Reviews play a crucial role in improving the visibility and reputation of your business on Google. Especially for local businesses, most of the top organic listings are occupied by sites having good business reviews. People always have a tendency to follow. Our actions are dependant on the actions of others. We believe the product or service to be good if we see our friends or colleagues posting a positive review of that business. If a business has lots of positive reviews then it automatically becomes a safe choice for most people. Before I tell you the ways that will help you to generate good reviews for your business, let me first list the websites where you should get your business listed.   List of Business Review Sites to Have Your Business Listed Here is a list of popular business review sites you should definitely have your business listed: Angie’s List Chamber of Commerce Better Business Bureau Yelp Google MyBusiness Bing My Places Facebook LinkedIn Foursquare Glassdoor Merchant Circle Manta SiteJabber SuperPages Yellow Pages Trust Radius Yext Which Choice G2Crowd TrustPilot Consumer Reports Amazon Now, that you are aware of the sites that you should list your business, it’s time to share the best practices to generate positive reviews.   Ask Your Customers to Leave a Review Here, time plays a crucial factor. You should always make a wise decision when to ask for a review. Let’s suppose your customer bought a furniture from your e-store and you sent an email asking him to review the product on the same day. This is probably not a good time to ask for a review. Wait for a few days, let the customer use the product for a while and then ask for a review. Here is a great example of an email asking for a review as provided by review trackers: Here are some of the best times to ask your customers for a review: When they email or message you about a positive experience they had with your business. When they tweet or tag your brand on social media. When they reach a milestone in sales. You can also: Send a small gift or discount to the customer and ask them for a review in return. (However, you need to disclose this endorsement in your site else it might be considered as an unethical practice by some review websites). Send a handwritten note along with the package you deliver asking them to review your business. This works well for items like gifts. Meet the customer in person and ask them to leave a review.   Put Reviews On Your Homepage and Each of the Product Pages Put customer reviews in full view for other people to see and react. Add it to the homepage and each of your product pages so that it stays on the front. Obviously, you want people to see the reviews and add their own immediately. Keeping the reviews right on the front helps a lot. Have a look at the below examples that display product reviews on top of the product page along with a CTA button that asks people to write their own review.   Add Your Store Name When Requesting Reviews When you send an email or SMS to the customer, include your store name in the subject lines. Data from around 3.5 million reviews shows that adding a store’s name to review requests impacts the percentage of customers who write reviews. Also, people are more inclined towards having a conversation before they accept any offers so make sure to strike a conversation with your messages.   Ask Questions In the Subject Lines Another key takeaway here is that people respond more to review requests when you ask questions in the subject lines. Some good examples of review requests having a question in them are given below: [Customer Name] Did You Liked [Product Name]? 220+ Customers Wrote A Positive Review! Did You Liked [Product Name]? [Customer Name] How Will You Rate [Product Name]? Etc.   Send Review Requests on Mobile People are available 24×7 on mobile. Sending requests on mobile devices will increase your chances of receiving a review as conversions rates on mobile and tablet devices are higher than that of desktop.   Tools That Help to Improve Reviews   Yotpo Yotpo is one of the best platforms that will you to get a review from your customer intelligently. Here are some of the best features of Yotpo: It helps businesses to collect and leverage reviews throughout the buyer journey to increase trust and sales. You can send personalized review requests, reminders and incentives to your customers. You have the power to showcase product reviews, ratings, and photos at key conversion points across your site. With improved dashboards, you can measure your business performance anytime. You can easily integrate the app with services like Google, Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, Hubspot, Bigcommerce, Zendesk etc.   Feedback Genius For Amazon sellers looking for reviews on their products, this tool is a boon. It lets you politely ask for seller feedback and product reviews. This tool automatically suggests the right time to ask for a review and offers a collection of templates and variables to make your messages personal.   GetFiveStars This tool offers dozens of customizable features to increase business customer feedback and online reviews. Some of the major features offered by the tool are: All the templates offered by mobile friendly. The platform can manage upto 10,000 locations for a particular business. Has customizable APIs to automate the review process from start to reporting. You can send bulk email or SMS to request feedback from a smartphone. Offers a testimonial widget to embed on your own site. The platform automatically asks customers to review your business on over 40 review sites.   Grade.us Grade.us is another great platform to manage customer reviews. Some of the important features offered by this platform are: Automate multi-channel review acquisition campaigns via email, text or print. Optimize your Facebook reviews and take actions to improve the numbers. Proactively collect feedback from happy customers and use it where it matters the most for your business. Manage customer reviews from around the web using a single dashboard. Manage online reputation of your business as the system catches unhappy customers for offline recovery. Reviews are certainly crucial to the success of any online business and people trust their peers before choosing any business. Follow the tips and tools suggested in the guide and increase the number of reviews you have for your business.   About the author: Guy Sheetrit is the founder of Over The Top SEO, one of the fastest growing and most awarded multinational SEO agencies in the world. He generated his clients over 16 million leads, making their phones ring over 5 million times, and passing the $1 billion dollar mark in 2019.