Check out our list of the best product review websites
for B2B and B2C companies. Keep in mind that every industry has niche sites,
too. For instance, those in the restaurant industry may want to be on
UrbanSpoon. This blog post won't get into sites that are specific to one
industry, but it will provide review sites that apply to businesses in almost
any industry.
Review Sites for B2C Companies
Amazon was one of the first online stores to allow
consumers to post reviews of products in 1995, and it remains one of
the most important resources for consumers looking to make informed
purchase decisions. Even if people can and even do buy a product
elsewhere, if it's sold on Amazon.com -- unless
it's gasoline or drug paraphernalia, that is --
then many people will look up its Amazon review before they decide to buy.
What's going to separate your product from one that
looks just like it? Those shiny gold stars and good customer reviews. Products
are rated on a five-star rating scale, which is broken down by percentage
of reviews per star, followed by most helpful customer reviews and most recent
customer reviews.
Geared toward U.S.-based service businesses, Angie's List
is a "higher-end" review site, because users actually have to pay for
membership. But you get what you pay for. The reviews, given on an A–F scale,
are typically very well-thought out -- not a lot of that ranting and raving
that's more common on free review sites. The reviews can't be anonymous, which
helps cut down on fake or misrepresentative reviews, and companies are allowed
to respond to the reviews posted about them, too.
It's free to set up a page for your company. Once you have
yours, encourage your customers who are on Angie's List to leave reviews
there -- members are the only ones allowed to do it!
Have customers in Australia? Choice is a member-funded
review website based in Australia. Choice independently test products
and services and provide performance reviews to their members. The bulk of
their work involves testing products and services themselves, creating
product comparisons, and writing buying guides. In addition, though,
they do allow members to rate and discuss specific product brands and
models with other Choice members. If you have customers in Australia, we
recommend encouraging those who are on CHOICE to leave reviews there.
Trustpilot is a fast-growing, community-driven consumer
review platform based in Denmark, although they've expanded out of Europe into
65 countries, including the U.S. The platform for businesses helps
companies from all over the world proactively collect customer reviews. It's
the customers who write both product and seller reviews,
keeping it third-party verified.
While they have a basic version for free (this lets you
create a profile page and collect customer reviews), their paid versions let
you create customizable review invitations, share ratings and reviews on social
media, and link review data to your internal business systems.
Similar to TrustPilot, the Swedish-based TestFreaks helps
companies proactively collect customer reviews and write seller reviews to
complement them. Another cool addition? Their question and answer feature,
which lets prospective customers post questions and receive answers
directly from your customer service team.
Which? is an independent consumer review organization
that tests and reviews products and then writes about them. Unlike Angie's
List, it's the folks at Which? who write the reviews -- not the customers. They
don't accept submissions for product testing or survey inclusion, but they do
encourage people to let them know about their products and services by emailing
brcpress@which.co.uk.
While this leaves less room for you to influence whether
your products end up on their site, it's still worth knowing about and checking
in on this popular site, especially if you have customers in the U.K. The
website has product reviews for everything from dishwashers and tablets to
cars and credit cards. They test and review all these products themselves, and
then write about both their methodologies and results. They also take customer
surveys of things like the best and worst firms for customer
service.
A lot of their content is free, but
customers can become members for £10.75 per month to get access to a
"Best Buys" and "Don't Buy" list, the latest reviews of
products from their test labs, and access to their consumer legal advice
service.
A nonprofit organization, ConsumerReports is an
independent product testing organization that runs unbiased tests to rate and
recommend products. They've reviewed over 7.7 million products, accept no
advertising, and pay for all products that they test. (Fun fact: They buy and
test 80
cars per year!) This is about as legitimate as it gets. As such,
there's not much you can do here "except" if you sell a product, make
sure it's really, really good.
If nothing else, you could take this website as a lesson in
excellent content creation. For each product they review, they provide the
review criteria, product overviews, a buying guide, and social sharing buttons.
It's all quite comprehensive and, well, helpful. Pretty much the key to great
content, am I right?
