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  David Cox July 21, 2011 at 5:39pm

  Incentives do work... a Free lawn cut almost always gets my card given to friends and neighbours after a big hedge reduction etc so no reason why not with reviews!
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  Claire Brown July 21, 2011 at 5:44pm

  personally I wouldn't give anything away for free to induce people to give you a testimonial, - you want real reviews not forced ones.

   

  Why use review sites if you have your own website? - that is where your customers are most likely to be looking for information about you.

   

  I thought that this blog post - how to get testimonials working for you, had some great ideas
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  David Cox July 21, 2011 at 5:52pm

  Its not about giving or forcing a testimonial... your asking the customer to give you their time, to write something up, so you give some time in Return. You dont have to do it every time, but it creates goodwill and makes everyone happy!
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  Claire Brown July 21, 2011 at 10:17pm

  thanks for that Gary, - hadn't come across free index before, will have to look into that more
  
  Gary @ Acer Paving & Landscaping said:
  

  We use Freeindex.

  I add a link to the "add a review" section on Freeindex to an email when I send the invoice at the end of a job.

  I think your 40% figure is OK, not everyone wants to give a review and in my opinion, it shouldn't be forced on the customer in any way.

  Claire said, "Why use review sites if you have your own website? - that is where your customers are most likely to be looking for information about you".

  My answer would be:

  Because the review count and stars show up in Google searches against your Company and make it far more visible and in my opinion, more likely to be clicked on. Search for a service near you on Google and you will see exactly what I mean.

  Secondly, If you embed the reviews in the front page of your website, ( which you need to do - it's easy on Freeindex ), then visitors to your site can see up to date reviews without visiting elsewhere. This is far better, ( in my opinion ), than a testimonial page buried somewhere within your site or expecting people to navigate to another site just to see your reviews..

  Finally, don't worry about the people who have false or repeat reviews linked to them, people will always abuse any system that's set up to try to get an unfair advantage, just do things right yourself and you won't go far wrong.
• PRO

  Ayegardening Ltd July 22, 2011 at 8:53am

  Thanks everyone for the replies. You have all really helped.
  David: you are right- to write a review takes the customers time- also sometimes they don't know how to compose a review- so although it's nice to offer something back I've decided that we won't offer gardening in return- instead we will include some information on our emails on how to write honest, informative reviews for businesses.
  
  Claire: thank you for the website link- it was interesting and useful. You are right lots of customers do look at our testimonials page but like Gary said it's our free index, qype and cylex reviews that are displayed on google searches.
  
  Also Gary, thanks for helping me to remember that yes some people cheat at the review system but as long as we do the right thing- like you said -we won't go wrong.
  
  Thanks everyone!
  Susan
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  Andy Lawrence July 24, 2011 at 1:41am

  No.

  Just do the job so well they feel compelled to write about it.
• PRO

  Ayegardening Ltd July 24, 2011 at 6:31pm

  Good point :)
  
  Andy Lawrence said:

  No.

  Just do the job so well they feel compelled to write about it.
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  Bridgman Garden Furniture July 25, 2011 at 11:33am

  If you are running an e-commerce website one great way to get reviews is to send out a short email a few days after the product has been dispatched. In this email thank them (again) for their custom and request a short review on your Google places page. This would have given them enough time to receive the product, and if you have offered a good product/service customers are more likely to give you a glowing review.

   

  In the past few days Google has had to stop indexing Yelp, Qype, Yell etc for reviews - Google overhauls place pages. This has brought some uncertainty to how Google will display reviews.

   

  The safest bet is to send customers a link to leave a review on your Google places page, or directly on your website.

   

  Robert.
• PRO

  Ayegardening Ltd July 25, 2011 at 9:58pm

  Oh I didn't realise that google have stopped doing that! Just been emailing them to link up our qype, freeindex reviews etc. But guess we should stick to customers putting feedback on website or straight onto google places.

  Thanks for the info!
  
  Bridgman Garden Furniture said:

  If you are running an e-commerce website one great way to get reviews is to send out a short email a few days after the product has been dispatched. In this email thank them (again) for their custom and request a short review on your Google places page. This would have given them enough time to receive the product, and if you have offered a good product/service customers are more likely to give you a glowing review.

   

  In the past few days Google has had to stop indexing Yelp, Qype, Yell etc for reviews - Google overhauls place pages. This has brought some uncertainty to how Google will display reviews.

   

  The safest bet is to send customers a link to leave a review on your Google places page, or directly on your website.

   

  Robert.