You're Asking For Reviews WRONG! (The Easiest Way To Get 5 Stars) — Daan Vaneker | How To Get A Quick Review Boost, What Makes Reviews Real, Why Negative Reviews Help, How To Respond To Bad Reviews, What Is Trust Profile (#448)

In this archive episode, we dive into the power of social proof and why trust building is essential for e-commerce success. 

Dan Vaneker, CEO and founder of trustprofile.com, shares his insights on how web shops can enhance trustworthiness through customer reviews and trust pages. 

He explains why customers rely on reviews before buying, how small shops can compete with giants like Amazon by focusing on trust, and the best strategies for collecting, aggregating, and responding to all types of customer feedback.

Topics discussed in this episode:  

• Why 75% of consumers check reviews before buying.
• How consistency in shop address data builds customer trust.
• How to get started by claiming and improving your trust profile.
• Why you should first invite existing customers for a review boost.
• How product reviews are crucial for Google Shopping and informed decisions.

Links & Resources 

Website: https://www.trustprofile.com/
Shopify App: https://www.trustprofile.com/topic/integrations/shopify-integration/
Shopify App Store: https://apps.shopify.com/trustprofile
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dvaneker/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/trustprofile/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/trustprofile/

Get access to more free resources by visiting the show notes at https://tinyurl.com/3vj9ffzc

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Transcript

00;00;00;02 - 00;00;21;01
Speaker 1
The internet is sometimes Wild West. I recently went to a conference about scams, and you get shots about stuff that's going on all positive reviews is not that trustworthy. There are a lot of fake reviews around. You need to make sure that your customers will feel that these reviews are real. People like to take a shortcut. They like to cheat.

00;00;21;02 - 00;00;28;24
Speaker 1
They like to build their trust faster than is actually reality. And we need to counter that.

00;00;28;26 - 00;00;48;06
Speaker 2
Hello and welcome to another episode of the eCommerce Coffee Break podcast. Today we want to talk about social proof and why it's so crucial for e-commerce. Did you know that 75% of all consumers look at your reviews before they buy a product? At least I do. And out of these, 75, 25% use this reviews as a basis to buy something.

00;00;48;08 - 00;01;07;22
Speaker 2
So that's the power of social proof. And I want to dive a little bit deeper on it. And with me on the show I have Daan Vaneker. He's the founder and CEO of trustprofile.com, a platform aimed at enhancing the trustworthiness of web shops through customer reviews and trust pledges. He is a finance professional and passionate entrepreneur, excels in marketing, strategy, finance and software development.

00;01;07;23 - 00;01;15;21
Speaker 2
And he graduated in Business Economics and is proficient in Dutch, English and Brazilian Portuguese. So let's welcome to the show. Hi, Don, how are you today?

00;01;15;24 - 00;01;17;09
Speaker 1
Hi, Claus, Very nice to be here.

00;01;17;16 - 00;01;33;01
Speaker 2
Great to have you on the show. Let's talk about building trust. No, that's not the easiest thing. Specifically for web stores, online businesses that have just started. And there's different ways to do that. Give me an overview. Why trust building is so important.

00;01;33;03 - 00;02;00;20
Speaker 1
That's a good idea to start at. The basics, like the internet is sometimes a world where there happens quite a lot of stuff, and even more people are even afraid of what might happen. I recently went to a conference about scams, and you get shots about stuff that's going on. So what happens as a result of that, even though there are a lot of good shops, but as a result of that, many customers go to the famous brands or go to the big platforms.

00;02;00;22 - 00;02;20;21
Speaker 1
So they go to Amazon just because they know then it's okay. So as a small shop. So to get your own position in the in the markets trust is key. If they come to your website they need to see that it is okay. And if they Google your name afterwards because they will not only look on your site, they will also Google your name.

00;02;20;23 - 00;02;47;04
Speaker 1
And then they need to see need to be confirmed. That's everything is okay. So talking about building trust. A really tiny thing like the address that is on your website. If afterwards they enter your name in Google, the same address should appear in Google places. That builds trust like it needs to be consistent. So these little details actually make a difference.

00;02;47;06 - 00;03;09;29
Speaker 2
Yeah I think there's a synergy effect. And it's nice that you pointed that out. It starts with your address I see so many stores that try to hide somehow but between or behind the website and do not really be great clarity of who they are and where they are. Who's behind that business. Now, you mentioned obviously having customers giving a review for a product or for service or something like that.