If you're in the travel, hotel, airline, entertainment, or
restaurant industries anywhere in the world, you'll want to check out the
reviews on the popular website TripAdvisor. As the largest travel site in the
world, it has over 225 million reviews, opinions, and photos taken by
travelers. They also have some awesome content on their about low
airfares, travel guides, rental listings, and advice forums about pretty much
every location in the world you could possibly image. A lot of people look
there before making a trip.
The key to a successful profile on TripAdvisor is making it
as close to the top of their popularity index as possible, so that people
searching for information in a specific place see your listing. According to TripAdvisor, the popularity
ranking algorithm is based on three key components: quantity, quality, and
recency of reviews. Here's an excerpt of the advice they give businesses
looking to improve their ranking:
Quantity: Ask your guests to write reviews, and use our management center
tools to remind them after they check out. Offering incentives for reviews is
against the rules, though -- take a look at our policy to make sure you
understand what is and isn’t okay.
Quality:
Guests who enjoyed first class hospitality and a memorable experience are more
likely to write positive reviews. Monitor what previous reviewers have written
to see what worked and did not work best for your property so you can maintain
and improve your service.
Recency: Recent reviews factor more strongly on your
popularity rankings and older reviews have less impact on a hotel’s ranking
over time. Once again, encourage guests to write reviews to keep fresh content
rolling in."
Yelp is a free review site that lets consumers rate
businesses on a five-star scale. Any business can set up a profile on Yelp for
free, and users can set up their own free profiles to review a business. You're
free to respond to reviewers, too, but we recommend taking a balanced and
polite approach to any negative reviews you receive, as Yelpers are in a pretty
tight-knit community.
Yelp has also come under fire over the past
few years for some slightly shady practices, like incentivizing businesses
to advertise with them in exchange for gaming the search results for their
business ("Pay us money and we'll push bad reviews down!"). Savvier
consumers have learned to look at Yelp reviews as a whole and with the
reviewer's clout in mind, instead of getting turned off by a business because
of one bad listing.
That being said, it's still to your benefit to get a
constant stream of positive online reviews coming to your business' Yelp
account so happy customers are always at the top of your review feed --
especially is you're a location-based business. Yelp profile information
contains things like store hours and location information, so your profile will
often turn up when people Google your business.
You know those reviews that show up with you search Google
for a business? Yeah, those things are on this list in a big way.
Google's Pigeon algorithm update uses
distance and location ranking parameters to deliver improved local search
results. So, in order for your business' website to be properly optimized
for search, you'll want to set
up verified accounts with local directories -- especially
Google's, called Google My Business. Getting reviews, comments, pictures, and
so on, especially on Google, can give you a boost in search. Only verified
local Google+ pages can respond to reviews.
An added bonus? Google Maps pulls that information and
those reviews into the app, so having a lot of content in there will make your
business look more reputable.
Similar to Google My Business reviews, Yahoo! Local reviews
let users post reviews of businesses with a five-star rating system. Here's
what the results might look like:
According to Search Engine Land, Yahoo!
still receives about 10% of search engine share. So while you might
not want to invest time figuring out the intricacies of Yahoo!'s algorithm,
obtaining some favorable reviews on the Yahoo! Local Listings sure couldn't
hurt for that 10%.
Review Websites for B2B Companies
If your business sells software, you'll want to be
sure you have a presence on G2 Crowd. Every month, over 300,000 people
looking to buy software read the 37,000+ user reviews on this website so they
can make better purchasing decisions.
G2 Crowd operates kind of like Yelp, but in a specific
niche. Companies are reviewed on a five-star scale, and reviews cover
everything from setup and easy of use to security and support. Reviewers answer
questions like "What do you like best?"; "What do you
dislike?"'; and "Recommendations to others considered the
product." Also, you can upvote and downvote others' reviews.
Like G2 Crowd, TrustRadius is an online review
site for software businesses. Reviewers on the site are authenticated via
LinkedIn to make sure they're users (although the reviews themselves can still
be anonymous), which allows users to see what their LinkedIn connections are
saying about particular pieces of software on TrustRadius. This adds a layer of
trust for someone reading the site.
You can use the site to browse reviews of individual
companies, or compare two companies side-by-side to compare
their five-star ratings, screenshots of their products, pricing details,
and user comments from reviewers.
