Beyond creating a positive brand image, online reviews have the power to motivate purchases and directly impact your bottom line.
Online consumer reviews influence 67.7 percent of purchasing decisions (Moz), while 74 percent of local customers trust brands because of positive reviews (BrightLocal).
These figures are as good a motivation as any to ramp up your review generation efforts this year. The good thing is you don’t have to stay limited to one review site or spread yourself thin and target every review platform available. Instead, focus on appropriate platforms and generate reviews on sites aligned with your brand offerings.
We’ve broken down the best review platforms into several categories to help you find review sites matching your business:
- Best portals for business-to-customer (B2C) and retail brands
- Review sites for restaurants and hospitality companies
- Best review sites for business-to-business (B2B) companies
- Best for search engine optimization (SEO)
- Best platforms for reputation management
Some of the best review sites may fall into at least two categories. We also categorized sites according to marketing intent, namely SEO and reputation management.
Best Review Sites for B2C and Retail Brands
B2C companies sell directly to consumers. If your business is a B2C enterprise, look for the best customer review platforms with high traffic. Many firms fall into this category, such as eCommerce related, food, travel, hotel, restaurants, medical, legal and retail brands.
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Amazon Customer Reviews
Amazon generates 85.44 million in organic traffic monthly and has an Alexa ranking of 3, which means it’s the third-most visited site in the U.S. This eCommerce giant was one of the first customer review platforms to allow consumers to post comments on products.
Today, Amazon is one of the most trusted sources of information for consumers. Over 300 million shoppers tend to look for products with higher star ratings and read the reviews before deciding on a purchase.
You can encourage customers to leave reviews via your social media channels. Another strategy is to set up automated emails sent to customers after the purchase. Make sure to use the site’s review monitoring and analytics features.
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Angie’s List
This site is a paid platform where reviewers give businesses an A to F rating (report card scale). The reviews are typically high-quality and excellent for establishing brand authority.
The site doesn’t allow anonymous comments, which is perfect for preventing fake and spam reviews. The portal’s admin also acts as intermediaries between customers and sellers, protecting your reputation against unfair customers.
Angie’s generates around 5.44 million organic visits monthly and is a good fit for service-related businesses. Setting up your company page is free, but you get more review monitoring options with its paid plans.
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Better Business Bureau Reviews
The Better Business Bureau (BBB) portal generates 6.15 million organic visits monthly and is an excellent review site for B2C and B2B businesses. In addition, it hosts reviews for companies and charities with 5.4 million profiles on its list.
This government-sponsored organization is known for unbiased reviews. To make the most of Better Business Bureau reviews, your company should aim to get a BBB accreditation.
Becoming BBB-accredited shows a business is trustworthy and reliable. Through it isn’t free, obtaining an accreditation is a worthwhile investment considering 85 percent of consumers trust BBB-accredited firms.
Accreditation gives you access to BBB’s customer review generator tool, which sends review requests via email or text message. You also get a customizable review tool kit, which helps with review monitoring, driving more traffic and generating more Better Business Bureau reviews.
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TrustPilot
TrustPilot is a community-driven review platform covering companies from the U.S., Europe and 65 other countries worldwide. The site admins proactively collect customer reviews keeping the information third-party verified. According to TrustPilot, over two million consumers participate on its platform each month.
The portal has rated over 500,000 brands. Just like other review portals, it also uses a star rating system. The site has a free basic and a paid membership. The paid version has plenty of valuable features, such as:
- Share ratings
- Customizable review invitations
- Social media reviews
- Review data and analytics
Best Customer Review Platforms for Hospitality Companies
Restaurants and hospitality companies thrive with visuals. So encourage your customers not just to leave reviews but also to post photos to aid your branding efforts.
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Yelp Business Reviews
Yelp also falls under the B2C category, but many reviews on the site cover restaurants, hotels and travel-related businesses. This platform allows consumers to post photos and provide business highlights. It’s an excellent option for geo-location marketing.
Yelp Business Reviews platform gets 40.47 million organic visits monthly, with 87.5 percent of the traffic coming from the U.S. The site has over 102 million company reviews, which means your company may be listed here without your knowledge. The first step to gaining more Yelp reviews is to claim your business page.