00;03;10;00 - 00;03;26;01
Speaker 2
That's the most important thing. And also, you mentioned Amazon, which they got in trouble a while ago before not being trustworthy at all. So you should do it better than them. Tell me how do you get started? Was building up this kind of trust profile on your business?

00;03;26;03 - 00;03;46;01
Speaker 1
To get started, it's actually quite easy. You just go to the trust profile that come and see what we already have about your website. What we do is we we collect data from the internet about trust sales, about, malware, about, is there no warning about your site from the police? All those kinds of things.

00;03;46;04 - 00;04;08;10
Speaker 1
Then you can log into your profile and then you can adjust it, correct the data. Sometimes it's not fully correct. Of course you can adjust some things, like your address. But the easiest thing you can do, and that's also the easiest thing you can also do at your own site, is to present yourself like the easiest thing in trust is to show the human behind the web shop.

00;04;08;12 - 00;04;26;22
Speaker 1
Because there are so many sites, it's so not personal at all. The easiest thing you could do is just show yourself. Show your story. Why did you start this business with a picture of yourself or your team? And you can also do that trust profile. So that's like an easy adjustment. It takes you a couple of minutes to upload a picture, upload a personal story.

00;04;26;29 - 00;04;55;17
Speaker 1
Why do you do this business? What's your passion with your products? That already builds a lot of, trust. So I think that's a good starting point. It's check your address data, make sure it's there, and then, make sure your personal story is there a good introduction text about your shop, some product categories? I don't know why, but many shops don't have a good about Us page, and that's one of the main things in building trust, like an address is really important.

00;04;55;17 - 00;05;19;09
Speaker 1
A phone number is important. But also show yourself people likes to do business with people. Absolutely. Just going one step back to the address. My son, he's, ten years old, and then he really sees a lot of goods online. He wants purchase all the time. And then he comes to me like that. This is really cheap.

00;05;19;09 - 00;05;42;14
Speaker 1
I want to buy this. And of course, I'm in the trust business, so first thing I do is check things about first working the software website. But also, maybe even before that, I check where is the site from? I am from the Netherlands, and I don't want goods to be shipped from the United States to the to the Netherlands, or from China to the Netherlands or from Spain.

00;05;42;16 - 00;06;07;02
Speaker 1
I want him to order at a Dutch web shop. So the address is not only to prove you're trustworthy, it's also to show like, hey, I'm from your country, you're okay to to order here. But back to your question. How do you start building trust? But first profile, start with cleaning your profile. Make your, show yourself, make it look beautiful.

00;06;07;05 - 00;06;31;29
Speaker 1
And then the best thing is, really, it's so a quick boost is first to invite some existing customers. So, ask some existing customers. What do you think about my service? You can do that for our system. And then once you get that first boost, boost, then you can like, connect automatically so that new customers will always, get new, invoice.

00;06;32;01 - 00;06;54;13
Speaker 2
Talking about reviews, reviews. When you start, you don't have any need that you should reach out to customers you already have. And sometimes you have reviews on other platforms. That might be Google, it might be Facebook. Whatever platform you have them. How do you make sure that you basically collect and bring everything that you have already out on trust somewhere on the interwebs?

00;06;54;15 - 00;06;59;14
Speaker 2
Back to your store, to your product detail page there. What matters the most?

00;06;59;16 - 00;07;23;09
Speaker 1
Actually, that's one of the unique things of our system, is that we combine, first data. So not only data that we have, but we also show if you have reviews on Google Places, if you have reviews on Facebook, the Spillers keel, and the many platforms, many review platforms, we combine that data into one profile and then give one overall ranking for the complete picture.

00;07;23;11 - 00;07;44;22
Speaker 1
And this you can integrate back into your website like in the sidebar. So that's always the first impression. Is the trust profile that comes with your complete overview of reviews. And if they click on it, they can also see what the source of that rating is. And I think that is really important that you always, if you aggregate data, is really important to show what the source of that data is.

00;07;44;22 - 00;08;04;13
Speaker 1
So people can see where does it come from. So actually that's one of the things that makes our system unique is that we bring together, practically all the reviews you have on the internet. Of course not every platform is then there in there, I think about 25 right now. So if you have another platform which we don't have, you can request it.

