In the process of selling my house, I had a number of contractors work on various items that needed some fixing. Fortunately, I had amazing experiences with a couple of the contractors. One, in particular, had a great reminder of a really easy way to get a customer review. 

You might ask: Why are reviews important? 

The obvious answer is that it lets other potential customers know that you provide a great service or offer a great product. People are more likely to buy if they see that other customers had a good experience with your service/product. 

The not-so-obvious reason to get good reviews, is that it really helps with Search Engine Optimization (SEO). While there are certainly many factors that contribute to your search engine ranking, reviews can be a strong indicator to search engines that your website is legitimate and trustworthy. It’s no surprise that Google often shows companies with many positive reviews first.

So what did my 5-star contractor do? They had a very simple message on their email signature:

“Small local companies thrive on reviews from customers. If you have a few minutes we’d appreciate a review from you. Just go to YELP or Google to leave a review. Thanks for taking extra time to do this!”

This is a simple and unobtrusive way to get an honest and quality review from your customers. My contractor provided links to their review pages, and it made it really easy to leave them a great review. 

We implemented this at gooWee and within 24 hours we had a new 5-star review on Google. This is great for our online reputation!