7 Online Reputation Building Tips For eCommerce Brands

Gone are the days when your online reputation was just an option - but now, the picture has changed, and it has become unnecessary for every brand out there. Especially for eCommerce brands, your online reputation can make or break your business because that is what acts as your digital storefront. If that doesn’t look good, then think of the impression your audience is going to have about your brand. Doesn't feel good, right? Thankfully, there's still time to fix it. Keep scrolling! 

Why is Online Reputation Important for eCommerce Brands?

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Online reputation becomes crucial because of its remote setting, especially for eCommerce. As there is no physical contact with the product, the customers have to rely on the brand and its authority. If your brand’s online reputation is not taken seriously, the day isn't far when you end up with zero leads. When you contribute to your eCommerce brand’s online reputation, there are a number of benefits that come along:

• Influences the purchasing decisions of customers: When you have a solid online reputation, you have the power to influence customers’ buying decisions to a great extent. When your audience comes across the majority of the positive reviews and testimonies about you, compared to your competitors, they will be more likely to purchase from you. 
• Buffer against negative publicities: When you are active online, there are high chances of getting negative reviews then and now. But with a strong online presence, you can withstand such negative comments and use the positive ones as a buffer.
• Encouraging word-of-mouth marketing: When you have a great online reputation, it's easy to generate positive word of mouth through your satisfied customers. 
• Build trust and credibility: When there's no physical contact with the product or service, it becomes difficult for your customers to trust your brand. But thanks to your online reputation - they can check your brand’s reputation online and rely on it.
• Fosters brand loyalty: When customers rely on you, they are more likely to return to a brand they trust. This increases your customer retention score and fosters customer loyalty.

7 Tips for Building A Positive Online Reputation for eCommerce

Here are some of the best tips for you to build a positive online reputation for your brand: 

#1. Engage actively on social media

If you want to win over your customers with a solid online presence, you can't let go of social media. Social media offers a range of tools catering to several online reputation-building goals. Here’s how eCommerce brands can make the most of social media:

• Maintain your posting consistency: Keep your audience engaged and your brand on the top of their mind by posting regularly. You can also automate the posting schedule with social media scheduling tools.
• Leverage interactive content: Create interactive content like quizzes, polls, or contests to encourage maximum participation from your audience. You can also host live sessions using a white label OTT platform, which adds a dynamic way to connect with your audience. This not only boosts engagement but also provides valuable insights into customer preferences.
• Use relevant hashtags: stay on top of trending topics and hashtags relevant to your industry. Do not hesitate to incorporate them into your content strategy every day, as it can increase your visibility and attract attention from new leads.

#2. Use social listening tools to address issues faster

It is not humanly possible for anyone to stay active on all the social channels at the same time and monitor the notifications that keep coming in. That’s why having a social listening tool can help you manage your brand's online reputation more effectively across channels. Here’s how you can do that: 

• Address issues promptly: There are many social listening tools like Hootsuite that come loaded with features like all inboxes and live stream monitoring that help you stay updated about who's saying what about your brand. There are many Hootsuite alternatives that give all the updates in your inbox directly and offer advanced sentiment analysis features to make it easy for you to address customers’ issues in a jiffy.
• Helps with competitive analysis: These tools also help you monitor your competitors on all channels to understand what online reputation strategies they have been using for their brand and get an idea about their market positioning. 
• Reporting and analytics: there are many social listening tools that come with analytical capabilities to help you track the effectiveness of your reputation management campaign online. Regularly reviewing these reports helps you make better data-driven industries and improve your strategies from time to time. 

#3. Create quality and relevant content 

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For an eCommerce brand like yours, it is not just about writing content and posting it on different channels - it’s more about being relevant and maintaining the quality of content. To elevate your content and establish your brand as a thought leader, consider using an AI paragraph rewriter. This tool helps refine your existing content or generate fresh, engaging text that resonates with your audience.