00;08;04;15 - 00;08;09;12
Speaker 1
And based upon the amount of times a platform is requested, we can add it now.

00;08;09;12 - 00;08;30;14
Speaker 2
Reviews building trust. It comes on different levels and it was different stages was in the funnel. You might do an email marketing campaign. Use it. There you have it on your home page. You have it on the product detail page, which then it basically focus more on the product and on the company. How would you use this difference of levels of content to get most out of it?

00;08;30;16 - 00;08;56;00
Speaker 1
I think you're already said it in the question. You have different levels. So what I was talking about just now is primarily shop reviews. When you first enter the website, there is like a sidebar that will show your overall rating. But even product reviews are even more important when you invite people, for a system. After they give a shop review, they will be shown a picture of the product that that they purchased, and then they can review their product.

00;08;56;02 - 00;09;35;23
Speaker 1
And, also with description, of course, then that data is uploaded back to your website and then at the products starts will be shown of course, but also the detailed descriptions of the reviews. And those are really important. Like it gives you content to your product page, which is pretty amazing for Google. But also, the viewers will see that a lot of people bought it that will give trust, but also they might see like somebody was not that happy because actually the size was a little bit different actually expected, which could help new customers to make the right choices.

00;09;35;28 - 00;10;01;13
Speaker 1
So it's not only about sales, it's also about informing people. Well, to make the right choices. And product reviews are really good in Google. So those product reviews, if you advertise in Google Shopping, those starts appear next to the advertisement. And that's a huge difference because it it triggers, it triggers to click on something that has starts instead of the ones that doesn't.

00;10;01;15 - 00;10;12;12
Speaker 1
So yeah, it's a great marketing tool next to showing that you are trustworthy, next to showing how people like the products, and so they make wise decisions on what to buy and what not to buy.

00;10;12;14 - 00;10;23;01
Speaker 2
Let's talk about the negative impact that you can create with trust or with testimonials and reviews. Sometimes I see stores that only have five star reviews and that's sort of questionable. What's your take on that?

00;10;23;04 - 00;10;48;17
Speaker 1
You must be very grateful for every one. Sorry. You you get, because it builds credibility for the overall picture. But also it is a chance to explain. So when somebody goes to a review page, they usually check out first the negative reviews. And if there are none then probably they will doubt all of your reviews.

00;10;48;20 - 00;11;12;20
Speaker 1
So then they will first check out your negative reviews. If there is one. If the response is like of the web shop owner, no, you're not right and this is not the case. And then you will feel like I don't know how this will go, but if the workshop on a response politely and says like I understand the problem, this is what happened and we'll see how we can fix it, then you will feel like, okay, a problem happens, which is like human.

00;11;12;20 - 00;11;36;18
Speaker 1
Everywhere you work, problems happen, but they fix it in a correct way. So I see negative reviews as an opportunity. While all positive reviews is not that trustworthy. And also there are a lot of fake reviews around, so you need to make sure that your customers will feel that these reviews are real and they can only be real if they are real.

00;11;36;22 - 00;12;08;21
Speaker 1
People smell it. They smell if reviews are not because the the text in the reviews is always similar, it has to be in place that same dates. It just doesn't feel real and a good mixture with good replies. Using an external platform like reviews hosted on your own website. That's like killing, because you can choose whichever you publish on which you don't publish, and that doesn't feel really trustworthy.

00;12;08;23 - 00;12;31;23
Speaker 1
And an external platform like us, but like many other external review platforms, have algorithms to counter fake reviews. They do moderation, when they think something is a fake review. And I think that's really important. We delete loads of them on a daily basis. Unfortunately, you don't want to be concerned with these fake reviews, but it's going on all the time.

00;12;31;26 - 00;12;42;03
Speaker 1
People like to take a shortcut. They like to cheat. They like to build that trust faster than is actually reality. And we need to counter that.

00;12;42;06 - 00;12;58;20
Speaker 2
Good point. You got me on that one. Looking for the bad reviews first. I'm one of these. I'm always looking for two and three star ones because I want to know what can go wrong or what's wrong with the product. Now, you mentioned fake reviews, and, I mean, that's something that marketers do, which is not a good read.

00;12;58;20 - 00;13;12;05
Speaker 2
They're trying to build up a of trying to find a fast way to build up reviews. Let's talk about the right way to build up reviews. How do you outreach to a customer? What's the perfect way to get them to leave a review?

