The Importance Of Product Reviews And How To Get Them!

Product reviews are a key element to the success of your packaged food or beverage product. With access to online shopping getting easier day by day, the way people shop for food and beverage products has completely changed, and this is becoming increasingly important to your success online. Today’s consumers are flocking to online spaces to purchase different food products, and they never fail to read at least one online review about your product before they decide to buy it. You want to know why? Consumers always want to know whether your product is good or bad, and they trust hearing about it from someone else other than you. 

Most consumers won’t consider a business or product with less than a 4-star rating. That goes to show how important product reviews are for your food or beverage business. Beautiful images and compelling product descriptions are no longer enough to sell your food products. Customers want more trustworthy sources of information and real-life insights about your products before they make a purchase.

In this short but very informative article, we tell you why product reviews are so important for your food business. And it doesn’t just end there. We tell you how to get reviews for your products and set your packaged food company on top of the pack! 

Let’s dig in!

Importance Of Product Reviews

Increased Trust

Positive reviews will definitely have huge benefits and build a very good reputation around your food product and your business as a whole. When potential consumers see that you have a great history of providing great food products and can be trusted, they will automatically trust you. Consumers will have faith in the greatness of your food or beverage product because it will not only be you blowing your own trumpet, but tens or hundreds or thousands of others will also be praising your products.

The more the reviews of satisfied customers you have, the more trust potential consumers will have. 

Product Reviews Create A Group Of More Informed Customers

Product reviews contain a host of amazing information that could prove very useful for new buyers or potential customers. You can only do so much with your product descriptions. Product reviews can, at times, give new buyers extra information about your food products or beverage products - information about the suitability, how to best use or when to best use the products, based on their personal experiences with your products. 

Information is very important and can significantly influence a consumer’s purchasing decisions. 

Valuable Insights Help You To Improve Your Food Or Beverage Products

It is not just consumers that benefit from product reviews. You can get amazing insights about your products that will help you improve on areas where improvement is needed.

A good example is repetitive comments about the poor quality of your products. That will immediately alert you about the need to improve your quality of production. 

Reviews also provide you with truly insightful feedback that will help you tailor your food products in the best way possible for your target audience. Product reviews show you what consumers like and what they don’t. 

Increased Transparency 

The availability of product reviews on your website or product sales page shows that you have nothing to hide about your food products. It is very brave to enable your customers to openly review your food or beverage products, regardless of whether the reviews are good or bad. 

Allowing your products to be reviewed also shows that you value your customers’ honest opinions and acknowledge that you’re not perfect for everyone. And it is not all the time that you will get a good review, so displaying all the good and bad reviews about your food or beverage products shows how transparent your business is. And there’s nothing that consumers love more than transparency! It also shows that you have faith in your products.

S.E.O Benefits

Your S.E.O improves when you start to collect product reviews. Product reviews are usually full of relevant keywords that will help build your e-commerce site and improve your Google rankings. User Generated Content (U.G.C) provides Google with lots of content about your products, and with time this will improve your website’s S.E.O and product visibility on Google. 

Your food products will have a higher chance of getting known by more people when you have better S.E.O. 

More Sales Leads And Conversions

Product reviews are the best way to eliminate shoppers’ concerns or doubts about your products. People are comfortable to buy food products that are recommended to them by their friends or family. Consumers also trust reviews from total strangers, and most would make purchasing decisions based on such reviews. 

Never overlook the importance of reviews in your food or beverage business.

The more information there is out there about your products, the higher the chances of generating more sales and, ultimately, more profits. What more would you want than to grow your food or beverage brand and spread the message about your great food products? 

How To Get Product Reviews

Ask Your Customers Directly

Want to know how your food products taste? Just ask! Be direct. Send follow up emails or requests to your consumers to give reviews about your products. 

It’s not that consumers never want to leave reviews. Sometimes they forget to. So it is upon you to send them emails and politely request them to review your food or beverage products.

Offer A Discount Or Any Other Incentive In Exchange For Reviews

This is one of the best ways to get more product reviews for your food business. People get very excited to share information when they know they’re getting something of value in return.

You can decide to give discount codes to use in your store in exchange for reviews. Incentives can range from shopping vouchers to loyalty points to gift cards. Ensure that whatever you’re offering as an incentive will sweeten the pot and motivate more customers to leave reviews on your food products.

Run A Contest In Exchange For Feedback

Customers love the possibility of winning something. Run a competition among your customers, and as part of the conditions to participate in the competition, request that they fill out a brief product review form.  

Make The Review Process As Easy And Smooth As Possible

You don’t want to send your customers to fill a review form riddled with complicated and unnecessary fields. Try to make the review form as simple as possible and make the process as fast as possible. The easier the review process, the more reviews you’ll garner.

Ask People To Take Pictures Of Your Products And Tag Your Business Page Or Send Them To You

People enjoy taking snaps of everything! The phrase “photogenic foods” sounds familiar to you? We currently live in a world where the phone eats first before we do. And people would very much enjoy taking pictures of their drinks and foods. Again, it’s simple. Ask! And it would even be more fun to have a hashtag to go with it whenever they share these pictures online.

All you want is a happy and satisfied customer base. Without that, your audience starts to shrink, and your sales decrease. Look to encourage positive conversations about your food or beverage brand. Respond to reviews that are given about your food products and engage your customers as much as you can. Today, competing in the online space without product reviews is an uphill task. Consumers expect to see U.G.C and failing to provide that will leave you at the bottom of the pack. You certainly don’t want that.

Like what you’re reading? Want more support growing your packaged food business? Join the Food And Beverage Growth Academy today. 

Published by Healthy Food & Beverage Group Contributor Calvin Wasambla