Add Online Reviews To Your Home Improvement Website… And Let People See
The Details Of What Your Customers Think Of You.

Written by Rich Harshaw.

Dead. Kaput. Lights out… literally.

My little desk lamp that had faithfully illuminated my workspace for a dozen years suddenly died on a cold December morning in 2009. There was no warning; no signs of faltering; no symptoms of old age. I just reached to click it on and nothing happened. I checked the plug. I changed the bulb. I jiggled it around—all to no avail. Suddenly, inexplicably, the lamp was dead.

As I searched Amazon.com for a replacement, I decided I wanted a better, more versatile model. I wanted to find a lamp that I could place at the back of my desk… but that was still big enough and long enough to reach up and over my secondary computer monitor to light the workspace to the left of my laptop.

After a few minutes of searching, I found one that appeared to offer everything I thought I wanted in a lamp: The Z-Bar High Power LED Lamp, manufactured by Koncept. The lamp was sleep and modern looking… but more importantly, it pivoted in three places (hence the name “Z-Bar”) which allowed it to have a very, very long reach. Perfect.

The only problem was the price tag: $195. Ouch. I was thinking more like $30 to $50.

I kept looking for other less expensive lamps, but I kept coming back to the Z-Bar… it had many features that made it the perfect fit for my lamp needs. So I started reading the online reviews—all twenty-three of them—to see what others thought.

Look, I know that you couldn’t probably care less about lamps, but I’d like for you to read this review, below, to begin to comprehend how important online reviews are for your prospects:

After spending an hour reading all twenty-three reviews (including twelve 5-star reviews, one 4-star, five 3-star, two 2-star, and three 1-star), I shrugged my shoulders and made the purchase.

Why? Because I felt absolutely certain that I knew what I was getting. Including:

• The guy writing the review was apprehensive—just like me!
• The Z-Bar lamp stays in place without constant fiddling and tightening
• It has a tiny footprint
• The light is good… but it can create shadows—something to watch out for and be aware of
• It doesn’t create a lot of ambient light
• It doesn’t get hot
• I saw the problems—minor as they were—of pushing buttons to turn it on (instead of a switch)

Do you think I could have learned all that from the manufacturer’s description? Do you think I would have believed them if they DID tell me all that? No and no.

Alas, the power of the online review.

By allowing existing customers to detail their experience, we allow prospects to read believable, granular information about what they can expect… which allows them to effectively “crowdsource” their due diligence.

If you fail to actively solicit and make available customer reviews, you are losing a huge opportunity. Think about all the times you’ve personally used online reviews to make purchasing decisions on everything from 99 cent apps for your phone, to Cancun resorts. From local restaurants to Chevy Tahoe’s. And everything in between.

Yet I still find that the majority of remodelers are relying on outdated “testimonials” that have the look and feel of stale, manufactured comments that cheerlead for the company with uninspired platitudes about “how great the company is.”

Read that lamp review again. Does it look canned? Is it full of platitudes? Does it simply say “the lamp is great!”? And most of all—is it believable?

To properly execute online reviews on your contractor website, you’ve got to be smart. Here are a few quick tips:

• Don’t Use Google Reviews As Your Main Source: Google reviews are good because they index well with Google (duh!) and can help SEO for contractors. But so can other solutions that don’t have all the downside. Downside #1: your customers have to register to get a Google account to leave a review, which is an extra “hoop” you really don’t want to make your customers jump through. Downside #2: You have no control—or recourse—when you get negative reviews. Any weirdo who hates you (read: random strangers, disgruntled customers, competitors, bitter ex-employees, etc.) can write negative (or even scathing) reviews about your business… and you’re just stuck with them. This is bad. Very, very bad. There’s nothing you can do to prevent this from happening… but at the same time, you don’t have to rely on Google, either.
• Don’t Try To Manage It Yourself: Some companies will try, in essence, to become their own review service. This means polling/surveying customers and somehow posting the results on your website. There are lots of problems with this approach, namely: 1) You have now lost the 3rd party credibility that comes with online reviews (you can “doctor” your results however you like); 2) You have to have somebody manage all this stuff—gathering, sorting, posting—trust me, it will eventually fall through the cracks; 3) it’s expensive.
• DO Use A Professional Service That Specializes In Reviews: The good news is there are many companies that specialize in gathering and posting your online reviews for you. At Monopolize Your Marketplace, we’ve researched them all (okay, a ton of them, at least!) and narrowed the field to just two that we recommend. They’re each a bit different in their approaches, but both of them allow you to automatically gather and post reviews in a 3rd party format at a reasonable price—and with reasonable protection against fraudulent (and to an extent, negative) reviews. By reasonable cost, I’m talking about $200 to $300 a month for most contractors… and as high as maybe $500 a month if you are a large volume contractor that has lots of customers and wants/needs lots of reviews.

The benefits of online reviews extend beyond helping your prospects choose you… they also help your SEO rankings; they create a steady helping of relevant, keyword-rich content for your home improvement website. Do yourself and your prospects a favor—get started with online reviews immediately.

© 2014 – 2016, Rich Harshaw. All rights reserved.