Travel firms should make sure they respond to both negative and positive reviews for maximum impact, delegates attending a Feefo workshop were told.
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Travolution Summit: Invest in people power to get the most out of reviews
Travel firms should make sure they respond to both negative and positive reviews for maximum impact, delegates attending a Feefo workshop were told.
Matt Eames, sales director of the reviews platform, said that customers were looking for trust more than anything else. He said reviews can be exploited to increase conversion.
Placing reviews on product pages and Google ‘gold stars’ generated through use of platforms like Feefo next to ‘book now’ buttons have been seen to encourage bookings.
Eames said: “Lots of companies tend to respond just to negative reviews, however, Google loves to see those conversations going backwards and forwards.
“If you’re going to do reviews you need to invest in people power to do them properly.”
He added that using the feedback from reviews and ensuring keywords are provided in response, pages can be moved from the supplemental index on Google to a main index.
Drawing the content into product pages can therefore help with SEO natural rankings, said Eames, enabling firms to reduce their CPC spend.
Expedia was said to have seen a 20% increase in conversions by doing this.
Eames also said, gold stars that appear in search results have been seen to make it 17% more likely a user will click on the link than for results appearing above with no stars.
“Also, it appears the user is coming through with a heightened element of trust towards your brand and they are converting higher,” said Eames.
Social traffic can also be generated by review content, if it is drawn into networks like Facebook.
Internally, reviews can be used as KPIs for staff and for firms to hone their product offering and gain valuable analytical insight into their operations.
Eames said: “Put great data in and you get great data out. If you are not utilising consumer reviews you can bet your competitors are.”