00;13;12;07 - 00;13;31;15
Speaker 1
Of course there are many, many ways. The easiest way which everybody already has is like they can find you in Google place and time, right to review. But what happens if you only have that is that people that have like, really want to express their opinion. They will go there and write a review that means probably your cousin, your nephew.

00;13;31;15 - 00;13;56;06
Speaker 1
They really want to express how happy they are with you. But most of all it is people that had the negative experience. So if you just have, an option on the internet to write a review, then most probably a lot of complaints will go there. But the vast majority of happy customers that are just happy, they will not do the effort to actually go somewhere and write review.

00;13;56;09 - 00;14;18;15
Speaker 1
You need to make it really easy to them. So what we do is after every order, we send out an email invite, which is really short text. I know many people get a lot of advice. They're a little bit annoyed with it, but we'd like to make it as small as possible. With directly, you can click on the source and then afterwards you just need to write the description and that's it.

00;14;18;15 - 00;14;42;28
Speaker 1
So you need to make it as easy as possible because people if you if a lot of effort is needed to write a review, then only people that have a really explicit experience will actually write a read. And you want that fast majority of your average customer to write a review, because it's not only what they write is important, but also the amount of reviews, also make a big difference.

00;14;43;01 - 00;14;47;25
Speaker 1
If you have nine reviews or you have 941, that makes a big difference.

00;14;47;27 - 00;14;59;10
Speaker 2
Would you use discount codes or, coupons or anything to motivate them to leave a review? Or would you just go for a plain, ask for a review?

00;14;59;12 - 00;15;21;07
Speaker 1
Depends on, the country, I think, I'm from the Netherlands. That's our region, or in the Netherlands we are. But think cool. And founded in 2010. And amongst those years things changed. So, about five years ago, I would advise people to, give out a promotional code to get a lot of reviews. But the law in the European Union.

00;15;21;07 - 00;15;42;20
Speaker 1
So I don't know how the law is in Argentina or in the United States, but law in the European Union states that if you reward someone for giving a review, then you should. It should be clear to the viewer that it is a promotional review, and that decreases the value of the review directly. So we just say, don't do that.

00;15;42;27 - 00;16;15;28
Speaker 1
Just make it as easy as possible and invite everybody. But don't give promotions, to give a region. But that's for European Union. I know other countries will not have this law. And then it's okay to, give a promotion code or like a discount at your next review. But I think it's really important you give that to everyone that wrote a review if it's positive or negative, if you start pushing only for positive reviews, people will start distrusting you just by asking that the trust in your company will decrease.

00;16;16;00 - 00;16;20;08
Speaker 1
So be careful with it. It's an easy way to gain more reviews, but be really careful.

00;16;20;10 - 00;16;36;21
Speaker 2
Okay? No, makes perfect sense. Let's talk about internalization. Multi-language multi localization stores obviously on a page or on was the trust elements that you have. You want to make sure that your visitor has it in their language. How do you deal with that?

00;16;36;23 - 00;17;12;27
Speaker 1
I talked about it in the last minute. Our region is in Netherlands, so Dutch is our main language in our original company. And then we wanted to go abroad. So extend it from there. So we extended to Germany with German to Belgium, adding France, France to Spain, adding Spanish, United States, adding English. So, we try to build a global reach, but for now it's eight languages, which is Spanish, Italian, French, German, English, Croatian and Bulgarian.

00;17;12;29 - 00;17;33;26
Speaker 1
Bulgarian is really cool because it's even a different alphabet. So it's really cool to see our software in Bulgarian because it looks completely different. It's it's amazing. And if you use like or free service, just as a profile of trust, you can only use one language and then if you go to bits of questions, it's possible to use eight languages.

00;17;33;29 - 00;17;54;04
Speaker 1
The profile will appear in eight languages. The integrations at your web shop will appear in eight languages, depending on the or the Lang Tech or, the browser language and the preview invites, of course. So the preview invites will also appear in the right language for the right customer.

00;17;54;07 - 00;18;03;20
Speaker 2
Tell me a bit about the onboarding process with trust. Trust profile.com. How does it work? Is there any kind of homework that I need to do before I can get started with you guys, or how does it work?

