Annoyed at Fake Reviews?
Ever been shopping online at big marketplaces and find yourself trying to figure out which reviews are fake or not? It's hard, isn't it? If it is hard for you as a Shopify merchant, it is hard for customers as well.
Your customers rely on reviews to make buying decisions online (and even in-store) because they can't always interact with you. Not only that, but online reviews tend to help would-be buyers answer the burning questions they have about a product.
Why Reviews Are Important to Making More Sales
The vast majority (82%) of online shoppers look at reviews before making a purchase. Again people can't SEE the product in person so they have to rely on the star rating to sway their buying decision.
The more good reviews you have, the better your chances of making a sale online. Lots of online marketplace sellers know this and are trying to game the system by getting fake reviews for their product, but customers are starting to catch on!
Why Fake Reviews Hurt Honest Shopify Store Owners
While most of the shady stuff is going on at places like Wal-Mart, Amazon, Sephora, and Yelp there are some Shopify stores that are actively displaying fake reviews on their online store.
When there are fake reviews floating around on the internet, it makes it so much harder for customers to buy a product with confidence!
This lack of confidence can hurt your business even if you haven't done anything wrong. When people lose faith in the Shopify ecosystem, every Shopify store is a casualty.
How Can Shopify Store Owners Fight Against Fake Reviews?
1. Don't Post Fake Reviews
First, store owners can refuse to upload fake reviews to their stores. It is hard in the beginning to generate reviews and social proof for your store but honesty is the best policy for building trust among your visitors.
If you need help on how to get good social proof and generate customer reviews, check out this post that we wrote!
2. Don't Use Fake Review Apps
Second, Shopify store owners can make the ecosystem better by not supporting fake review apps.
If you come across an app that allows you to create or fake your own data don't trust it! It's not credible or trustworthy and customers can often see right through it.
Customers are smart and you want them to trust you, so use real data, and show real reviews! The other thing is that Shopify can close down your store for using shady tactics that do against their terms of service.
They understand that there can be damage to the reputation of other stores if other Shopify stores are found to be using fake reviews.
3. Use a Third Party to Verify Your Data
Make sure that any review app or social proof app that you use can verify the accuracy of your data.
This means that they will show your online customers that a purchase or product viewer counter is displaying authentic data.
Try Fera for Trustworthy, Verified Testimonials and Reviews
At Fera, we truly believe in the eCommerce ecosystem.
That is why we have rolled out a new verification system that is available to all of our merchants. This verification system is available on the following social proof content:
- reviews
- testimonial
- added to cart counters
- 'people watching' counters
- recently purchased pop-ups
Why We Want to Banish Fake Reviews
The reason we decided to include these in our widget base because we know how big of an issue fake reviews on Shopify and other platforms can be.
We wanted to offer merchants something that can verify reviews on their Shopify store and keep the eCommerce ecosystem trustworthy for customers.
We've all been in the shoes of the customer when shopping when trying to decide if a review or product testimonial is fake or not, and it can be extremely frustrating!
Fake reviews hurt all online merchants by making eCommerce as a whole less trustworthy.
Show Curated Testimonials on Your Shopify Store
Help build trust with your visitors and add credibility with curated and personalized testimonials that can be placed anywhere on your Shopify store with the click of a button.
Testimonials/reviews are a powerful way to create social proof and increase buyer confidence.
Fera lets you easily showcase your social proof with built-in feeds and blocks that show up to the shopper when the time is right.
Take Action
Hopefully, you see the importance of gathering and curating authentic reviews for your products, and why you need to keep fake reviews at bay.
Building trust with your customers is the best thing you can do to increase sales.
If you are ready to build trust and make more sales, try any of the verification features that Fera has to offer. You can try the app 30 Days for free!
Bonus Shopping Tool: Spot Fake Reviews Other Places Online
If you are personally looking to spot fake reviews online, you can try the site Fakespot. Fakespot allows you to paste a URL to a product review and it does the hard work of research for you.
This tool helps to analyze whether the reviews you are looking at are fake or not. This works for sites like
- Amazon
- Sephora
- Yelp
- Steam
It's not the 100% answer to dodge fake reviews, but it can provide a bunch of data to make you a better-informed decision-maker.
