Video: How to grow your business online during the Coronavirus crisis

We are facing an unprecedented situation and, in several countries, governments have already taken drastic measures to reduce the spread of the virus, and more will probably come. One of the situations we have seen, and that we will see more often in the near future, is the so-called lockdown, or semi lockdown, where citizens are asked to stay home and go out only for important reasons. It goes without saying that more and more people are buying online these days. People are not only buying more, but they are also spending more time researching, reading, comparing. In this context, online reviews become even more important than before. Online reviews have been the best source of information from consumers for many years, but now they are essential for both customers and manufacturers.

Various e-commerce shops announced that in the future, products with a star rating below 4 will not be sold anymore, losing premium positions on their digital shelves. Online reviews are essential for customers to decide what’s the best product for them. So, ratings and reviews are also crucial for brands. So, what should be the number one priority for a brand that sells online today? It’s clear that it is having the best possible ratings and reviews. How to make sure you improve your scores? You have to analyze reviews more carefully than how you would analyze the output of a survey or an interview. You have to study them carefully. When you have too many reviews or too many products, you need to use software to do so. 

When analyzing online reviews, your company needs to capture these three aspects:

1. Pros and cons: where you can learn what customers like and dislike. This is not an indication of what is relevant for them, or what drives their satisfaction, however, it is important to have an overview of the most popular topics mentioned by customers when they review your products and services
2. Impact model: what does this mean? Generally speaking, an impact model aims to determine the impact that a certain event would have on another parameter. In our case, we would use it to understand what is the impact of the different topics, mentioned in a product review by customers, on the star rating of the product itself. This is crucial to prioritize improvements based on what would have the highest return. It is difficult to calculate these things without specific technology, but you can try.
3. Competition: the great thing about reviews is that they are not just about your products, but also about competitor products, and they are all public. This means that you can do all kinds of analysis on the competition too, and then compare their performance to yours, in order to spot your strengths and weakness.

For more interesting content, click here.