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Reviews are an excellent way to increase your conversion rate. However, business owners across different industries know how difficult it is to collect customer reviews. Fortunately, numerous websites now offer Google review widgets that allow businesses to post their Google Reviews on their website.
In this blog, we'll discuss how you can maximize the Google Reviews widgets to increase your search engine visibility and drive more sales.
What is a Google Review widget?
Google continues to be one of the most powerful platforms for businesses to optimize. Due to the convenience of Google apps and the dominance of Google search, most consumers rely on the company before purchasing online. In fact, recent surveys show that 59% of consumers use Google Reviews when researching a business. For this reason, it's not surprising that companies want to integrate the power of Google on all their marketing platforms, including their website.
A Google Reviews Widget enables businesses to embed their Google reviews into their website. While you could feature your product reviews, using a Google Review widget is like hitting two birds with one stone. Not only does it help you showcase your Google Reviews, but it can also help you optimize your Google My Business listing. Regardless of your goal, integrating your Google Reviews into your website will make your offers more appealing to clients, thus increasing your conversion rate.
What are the types of Google Review widgets?
The look of each Google Review widget varies depending on your widget provider. Some companies even offer personalized widgets that allow you to design a Google Review widget that will complement your website's overall design. To help you choose your widget, we've come up with the most common Google Review widget design which you can use on your website:
Google Rating Badge
Google Rating badges are compact buttons that promote your Google My Business listing. It usually shows your overall Google Review rating and the number of reviews on your GMB profile.
A Google Rating Badge works well when placed in the header or bottom of a website. You can also use it on select landing pages since it fits nicely into smaller areas of your pages due to its compressed form.
Featured Comment Widget
The Featured Comment widget is designed to give customers a comprehensive overview of your current Google Reviews. It allows website owners to filter and display specific reviews on their sites, and it mostly appears as a carousel or a slider.
This Google Review widget aims to provide customers with strong social proof of your products and services. It fosters confidence among consumers that actual people have purchased your offer. Because of this, it's best to be placed on strategic areas of your website, such as your homepage and your main sales page.
Pop-up Review Widget
The Pop-up Review widget shows select Google reviews by imitating a social media message. Because of its spontaneous effect, it's mainly used to break the monotony on your website while providing more social proof of your products.
This widget is mainly placed on all pages of a website. While it's an attractive widget, website installation and integration can be tricky. So, make sure that both your website and your widget are highly responsive.
Write a Review Badge
Like the Google Rating badge, the Write a Review badge promotes your GMB listing. However, it contains an explicit call to action to leave a review on your Google profile. It's primarily used to collect more Google Reviews and boost your GMB listing instead of encouraging customers to purchase on your website.
Since the Write a Review badge actively encourages people to leave your website, it's best to be placed in post-purchase campaigns. This includes the footer of your sales page or email newsletters.
There isn't one best kind of Google Review badge or widget to use, as each has its benefit. Just remember to ensure your website is fully optimized to accommodate the widget you choose.
What are the benefits of adding Google reviews to your website?
If you're looking to enhance the appeal of your website, adding a Google Review widget could be the improvement you need. Here are the benefits of incorporating Google Reviews into your site:
Provides more social proof for customers.
Adding Google Reviews on your website allows you to display a greater number of customer testimonials. This abundance of reviews helps build trust and convinces potential customers of the quality of your products or services.
Builds trust and credibility.
Consumers who are used to online shopping know that some website reviews can be fabricated. For this reason, customers look for online review websites, like Google, that implement a strict review policy to ensure the authenticity of each customer review. Adding Google Reviews to your website shows your customers that you're confident in showing them accurate representations of your products or services. This helps establish trust and credibility.
Improves search engine visibility.
By displaying your Google Reviews on your website, you can encourage customers to post reviews on your Google listing. This increases the number of reviews associated with your Google My Business listing, boosting your SEO ranking or your search engine visibility.
Helps optimize Google My Business listing.
Increasing the number of Google Reviews enhances the optimization of your Google My Business listing. While it may sound mundane, remember that your GMB profile appears on all of Google's marketing channels–Google Maps, Google 3-Pack, Google Hotels, Google Travel, and more. This means that a fully optimized and engaging GMB listing can help you generate sales on numerous marketing platforms.
Increases customer engagement.
Online reviews expand the conversation about your business. While we all know that positive reviews help persuade indecisive customers, negative reviews can also help your online reputation. A handful of negative reviews show the authenticity of your brand. This ensures your customers that your reviews aren't fabricated. Aside from this, they also encourage satisfied customers to start a conversation. Thus, whether it's a positive or a negative one, reviews increases customer engagement.
To learn more about handling negative reviews, read our complete article Don't Let Negative Reviews Ruin Your Business: Examples & Tips.
Streamlines efficient review management.
Review management can be one of the most challenging aspects of digital marketing. Creating a centralized review platform like Google allows you efficiently monitor and respond to customer reviews. Most importantly, since you have a central review platform, you can quickly gain market insights and customer data that will help you plan your marketing campaigns.
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To learn more about review management, read Optimize Your Online Presence and Save Time With Review Management Tools
Generates more revenue.
Ultimately, these benefits of Google Reviews will help you generate more revenue. Research from Harvard Business School shows that online reviews can directly impact conversion rates. Businesses with positive reviews have been verified to experience higher sales. There's no denying that reading reviews have become an integral part of the decision-making process for consumers.
How do I add a Google Review widget?