“Yelp is important for organic search, but it’s almost impossible to work with for reputation management,” says Tim Clarke, Rize Reviews’ senior reputation management manager. It requires proven strategies and a solid team to generate reviews and get a good score.
To encourage customers to leave Yelp business reviews, you can provide freebies, discounts and other incentives. Post the positive reviews you receive on your website. You can also send rewards to customers who check in on Yelp, similar to what is done on Facebook.
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TripAdvisor
Many customer reviews focus on companies in the travel sector. It makes TripAdvisor a critical review platform for tourism and hospitality companies.
This travel website generates 28.27 million in organic traffic with 50.4 percent coming from the U.S. Although it began as a travel site, its reviews feature any type of business, with most customers commenting on restaurants, hotels, cafes and other points of interest for tourists.
To generate reviews on this platform:
- Ask your guests to leave comments on TripAdvisor during checkout.
- Send personalized thank-you emails to customers and include a link to your TripAdvisor page.
- Use templates when asking for reviews with leading questions to make review generation easier.
Best Review Sites for B2B Companies
Since B2B companies cater to other businesses, they must use online review platforms focusing on professional audiences or even subject matter experts.
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Capterra
Clarke recommends Capterra for B2B companies. It’s also one of the platforms used by Rize Reviews. Capterra features an active community, offering immense exposure for software vendors.
The platform gains around 3.1 million unique visitors each month, making it another favorite of SaaS companies generating more than a million reviews. It’s also an excellent option for search engine optimization (SEO) since it offers organic backlinks. You can also select paid advertising options.
Software products are placed in 700 different categories for better comparison. In addition, firms should take advantage of the site’s online reputation management software to help generate more reviews.
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Glassdoor Employee Reviews
Glassdoor is an excellent platform for B2B and B2C companies. This site gets 56 million unique visitors each month, with around 77 percent of all traffic coming from the U.S.
Business owners read Glassdoor employee reviews for information regarding potential partners. So you’re not just positioning your business as a leading employment brand, but you’re also opening collaborative opportunities with other companies through positive feedback from your employees.
This workplace review platform has over 540,000 company reviews. Businesses that have claimed significant real estate on the site and garnered a high volume of positive Glassdoor employee reviews have been able to improve both their website traffic and engagement.
Best Customer Review Platforms for SEO
Not all online review sites can boost SEO efforts. For instance, getting more Facebook Marketplace reviews improves your brand reputation but doesn’t impact search rankings. However, getting more Google reviews and those from Yelp will increase organic traffic. So choose platforms with better search impact for your site if you’re after improved traffic.
Google Reviews
Google is the most visited site in the U.S. Its online review platform is the number one option for SEO. The search engine performs over 3.5 billion searches daily, and its average monthly traffic is 158.03 million. So getting more Google reviews is one of the effective ways to boost site traffic.
Companies need to have a verified business account to take advantage of these benefits. You’ll also need to provide essential information about your firm, including the official business name, contact information, opening hours, website URL and business address. This information will be added to your local listing.
Customer reviews on Google appear on the search engine results page (SERPs). This feature makes it a superb option for B2B and B2C companies.
Best Platforms for Business Reputation Management
Clarke recommends both Google and Facebook for business reputation management. These two are also the top picks of other seasoned reputation management consultants.
Facebook Marketplace Reviews
Social media experts recommend Facebook Marketplace for review generation. Facebook gets 2.7 billion unique visitors each month and is one of the top 10 most used sites worldwide.
Of the massive traffic, 23.1 percent comes from the U.S., making it an outstanding platform for gaining global engagement. Customers can post reviews on your company’s business profile, while prospects can also ask questions.
Businesses should set up notifications to alert them when customers leave Facebook Marketplace reviews. You can also ask your clients to use the check-in feature, which helps boost brand awareness. Reputation management consultants also recommend adding call-to-action buttons on your website to make it easier for customers to leave Facebook reviews.
Leading Online Reputation Management Services
You gain the most benefits from online review platforms by selecting sites that align with your products and services. What’s more, some of these portals provide online reputation management software to optimize your review generation and monitoring efforts.
To fully utilize these online review platforms, partner with a seasoned company offering online reputation management services, like Rize Reviews. Our team has experienced reputation management professionals and social media experts who can help you select the best review platforms for your business.
Call us today for a free consultation.
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