When you post quality content, you establish your brand as a thought leader and enhance engagement from your customers. Here’s how you can nail it:

• Assess your audience's pain points and interests: It is important to know what your audience is interested in and discover their pain points and challenges. Once you have done that, take your insights and try to find out how your product or solution can solve these problems. And that’s it - that’s your CONTENT!
• Educate your audience: Create educational content like how-to, demos, and guides to educate your audience regarding your service or product. However, ensuring that your content adds value to your audience is important.
• Share user-generated content: Try to reshare or repost content with your audience that has been created by them where they are talking about your product or service. 

#4. Showcase customer testimonials and reviews 

When building your brand's online reputation, customer testimonials and reviews are powerful tools for any eCommerce brand. They provide the much-needed social proof that your customer needs to make potential buying decisions. Here’s how you can effectively showcase them:

• Use positive reviews in marketing assets: Try to incorporate positive testimonials and reviews into your marketing assets, like brochures, promotional ads, marketing, campaigns, and more. When your potential customers see these reviews, it can significantly boost your brand's visibility and impact.
• Promote video testimonials: try to encourage customers to give reviews through videos and share their experiences with your brand. A video testimonial can be more convincing and engaging for your audience than a text review.
• Use third-party review platforms: Make use of platforms like Ryviu, Google My Business, Trustpilot to gather and showcase customers’ reviews about your brand. If you use the Google review management software, it can help you streamline the whole process of review management efficiently.

#5. Implement a user-friendly website design

When your website is well-designed and comes with smooth navigational features, it is easier for your audience to go around and explore products and make purchasing decisions faster. Here’s how you can implement a website design that's more user-friendly:

• Go for a responsive design: It is important to ensure that the website design you are using is responsive enough so that it can seamlessly adjust to different mobile devices and screen sizes. Most of your audience will be viewing your website from their smartphones, so having a mobile-friendly design is essential.
• Check and recheck your website speed: Nowadays, your audience doesn’t like to wait for anything. So, if your website has a higher loading time, then chances are, they will soon shift their attention to a different eCommerce brand that lets them explore and check out in minutes.
• Display your products effectively: As not everyone will be viewing your products from a desktop or a laptop, you need to ensure that your products are displayed effectively on your website. From 360° views to zoom-in features and high-quality images, taking care of these little details for your e-commerce brand is essential.

#6. Leverage collaborations with influencers

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Influencer marketing has grown exponentially over the past few years, and it has been proven to be a highly effective strategy, especially for e-commerce brands because it offers a combination of organic reach and credibility to convince your target audience. Here’s how you can make the most out of these influencer collaborations:

• Start by identifying the right influencers: The first step for any e-commerce brand is to choose the right influencers. The type of influencer you choose depends completely on your target audience, business goals, and budget. 
• Encourage influencers to interact: When the influencers are posting something about your brand from their social media account, make sure they are also interacting on the same post with the prospects via comments, Q&A sessions, or DMs.
• Track and manage influencer reviews: You can use several metrics to track the performance of these influencer collaborations. By tracking them, you can clearly understand how these collaborations are impacting your business’s reputation and helping it grow. 

#7. Take advantage of local SEO

If your eCommerce brand has a physical store or if you target specific geographical areas in a country, then local SEO can do wonders for you. By optimizing your eCommerce stores’ online reputation with the help of local SEO, and incorporating SMS solutions to send timely and relevant updates, you can end up attracting local customers who have more buying potential. Here’s how you can do that effectively: 

• List your eCommerce brand on Google My Business: Verify your Google My Business listing and complete your profile with all the business details. Do not forget to insert the operating hours and make sure the hours are accurate and consistent across all online platforms. You can also update your GMB profile with event notifications, photos, or anything ethical related to your brand. 
• Optimize for local voice search: As the demand for voice-activated devices is on the rise, optimizing your brand for voice search by including longtail, keywords and conversational keywords is very important.
• Engage with the targeted areas: If you have some targeted areas to promote your e-commerce brand in, you can participate in the local online pages and forums to increase your online presence in that targeted area and improve your brand's search rankings.

Takeaway

Each strategy we told you about above actively plays a significant role in shaping your e-commerce brand’s online reputation. Keep adjusting it according to your business goals and requirements, but don’t forget - the reputation you build online for your brand reflects what your brand stands for and how your customers will perceive you.