Adding Google Review widgets to your website will depend on your widget provider. However, here's the usual integration process of the leading widget providers:
- Register for an account. Choose your payment plan and Google Review widget.
- Upon confirmation, you will receive two types of code: JavaScript and HTML.
- Choose the section of your website where the code will be placed, and use the corresponding code.
- Check your website to ensure the widget functions properly on your site's interface.
Most Google Review widgets can be installed seamlessly on popular content management systems such as WordPress, Wix, Shopify, Drupal, Webflow, and more. However, you should still ensure that your Google Review widget is responsive and will not affect other website elements.
How to optimize Google Reviews on your website?
Google Reviews can be powerful marketing assets when fully optimized. Here are some ways to maximize the potential of Google reviews on your website:
Collect Google Review continuously.
Recency plays a significant role in the effectiveness of reviews as a marketing tool. A Google Review widget without new reviews is futile. Furthermore, when consumers see that your GMB listing doesn't have news reviews, they may assume that your business is no longer active. They may also think that your customers don't post reviews because you don't have satisfactory products and services. Needless to say, it's imperative to streamline an effective Google review collection process.
Want to learn more strategies for collecting Google reviews? Read our article Learn How to Generate and Share a Google Reviews Link.
Highlight your Google Review widget on your website.
Place your Google Review widget where your customers can easily see it. Consider featuring a comment widget on your homepage and a small Google Review badge on each landing page. This approach ensures that each visitor immediately recognizes the quality of your products and services.
Maintain a balanced mix of reviews.
While comment widgets typically display 5-star ratings on your Google listing, 4-star and 3-star ratings can still help you boost your brand's credibility. These reviews provide customers with a holistic view of your products and strengthen the authenticity of your website content.
Respond to Google Reviews
Ultimately, you should ensure that each Google review featured on your website has a well-written response from your team. This conveys the idea that your company is not just confident in showcasing genuine customer reviews, but also values your customers' opinions. Furthermore, each reply shows that you immediately attend to any issues raised by clients, even after buying your products or services. This fosters a strong sense of brand confidence, encouraging your customers to finally purchase on your website.
We know that this is easier said than done. Fortunately, you can use an AI writing assistant to help you write engaging yet fully-optimized responses to your Google Reviews.
Enhance customer relationships with MARA.
Responding to online reviews can be daunting, yet it’s a great opportunity to strengthen your customer connections. Fortunately, you can simplify and streamline this process through MARA AI Review Assistant. This intuitive tool is designed to ease your Online Reputation Management process, making it more efficient, personalized, and time-saving. It offers the best and most personalized AI for responding to and analyzing your guest reviews.
AI-powered Review Inbox
Review management involves two challenging steps—review monitoring and response writing. The former demands time and resources to stay on top of all your reviews, while the latter requires customer service and marketing skills. MARA’s Review Inbox assists with both tasks using AI.
Your review inbox makes responding to reviews as simple as hitting "Generate reply" and clicking "Send". It connects to multiple review sources, including Google, Booking.com, and Tripadvisor, giving you a panoramic view of all your reviews. You can even configure review response automation, ensuring you never miss a review with daily notifications.
Review Analytics for customer data
Extracting customer data is essential for boosting credibility and trust among your customers. Without data, you wouldn’t know how to effectively reach out to them. The Review Assistant incorporates Review Analytics, providing actionable insights tailored exclusively to your business. With MARA, you can quickly understand all your reviews without reading each one. The analysis is detailed, allowing you to identify specific issues like "water in the pool is too cold" or "lack of vegan breakfast options," optimizing the guest experience without requiring data expertise.
Personalized review responses
Using generic templates for review responses can shatter your credibility among customers, giving the impression that you can’t be bothered to attend to their concerns. MARA's AI prioritizes personalization alongside efficiency. The Brand Voice feature ensures responses sound authentically you, while Smart Snippets allow the AI to adapt to recurring praises or complaints, providing more personalized, relevant replies with different words each time.
This review response assistant has quickly become a game-changer for over 2000 customers due to its promising capacity to elevate overall ratings, amplify response rates, glean insights from customer feedback, and economize both time and money.
Final Thought
As a business owner, improving your website with tools like Google Review widgets is beneficial, but fostering a strong connection with your customers remains the paramount marketing goal. Regardless of your competitors' strategies, customers will return if they feel valued, which can be achieved through the simple act of responding to Google reviews. Managing online reviews doesn't have to be overwhelming; with the right software like our AI Review Assistant, MARA, you can streamline the process, personalize responses, and gain valuable insights. Don't hesitate to try MARA—it's free for testing, requires no credit card, and can be operational in under five minutes.
This article is part of our hero content on "Mastering Google Reviews - A Complete Guide."
Frequently Asked Questions:
As of this writing, Google doesn’t offer an official Google Review button. Businesses can get their button from Google Review widget providers or create their own. Just remember to ensure that the button has the right Google Review link.
While you can’t directly upload Google reviews to your website, you can use a Google Review widget that automatically features the top-rated reviews on your Google My Business listing.
Yes. You can generate a direct link to your Google reviews. Just log in to your Google My Business profile and look for the Get More Reviews section of your dashboard.
Google currently doesn’t have an official Google Reviews widget. However, numerous websites are now offering these review widgets that could be linked directly to your Google Reviews.
A Google Reviews widget badge allows business owners to display their Google reviews on their websites. Aside from creating social proof, the Google Reviews badge encourages customers to post their reviews on your Google My Business listing.