In addition to their company reviews, they've put together
a whole bunch of buyer guides for categories including talent management
software, business intelligence software, core HR software, social media, and
A/B testing to help people find the right product for them based on hundreds of
reviews and user ratings.
Have an app on the Salesforce AppExchange? Then you'll
want to keep track of your app's ratings and reviews there. Reviews are
based on a five-star rating system, and each app has reviews listed with
the most helpful positive review and most helpful negative reviews first, followed
by all reviews, from which users can filter by rating, date, and
helpfulness. They've embraced transparency, letting users access thousands of
reviews and see the number of downloads with just a few clicks.
For Online Reviews Both B2B & B2C
A nonprofit site, the Better Business Bureau (BBB)
evaluates all types of businesses against a set of best practices for how
businesses should treat the public. They don't directly recommend or endorse any
businesses, products, or services; they simply provide the public with the
information on their site about businesses, and whether they have met the BBB's
accreditation standards. They will also review both accredited and
non-accredited businesses.
A business' profile listing on the BBB contains general
overview information, like a short company bio and the company's accreditation
status, a history of any complaints made about the business and whether they
were resolved, customer reviews, and the BBB's A - F rating of the business.
Glassdoor is an employee review site that helps
anyone -- from prospective employees to prospective customers to
investors -- get an idea of what a company is really like from
the inside. In other words, it helps measure the more qualitative factors of
things like valuation.
Employees can share what it's like to interview and work at
their companies, and the site shows visitors which companies are rated
highest by their employees. Many employers use it to build their employment
brand so they can target and recruit candidates, but you can also use the
reviews to share ideas internally for improvement among your management team.
Creating an employer account is free, and it's easy to
track and respond to reviews. For example, you can set up alerts so you get an
email each time a new review is posted so you can acknowledge and respond to
each one.
Other Places for Consumer Reviews
Online reviews also exist on sites that aren't necessarily
built just to publish online reviews. Some businesses use their social presence
and website to encourage online reviews ... and some brands just get them
unsolicited, for better or for worse.
Here are some sites that, if you choose to (please, choose
to) can serve as additional hubs for online reviews. And they're awesome,
because they have enormous reach, and you have some -- if not entire -- control
over these properties.
Did you know there's a place on Facebook for fans to leave
ratings and reviews of your business? There sure is ... it's named, aptly,
Facebook Ratings & Reviews. It appears on the left-hand side of your
Facebook Page, and you can't move or remove it like you can other parts of
your Page.
Anyone logged into Facebook can post a rating or review of
a business. All they have to do is go to the Reviews section of your Page,
click the grey stars to choose a rating, and then write an optional review.
They can make that review public, visible to friends, or visible only to
them.
The ridiculously fast-paced nature of Twitter makes it seem
like a weird place to try to accumulate reviews. But while users might not
always search for reviews directly on Twitter (unless you started some kind of
review hashtag, perhaps), tweets are still indexed in search results. That
means a user's tweet, whether complimentary or less-than, could pop up in the
SERPs when someone's searching for reviews on your business.
Not only that -- there's things you can actively do
with the positive tweets coming at you. For instance, we tested the element of social proof on
conversions here at HubSpot, attaching three tweets that gave
positive reviews on an ebook we were promoting at the time. Guess what
happened? The CTA with the three tweets converted better than the CTA with no
tweets. If you start to "Favorite" tweets that could serve as
positive reviews in the future, it'll be easier to find them when you want to
use them in your marketing.
19) Your Own Website
Finally, the one place where you have total and utter
control: your website. It's an excellent place to publicize reviews you
receive (perhaps embed some of those tweets you favorited?) You could carve out
a section of your website dedicated just to reviews and testimonials, and even include a form so happy
customers can submit their unsolicited reviews. But if you're actively
campaigning for positive online reviews and you encounter happy customers
who want to leave you a positive review but don't have accounts on sites
like Yelp, Angie's List, or Google, it's handy to have a place on your website
to publish their kind words. Consider adding testimonials to landing pages and product pages,
too.
Review Submission sites:
