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Shoppers often rely on unadulterated opinions of former customers to judge whether or not they want to make a purchase. This makes online reviews a key factor in people’s purchasing journey—and it’s why there are so many review websites where customers go to share their experiences with both local businesses and national brands.
\nAs a small business owner, collecting customer reviews is one of the best ways you can build consumer confidence and expand your market reach. Here are strategies for getting business listings on different sites and getting as many positive online reviews as possible.
\nTable of Contents
\nCustomer reviews benefit small businesses through the concept of social proof: The human tendency to base our decisions on the actions and opinions of other people. Specifically, consumer reviews can benefit businesses because they can help:
\nAllow customers to leave product reviews on your store
\nCustomers can rate and review products to help other people decide what to buy, and also provide valuable feedback to you.
\nEvery positive review—whether it’s posted on a popular review site or your own website—has the potential to boost your brand reputation. Still, there are certain third-party review sites worth prioritizing, since they get a lot of traffic and people already trust them. Here are 10 (plus your own) of the best review sites for online businesses.
\nWhen you set up a Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business), you get placement on Google Maps. You also get a forum for Google customer reviews, where anyone with a Google account can leave feedback about your business. Given Google’s continued dominance in online search and the number of people who rely on Google Maps to get around and find local businesses, it pays to have a presence on its platform. You can solicit Google reviews by directing people to your Google business listing.
\nYelp specializes in local search, so it’s particularly useful if your business has a physical location. But even if you work exclusively in ecommerce, Yelp reviews improve your online visibility. That’s because Yelp devotes a lot of attention to search engine placement, so your Yelp listing might show up in a search result ahead of your own website. Yelp encourages you to set up a business profile and let active Yelpers organically review your company.
\nFacebook is known for connecting family and friends, but it also functions as a review site for businesses. You can create a Facebook page for your business and encourage people to like your page and leave reviews.
\nWhile review sites offer value, there may be no better place to feature positive reviews than within your own ecommerce store. The Shopify Product Reviews app and the Shop App both let you display client feedback directly on your Shopify online store, providing on-the-page social proof to interested buyers. The app lets you publish, hide, filter, and manage reviews quickly and easily. It also lets you add review scores to your Google search results.
\nTrustpilot lets users write reviews about individual products and companies as a whole. This helps it stand out among business review websites, which typically only feature one of these review categories. Trustpilot operates on a paid subscription model, but even its free tier offers Shopify integration.
\nThe Better Business Bureau (BBB) is a nonprofit organization that rates companies on an A to F scale, and it offers accreditation, for a fee, which signals to consumers you’re an honest business. These ratings and accreditations can show whether a business is reliable and trustworthy, and whether it proactively addresses customer complaints. The Better Business Bureau’s own research says 88% of consumers said they were more likely to purchase from a business if it had an A+ or A rating, 78% of consumers said they were more likely to purchase from a business if it displayed a BBB Accreditation seal, and 68% of consumers said they were less likely to purchase from a business if it had an F or D rating.
\nIf you sell on Amazon, reviews are of paramount importance. Positive Amazon customer reviews can push your product to the top of a product search page, while negative reviews can relegate you to the bottom. Note that Amazon forbids the practice of offering people rewards for their reviews. One way to get more reviews on Amazon is to make a high-quality product and aggressively price it to gain market share. Later, when you’ve amassed a large number of reviews, you can consider raising your price to improve your profit margin.
\nAliExpress is a Chinese online marketplace with a growing presence in the United States. It is known for rock-bottom prices, which draw bargain shoppers. AliExpress is much like Amazon in that reviews can boost your listing on search results pages. AliExpress reviews tend to be shorter than those on Amazon, which may incentivize happy customers to quickly type a few words of praise.
\nAngi (formerly Angie’s List) specializes in local businesses and the service industry—think contractors, music teachers, and caterers. If you exclusively work in ecommerce, you may not need an Angi profile, but if you provide services or operate within a specific local area, a listing may help. Angi charges site visitors a fee to access its review listings. This means you can only request customer feedback from Angi subscribers.
\nFoursquare allows users to “check in” at a local business. It also provides a forum for customer reviews, which can be given on a scale of 1–10. While Foursquare reviews may not directly boost ecommerce sales, they can definitely improve the visibility of your brick-and-mortar locations. Its default view presents businesses in order of their customer ratings, so keeping a high score boosts your presence on the platform.
\nLong before online review sites transformed the retail market, shoppers found business by searching the Yellow Pages, a massive print directory that was delivered for free to people’s homes. Today the Yellow Pages name lives on in an online directory. Like Foursquare and Yelp, yellowpages.com (also called YP) emphasizes local listings and includes map views. If you’re rated by the Better Business Bureau (see item 6), you can feature that on your YP listing. You can also indicate how long you’ve been in business and how long you’ve been listed in Yellow Pages.
\n\nAsking people to leave you reviews on sites is a marketing strategy in and of itself. Here are four strategies for gaining positive ecommerce reviews.
\nOne of the best review-generating strategies is also among the simplest. Reach out to past clients via email newsletter, text, or phone, and ask them to review your business. Make it easy for them to do so by sending a link that takes them right to your review page.
\nSome clients struggle to summarize their customer experience in written word format, but they may be happy to record themselves talking and leave a video review. Sites like Amazon encourage video reviews, so you can remind your clients that it’s up to them to decide what format they want to use to leave feedback about your business.
\nRather than rely on general purpose sites like Google, you can focus on sites that cover your particular niche industry. Think of musical equipment reviews on Sweetwater, or pet supply reviews on PetSmart. You can also encourage engagement by joining forums like Reddit, where users may talk about your business. Although Reddit does not contain formal reviews, it hosts communities of like-minded people open to recommendations; you may have fans on there who welcome the chance to sing your praises.
\nYou can offer past customers incentives (like a discount on their next purchase or a free item) if they leave you a review. This helps, as 73% of consumers say an incentive would make them more likely to leave a review. Ethically, you should offer the same incentives for any review, whether positive or negative. It’s unethical for businesses to only offer rewards for five-star reviews. Note that some sites, notably Yelp and Amazon, discourage soliciting reviews in any form. But generally, asking for a review—and not dictating what you’d like the review to say—is OK to do.
\nReviews are effective because they offer social proof about your business. Many potential customers rely on reviews from real people who’ve done business with you in the past to gain confidence before they purchase your product or service.
\nAYes, it’s wise to respond to reviews, both positive and negative. Responding to your customers on review sites demonstrates you are actively engaged in your business and care about the client experience. It also helps forge a more personal connection between you and those customers, and this can lead to repeat business.
\nFake reviews are a scourge of small-business owners, and they must be dealt with quickly before they can spread. Immediately report these reviews to platform moderators on the specific review site and follow up with them until the fake reviews are taken down.
\nWhen asking for reviews, avoid asking for specific language or star ratings. Reviews should reflect the customer’s honest opinion, not the business owner’s.
\nhttps://www.shopify.com/blog/review-sites
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A new AI service for “parsing” music tracks.
\nThe Mikrotakt neural engine can split any track into vocals, instrumentals, bass, drums, and other audio tracks.
\nIn addition, you can upscale vocal tracks to clean up the voice and adjust the pitch. This feature is ideal for musicians and content makers.
\nThe new Chinese model DeepSeek-V3 becomes a competitor to ChatGPT:
\n– registration requires only your email and password
\n– the neural is quite fast: answers are generated in seconds
\n– Thinking mode, where AI turns into an academic on any topic
\n– the model can read diagrams and generate any texts
\n– files of different sizes can be uploaded
\n– the neuron is good at working with code
\n– absolutely free
\nHailuo AI from China can clone any voice without censorship in a few seconds. Its library includes more than 300 voices in different languages and intonations. The model also allows for full customization: you can change the tone, speed, and timbre and add sound effects.
\nThe Chinese have released a worthy competitor to ChatGPT.
\nThe Qwen2.5-Plus chatbot provides accurate answers, can read documents and images, and is completely free of charge.
\nKrea allows rotating models in its “Photoshop”
\nKrea developers have come up with an incredible feature for their neuro-Photoshop: you can drop any object and edit its position in 3D space.
\nThe Upscayl neuron has received a 16x upscale, so now it can save even the most hopeless photos. The download is free.
\nThe Wegic neural network has become even cooler.
\nNow websites are generated in seconds, and all your edits can be made with simple queries.
\nYou just throw in a promo and you have a perfectly(?) designed website.
\nA working AI meme generator.
\nThe Brainrot neuron follows trends, selects relevant images, and produces memes that are even funny to read. And all this is free.
\nGoogle has released a top free guide to AI agents.
\nIt contains everything: basic knowledge, tools, architecture, training methods, and a step-by-step recipe for creating agents on LangChain and LangGraph.
\nIt is a cool service for learning languages with an AI interlocutor.
\nThe Lingocat neuron imitates the native speaker, gives feedback, and has tasks to improve skills. And all this is free of charge.
\nThe free neural from the Chinese outperforms(?) ChatGPT.
\nA new model called R1 has been released that outperforms the best version of ChatGPT. R1 is twice as powerful as the previous version and it has literally everything you need: programming, math, rewriting, and everything else. It’s worth noting that if you look at the graph of how it “outperforms”, it doesn’t encourage you to switch from OpenAI to the Chinese neural.
\nUniversal AI photo editor.
\nGenerating, replacing, or deleting details, styling, changing the background, and upscaling – and this is not the whole list of functions of the new and free Dzine neural.
\nPrompt generator for ChatGPT
\nPromptEngine works according to the official recommendations of OpenAI. The service also supports other language models: Claude, Gemini, LLama, and Mistral, which can be selected from a list.
\nOpenAI President showed a feature for the o1 model.
\nAccording to Greg Brockman, the o1 model works a bit differently than other types of AI, and to achieve high performance, you need to follow a certain plan in writing promos:
\nthe goal, response format, warning, and context.
\n(The Anatomy of an o1 Prompt attached an example image)
\nChatGPT can now write first.
\nThe neuron will remind you of important things like a real assistant. For example, in the morning, it can provide a ready-made excuse for being late for work, and in the evening, a convincing explanation for a deadline shift.
\nSo far, only 10 regular tasks are available, but by the end of the week, all paid users will receive the new feature.
\nOpenAI offers free tokens for ChatGPT.
\nHowever, there is a caveat: in exchange, they ask for permission to use your promos to train models.
\nThe offer lasts until the end of February. Pro users can get up to 1 million tokens per day, and mini-version users can get up to 10 million!
\nTrump has canceled Biden’s decree on control over AI development.
\nThe document, signed in 2023, required developers to share test results with the government to reduce risks. However, Republicans insisted that this restricted freedom of speech and hindered progress. Now, AI development is unrestricted again.
\nChina will organize a competition between robots and humans
\nIn April, China will host the world’s first half marathon where people will compete with robots. The race will involve 12,000 runners and dozens of androids. Technology versus biology is a real race of the era.
\nAI tokens soar after the Stargate project announcement.
\nOn January 23, Trump announced a $500 billion investment from the private sector in the development of AI infrastructure in the United States. As part of this project, OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle will create a joint venture called Stargate. Immediately after this announcement, the AI and big data token market showed significant growth:
\n– AI16Z and AI Rig Complex (ARC) grew by 30% per day
\n– GRIFFAIN and ZEREBRO tokens doubled in price
\n– MetamonkeyAi (MMAI) showed an increase of 152.25%
\n– FLock.io (FLOCK) – by 57%
\nThe smartest o3-mini model will be free!
\nSam Altman said that this neural will be able to solve complex problems in programming, math, and data analysis – all for free.
\nFeatures of o3-mini:
\n– advanced analytical abilities
\n– accelerated data processing speed
\n– ease of use for everyone
\nThe release is planned for the near future.
\nOracle founder supports AI totalitarianism
\nBillionaire Larry Ellison stated that the total surveillance system with artificial intelligence based on cameras, drones, and police recorders will force citizens to “behave in the best way possible”.
\nOracle has recently entered into a partnership with OpenAI and Softbank. Digital dystopia is becoming a reality.
\nThe first Chinese base for robot training was opened in Shanghai
\nThey will learn to help around the house, play football, and assemble cars.
\nThe data obtained in the process will be shared with various companies.
\nCurrently, the center has more than 100 androids and plans to expand to a thousand by 2027.
\nChatGPT can now create any kind of application – a new Canvas feature has been released that runs the code right in the browser.
\n– There are no limits to ideas – we invent and ask AI to draw up a detailed project description.
\n– Copy and paste the request into the chat with the neuron, but add the “/canvas” command at the end.
\n– AI will produce a fully working application in React and HTML in a second – you can test it right away!
\n– There are no limits or restrictions – you can even clone YouTube in your browser.
\nThe feature is free.
\nTop 5 promos for working with any amount of information – the neural will squeeze out all the “water” from the source and give you only concise, verified facts:
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