Offering an Extended Warranty in exchange for leaving review

[MrSparks]

This year we're looking to get a lot more reviews in. A small percentage of customers actually bother to leave a review but it's a very important part of eCommerce. I'm not too sure how conversion rate changes from 100+ reviews to 1000+ reviews but I can only imagine the more reviews the better?

We're looking to encourage more reviews by offering even more value... a free 6 month extended warranty for people who leave both a product and a company review and submit a short form to claim the offer. We'll then send them a PDF certificate with a new warranty end date on.

This offer will be shown AFTER sale only, so they'll get the flier in the package and a follow up email. It won't be promoted before sale.

Is there anything to watch for on this? Good idea? Bad idea?

I'm not too worried about fulfilling the extended warranty, the products are good and we can afford to take the risk on replacing the odd one ourselves if needed. This is on one of our sites only, not all of them.

Do people care about extended warranties? am I better off following up with a free accessory or discounted accessory?

Just trying to offer enough legitimate value for someone to take 5 minutes to leave a review.

Edited by MrSparks on Wednesday 27th December 13:27

[The Moose]

Interesting idea and I look forward to reading other opinions.

Will it add much of an administrative overhead for you guys?

[Algarve]

I am reasonably confident this isn't legal without full disclosure. It'll certainly get you kicked off every single major review site (trip advisor, Reviews.co.uk, Google / Fb review and so on) if you get caught doing it.

[Condi]

Algarve said:

I am reasonably confident this isn't legal without full disclosure. It'll certainly get you kicked off every single major review site (trip advisor, Reviews.co.uk, Google / Fb review and so on) if you get caught doing it.

It wouldnt be illegal, although you might get kicked off the review sites for doing so.

Its not illegal to deliver more than is being advertised, and note the OP didnt say a good review, just a review. Its not open to good reviews only, that might be illegal. However all the review sites generally say you're not allowed to offer a reward for leaving a review exactly to stop people doing that....

[MrSparks]

Algarve said:

I am reasonably confident this isn't legal without full disclosure. It'll certainly get you kicked off every single major review site (trip advisor, Reviews.co.uk, Google / Fb review and so on) if you get caught doing it.

I wasn't sure to be honest. Thing is, Reviews.co.uk give you the option to send a discount code for leaving a review.. so they have an in-built incentive for review system. I'm not sure how giving an extended warranty differs? My thoughts were that an extended warranty is of greater value to the customer.

Having just Googled it a bit further, there's a lot of, mostly American, sites saying not to do it. Illegal etc. etc.

Thing with reviews is if you have a negative experience you'll go out of your way to write a review...no incentives needed... yet you'll get customers that are super happy but don't actually both leaving a review, so in reality the incentive generally is only encouraging people who are happy to write reviews to actually write the review!

It's a pain as Google now need 150+ reviews in a 12 month period to get stars in Google SERPS. Difficult task!!

[Algarve]

MrSparks said:

It's a pain as Google now need 150+ reviews in a 12 month period to get stars in Google SERPS. Difficult task!!

Do you mean for PPC? Or natural results? Certainly for the latter that isn't true.


I still don't think its legit as far as advertising laws go to offer an incentivised review and then not disclose that... whether I'm right or wrong on that point though the chance of anything happening is extremely low.

[snobetter]

I've seen sites offering entry to a competition for leaving a review, Evans cycles, one of the biggest online bike sites does I think.

Whichever site it was I left a review because of it.

[DSLiverpool]

I’ve seen success in a discount code for future purchase upon submitting a review, not quite a tangible benefit but enough to sway a few.

I would word anything you do carefully as the last thing you want is one star “they asked for a review and offered a bribe so here it is”

[otherman]

I don't leave reviews because so many companies abuse them, use it as an opportunity to harvest personal information for spam purposes.

[MrSparks]

otherman said:

I don't leave reviews because so many companies abuse them, use it as an opportunity to harvest personal information for spam purposes.

How does that work then?

By the time we ask for a review we'd already have your address, email & phone number.

Not sure what getting a review from you would enable us to do that we couldn't already with your order details should we want to.

Luckily we have no intention of abusing any data.