On one of my brand sites, I used an affiliate program with a UK based company selling widgets related to my site. A few months ago, a combination of Brexit and a new virus strain halted virtually all transport between the UK and mainland Europe for some weeks. In that period my affiliate partner ran out of stock for many items and sending the products to mainland Europe became more difficult due to the brexit regulations.
This triggered me to stop the affiliation with them and build an ecommerce section on my existing site for the widgets to sell them myself. The current situation is that I sell more products than were reported through the affiliation program previously, earnings are up 4-fold and I expect a positive cashflow next month. The first months obviously needed money to invest in the platform development and purchasing inventory.
Current customers are mostly people aware of the site brand value, and this gives them enough trust to buy. But I want to expand to a larger customer base who will find me through the SERPs or through advertising. That requires that I provide trust signals to them in other ways. One of those signals is obviously (genuine) reviews.
As the products are sold internationally, there are only a few review platforms which are useful for me. I already more-or-less made a decision about which platform to use, but still have some questions what would be the best way forward. I am exploring now how to implement reviews on the site and see several options. I could
- Let the customers review the product
- Let the customers review the service of the company/brand/site
and
- Send the review requests out myself
- Let some the review platform send out the requests on my behalf
All options have pros and cons and I would like to have hear the views of others what worked for them and why.