00;18;03;23 - 00;18;24;29
Speaker 1
The first step is to look for your own website on our website, on trust profile. There you will see what what is already there, and you can claim it and improve the data. That is a free process, because we think it's important that everybody's able to build an overview of their trustworthiness. It's completely free. It will stay free.

00;18;25;01 - 00;18;49;04
Speaker 1
But there is a catch, of course, if they will start using on your system, start sending out invites. That's all paid subscriptions. And the multi-language feature is a paid subscription. But just claim a profile, make it more beautiful. That's free and it will already give you a back link. So what do you have to lose? And then the best thing is to integrate it directly with your store, Shopify.

00;18;49;04 - 00;19;09;29
Speaker 1
It is in the UPS and the App Store of Shopify. You can just activate it and connect it to, to trust profile. And then it's possible to have a sidebar appear in your own website so that visitors directly see, like, okay, this is how they look on trust profile without leaving your website. So if you click on it, there's a pop up with the profile.

00;19;10;02 - 00;19;25;21
Speaker 1
It's not that they're going to a new page, and I think that's really important. You don't want visitors to leave your page. And also if you activate the review system, the orders will be automatically sent to Trust profile, where we can send out review invites.

00;19;25;24 - 00;19;34;10
Speaker 2
Okay. No, that's on very straightforward. Before we come to the end of the coffee break today, is there anything that you want to share with our listeners that we haven't touched on?

00;19;34;13 - 00;19;59;29
Speaker 1
Maybe my brush, because I've been at Inntrepreneur since 2008. I think I've done many businesses, small businesses, I love doing that. And I met so many entrepreneurs. And what I really like about entrepreneurs is you have an idea, you try for it, you go for it and you grasp it. And then there's one hurdle and it breaks it down, and then you climb up again and you go again.

00;20;00;01 - 00;20;24;18
Speaker 1
I really love that. And that's also what risk profile is for. Like in small, medium sized businesses. They need to trust. So actually my passion with this platform is to enable small, medium sized businesses to get their place on the internet, to be able to show yourself like, hey, I'm okay. Of course, we also show you show if you're not okay, because otherwise there would be no value in the products.

00;20;24;22 - 00;20;45;19
Speaker 1
So we also show warnings of yeah, the please trend Micro Safe Browsing, if you did a lot of fake reviews, we will also show that. So it's not only about positive, but it was built to enable small medium sized businesses to show that, hey, I'm okay. You don't need to go to Amazon. You can also go to my business.

00;20;45;22 - 00;21;08;05
Speaker 1
And yeah, I love that. And I think I hate to say it, but I think I filled about five times building a business. And now since 2017, I'm in this business and I'm loving it. So I don't feel this time, I'm pretty sure that, but this process of building businesses, going for it, aiming for it, that's amazing.

00;21;08;07 - 00;21;10;11
Speaker 1
And I love that.

00;21;10;14 - 00;21;28;21
Speaker 2
Yeah, I think a lot of listeners can relate to that. There's a lot of small and medium enterprises, solopreneurs, side hustlers listening to this show, and they're going through the stages of becoming an entrepreneur. And as I said, you run into a wall and you tear it down, and then you continue to your towards your goal. And so entrepreneurship definitely is a roller coaster.

00;21;28;24 - 00;21;47;12
Speaker 2
But everything that helps is building up trust. And I think that's a very important pillar of being an entrepreneur. It helps there. And I think trust profile dotcom, if you're an e-commerce, if you're selling a service or product, is, an integral part of that and will help you to build up the reputation of the trust you need to grow your business.

00;21;47;14 - 00;21;50;12
Speaker 2
Cool. Where can people find out more about you guys?

00;21;50;15 - 00;22;05;20
Speaker 1
That's true growth of the company. Everything is there. And of course you can also check LinkedIn. Find me there. And, always you can send an email, connect to us, Shopify app store. We try to be all over the place.

00;22;05;23 - 00;22;20;04
Speaker 2
Okay. I will put the links in the show notes and you just one click away then. Thanks. So much for giving us an overview of about the best ways to build up trust with you for your business, not on your on your store for for your business. Overall, I know a lot of people will check out your website.

00;22;20;04 - 00;22;27;07
Speaker 2
I went to your homepage and had a look and I don't see what the results will be for myself. Thanks so much for your time today.

00;22;27;09 - 00;22;27;25
Speaker 1
Thanks a lot.