How to Choose a Product Reviews App for Your Shopify Store

When running an online store, having a robust and reliable product reviews app is an essential way to boost your social proof and build trust with your customers, increasing conversions and improving customer retention.

But choosing the right product reviews app for your Shopify store can be tricky.

So here’s a comprehensive guide to help you make the best choice.

Start with your business needs

What do you want to achieve? It’s always a question worth asking. If you don’t know what you want, it’s hard to work out how to get there.

A few suggestions:

• Build trust and a stronger brand: Displaying customer feedback prominently can help with both.
• Gather more feedback: More reviews means more customer data that can inform of your product and service development.
• Increase conversions: Reviews can help to persuade hesitant shoppers to take that extra step and hit ‘buy’.
• Attract more visitors: You can improve search engine rankings, increase visibility on social media and grow through word-of-mouth.
• Strengthen customer relationships: Engaging with reviewers can improve loyalty and increase retention.

Search on the Shopify App Store

Once you’ve clarified your business needs, get searching. The Shopify App Store is great for this. There are countless options, many of which which include detailed descriptions, pricing information and (of course) reviews from users.

Combined, these can give you a good sense of how effective an app is and, often, how good its customer service is. That can help to point you in the right direction.

Evaluate the features

Now’s the time to see if the app you’re looking at aligns with your goals.

• Build trust and a stronger brand: Look for apps that let you customize review invitations and the way you display reviews to suit your brand’s look and feel. These create an impression of authenticity. Also, look for apps that support video and photo reviews to make your social proof really stand out.
• Get more reviews: Seek out apps that enable you to increase the responses to your review requests. This can be through customizing the timing and content of review requests, sending automatic reminders and requesting reviews through more channels, such as push notifications or SMS.
• Attract more visitors: Go for apps that make it easy to share reviews on social media and are designed for SEO, with features like rich snippets and Google Shopping integration. This increases the likelihood that a potential customer will click on your store in the search results.
• Increase conversions: Make sure the app can integrate reviews directly on the product pages and include reviews in upselling emails. Bonus points if the app enables you to showcase reviews in a variety of ways across your store to get more visitors from browsing to buying.
• Strengthen customer relationships: Choose apps that let you reply directly to reviewers to address any concerns and offer incentives, like coupons to reviewers.

Consider the price

It’s smart to consider the app’s cost relative to the features and benefits it offers. It isn’t always obvious whether you’re getting good value. An app might be expensive, but offer you much less than a much cheaper (or free) app. So think about:

• Flexibility in pricing plans: Is there a free plan? Are there any trials available so you can test out the features of plans with more advanced features?
• Payment terms: Are the payments monthly or yearly? Be wary of long-term contracts: they can be restrictive. Having the freedom to cancel without penalty is important if your needs could change.
• Additional costs: Be mindful that some contracts contain hidden costs, such as quotas, add-ons, or customization fees. Some apps get you started for free and then increase the cost as your store takes off and you use the service more. It’s a hassle to change providers, so it’s best to look for a provider offering unlimited usage.

Don’t neglect customer support

Customer support is essential, not just for setting up your app but for troubleshooting any issues and helping you get the most from the app. Effective support means minimal disruption to your service, and that means minimal potential impact on your sales.

So look for apps that offer 24/7 support across a number of channels, like email and live chat. That’ll make sure that if something that shouldn’t happen does happen, you’ll be back on your feet and selling in no time.

Heard good things?

Have you heard anything about the apps you’re checking out?

Apps build up reputations within the e-commerce community. Recommendations from e-commerce experts and other store owners can give you really useful insights into an app’s reliability and performance. These endorsements are often much more trustworthy than ones you find by accident online, as they come from users with first-hand experience who are willing to put their reputation on the line to endorse a product.

A final thought

Choosing the right product reviews app for your store is an important decision. It can seriously affect your online presence and sales. So take your time. Explore the options, compare the features, and seek out an app that aligns with your goals. And if someone’s said good things about an app to you before, that’s a great sign.

Thanks for reading and we hope that was helpful! For a detailed comparison of the best apps in the market, have a look at our guide to the Best Shopify Reviews Apps 2024.

About Judge.me

Judge.me is the world’s most popular Shopify reviews app used by over 400,000 stores. We offer a Free plan with unlimited reviews including photo and video reviews, great options to display reviews, 24/7 customer support and more. Our Awesome plan costs just $15 per month and includes many advanced features to build trust and boost sales. To find out more visit Judge.me.