Wholesale reviews play an important role in the success of your e-commerce business. A staggering 95% of customers read reviews before they buy a product online. When dealing with wholesale customers who buy products in bulk, you can bet they will be looking at reviews.
Wholesale reviews tend to be very different from those that you see on retail websites. In this article, we’ll discuss the difference between retail and wholesale reviews. Then, we’ll go over three tips to get more wholesale reviews and to use them effectively. Let’s get to it!
What’s The Difference Between Retail And Wholesale Reviews?
You might think that any positive review is a good review, but that’s not the case when it comes to wholesale stores. By and large, wholesale customers have different expectations when it comes to making a purchase.
If you’re a wholesaler on the hunt for a new supplier, you might look through their reviews to find out information about the following:
- What the shipping experience is like
- What type of post-sales support the store provides
- Any type of manufacturing errors in the product
Retail customers mostly care about product quality, getting good support, and making purchases that meet their needs. That’s all valuable information, but your wholesale customers might also want to know if you take weeks to ship a bulk order.
If you’re getting positive reviews from wholesale customers about the quality of your products and how you operate, you need to leverage those testimonials. Let’s talk about how to do that.
How To Leverage Wholesale Reviews To Increase Sales (3 Tips)
You can’t leverage wholesale reviews if you’re not getting any feedback from your customers. That’s why your first order of business should be to get your first review.
1. Ask past customers for reviews
The simplest way to get more reviews is to ask customers for them. A lot of buyers might not even think about leaving a review, even if it only takes them a few minutes. However, simply asking them drastically increases the chances that they’ll find the time to do so.
There are several great ways to ask customers to leave you a testimonial, including:
- Sending an automated email after they make a purchase
- Prompting them to leave a review after the checkout is complete
- Sending an email reminder some time after the customer receives the product
Since you’re dealing with wholesale customers, shipping times can often be longer than with retail purchases. That means you’re better off waiting a bit to ask for wholesale reviews.
Traditionally, online stores ask for reviews via email instead of a phone call because it can seem less aggressive. However, if you regularly touch base with wholesale customers via phone to help them coordinate purchases, it can’t hurt to ask them to leave a review if they’re happy with your services.
2. Use wholesale reviews to register more customers
Wholesale reviews can help you get more purchases from existing users. However, they can also help you recruit new customers altogether.
If you run a wholesale store, then you should be using a custom registration page (you can do this using Wholesale Lead Capture). With a custom page, you can ask customers for detailed business information, documents, and more:
Traditionally, a lot of users leave registration pages before completing the process. That might be because they want to look elsewhere to make a purchase. One way to entice users into completing the process is to include wholesale reviews within the registration page.
Adding one or two recent testimonials can give users the push they need to become customers. Once a user registers, they’re much more likely to make an initial purchase and you can always encourage them to do so with an email campaign.
3. Feature wholesale reviews as case studies
As we mentioned before, wholesale customers look at reviews, hoping to find a lot more information than you’d see on sites such as Amazon or eBay. They want to know about shipping times, manufacturing errors, and above all else, how well a product sells.
If you have any wholesale reviews that discuss their success with one or more of your store’s products, then you want to put those testimonials in the spotlight. You can do that in several ways, including:
- Showing those testimonials in your homepage
- Adding detailed testimonials in your wholesale registration page
- Including featured testimonials in your email campaigns
The more detailed a review is, the more effective it will be at helping you increase sales. However, you can’t force customers to leave multi-page case studies for every purchase that they make.
Luckily for you, a lot of wholesalers love to talk about their business. If you have any products that are helping customers make a killing, they’ll probably mention that in their reviews, and sales will follow.
Conclusion
Because potential wholesale customers often make bulk purchases, they tend to place a higher value on the trustworthiness of your business. Often, they rely on wholesale customer reviews as a source of reassurance. Fortunately, there are actionable steps you can take to leverage reviews to your advantage.
In this article, we’ve explored three key ways to do this:
- Ask past customers for reviews.
- Use wholesale reviews to register more customers.
- Feature wholesale reviews as case studies.
Do you have any questions about how to get more wholesale reviews? Let’s talk about them in the comments section below!
