and new reviews on these platforms. There is also an option to add your own custom reviews. If you want, you can also filter out some of the negative reviews. This is a paid plugin and the lowest price is $99.50 per year.
Main features of this plugin are:
- This plugin fetches reviews from different review websites like Yelp, Google, and Facebook.
- You can also add custom reviews that were submitted to you individually.
- The customers will have an option to go on your website and share reviews. They will not have to go to a website like Google.
- You can filter out any reviews or ratings that are below a certain star level.
- You can push your favourite reviews to the top of the list.
- There is an option to adjust the styling of your reviews so that they fit your website’s theme.
- You can change the appearance of the rating system.
Site Reviews:
If you have a limited requirement and are looking for a simple review plugin then Site Reviews is the best option for you. This plugin allows your customers to submit a 1-5 star rating on your website. Once submitted, you can display these reviews in different formats.
This plugin gives you two options: you can either allow the users to rank your website as a singular entity or give reviews to specific posts, pages, products etc. There are dedicated editor blocks and shortcodes available. You can use any of them to add frontend review forms on your website. The free version of this plugin comes with sufficient features. If you need access to additional features like: customizing the review form, add sorting options, filters and search bar etc. then you can get the premium version.
Main features of this plugin are:
- It has three dedicated blocks/shortcodes for three different purposes: submit a review form, display latest reviews, and display review rating summary
- You have the option of accepting or declining a review. Reviews start displaying on your website only when you approve them.
- You can respond to reviews publicly.
- Your users can give reviews on certain posts, pages or products.
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Wrapping Up!
Hopefully, this article has helped you to understand what is the need of a review plugin in WordPress. If you are in a situation when you cannot decide which plugin to choose then you can take help from the list of top 5 WordPress review plugins.
Still have some doubts about this? To get some expert advice you can call us on 1-866-332-O276. Our team of WordPress experts will assist you with all your queries.
FAQs:
QA: How can customer reviews affect your overall sales?
Ans: Having some good user reviews can convince other users to make a purchase and help to boost the sales.
QA: What is the best way to ask users to leave feedback?
Ans: You can add a user review form on your website to ask the customers for their feedback.
QA: How can we add a user review form in WordPress?
Ans: Using a review plugin is the easiest way of adding a user review form in WordPress.
QA: Can we put the feedback from our clients on Google Reviews?
Ans: You can put user reviews either on Google Reviews or on your product pages.
QA: Can user reviews help in building social proof?
Ans: Positive reviews from the users act as a social proof. It is a fact that people are more likely to make a purchase if they see that other users approve of the product or service.
