The success of your dropshipping business highly depends on
public opinion. In this article, we’re going to talk about the role your online
business reputation plays in your profit generation. Also, we will discuss how
it forms and how you can establish a good, money-making online reputation.
How do people decide whether or not to buy an item from a store? Nowadays your
success depends on what people say about you more than ever before.
In other words, your reputation has become your best commercial!
Your online business reputation is too
important to let it run its course
Indeed, when it comes to the ecommerce business, it’s not wise to count on luck
too much. Your reputation is vital.
Dropshipping is a really competitive field. There is always somebody who is
eager to take your place.
And despite the fact that your online store is not as big and famous as United
Airlines, you’re more vulnerable to public opinion.
How come?
Well, it’s simple.
What do you usually do before going to a restaurant or booking a hotel for the
first time?
Right! You look it up in TripAdvisor. There you can find ratings and reviews
from the previous visitors. This helps you find out whether a restaurant is
worth visiting or not.
Things work similarly with online stores. A research conducted in 2015 shows that
82% of US adults read reviews at least sometimes before making a purchase for
the first time. At the same time, 40% of them do it on a regular basis.
Meanwhile, 51% of Americans think that online reviews paint a trustworthy
picture. Quite remarkably, 65% of those who always read these reviews believe
they’re accurate. This research reveals one more interesting detail.
The more people go shopping online, the more they tend to read reviews. 67% of
weekly online shoppers always read customer feedback before buying a new item.
They’re followed by 54% of monthly shoppers and 38% of those who go shopping
online less.
Now, consider this: what if customers come across bad comments about your
dropshipping store?
You’ll lose the better part of your clients, pure and simple.
Well, now you see it for yourself whether your business reputation is
important.
Where your online business reputation
comes from
Now you know how much reputation matters in dropshipping.
And the major challenge is to build a good one.
But before this, you need to track down the sources where your business
reputation forms.
It seems to be impossible to explore the whole Internet sniffing out what
people think of your online store.
Luckily, you don’t need to!
There are three main sources on the Internet which matter for your online
business reputation.
1. Google search results
A research shows that users are unlikely to go beyond the
first page of Google search results while looking for something. Here on their
right, they can see all the necessary information about your online store
(reviews, rating, etc.)
Also, you can use Google Alert to gain more control over your brand mentions.
It’s a tool that looks for a new content which lives up to your search terms.
Once it finds something, you get a notification.
2. Social media
Social networks are not the places meant for leaving
customer reviews. However, people discuss brands, businesses and online stores
in various communities on social media.
Since the audience of social networks is constantly growing, you can’t ignore
this channel. You need to keep track of the most popular communities where your
store could be mentioned, and pay attention to the external reviews left on
your own account.
3. Online review sites
You could have guessed it.
If hotel and restaurant businesses have TripAdvisor, there must be a similar
thing for stores’ reviews. Websites such as Choice.com, Trustpilot.com, etc.
allow customers to evaluate brands quality and write their comments about
online stores they visited.
How to establish a good reputation for your online store
Let’s look back at the incident with United Airlines.
Of course, to some degree, the specific situation in the industry allowed the
company to overcome the reputational crisis. But there was something more.
Its officials took some actions to take the heat off the company. They made
some public statements, solved the problem with Dr. Dao, and took measures to
prevent such situations.
This let the airline save its face and report a profit of $818 million in the
end of June 2017.