Mastering online reputation: Strategies for boosting business credibility with DJ Sprague

What if you could harness the power of online reviews to transform your business's reputation? Join us as we chat with DJ Sprague, the CMO of Shopper Approved, about the art and science of online reputation management. Sprague sheds light on how companies can partner with platforms like Google and Bing to amplify their online presence, strategically collect reviews, and showcase compelling star ratings that catch consumers’ eyes. From using post-checkout pop-ups to sending follow-up emails, we explore innovative ways retailers can encourage reviews and manage feedback, whether it's glowing praise or constructive criticism.

Dive into the intricacies of reputation management with "review destinations," a tool designed to guide businesses through the often perilous waters of online reviews. Sprague discusses how directing reviews to platforms like Trustpilot and Google Business Profile can help balance out the impact of false or competitor-driven feedback. The conversation emphasizes the vital role of actively seeking out customer reviews and the different formats they can take, be it written or video. With social proof becoming increasingly crucial, we explore how it builds trust and credibility, ultimately driving consumer behavior.

Sprague also shares insights from his new book, "Reputation King", offering resources and strategies for bolstering business reputations. We discuss how major retailers like

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Chapters

• 0:02 Reputation Management in the Online World
• 14:33 The Importance of Reputation Management
• 28:30 The Power of Social Proof
• 34:53 The Power of Reputation Building
• 41:38 Expert Insights on Reputation Management

Transcript

Erin Manning: 0:02

Welcome to the Dead Pixels Society podcast, the photo imaging industry's leading news source. Here's your host, gary Pegeau. The Dead Pixels Society podcast is brought to you by Mediaclip, Advertek Printing and Independent Photo Imagers.

Gary Pageau: 0:18

Hello again and welcome to the Dead Pixels Society podcast. I'm your host, Gary Pageau. Today we're joined by DJ Sprague, who's the CMO of Shopper Approved, and he's going to be talking to us today about managing our reputations, which is more and more critical in today's increasingly online world. Hi, DJ, how are you today?

DJ Sprague: 0:39

Good Gary, how are you doing? Really excited to be here with you.

Gary Pageau: 0:42

So first can you share a little bit about what Shopper Approved is first, before we get into the reputation piece, Just kind of what does the company do?

DJ Sprague: 0:52

Yeah, absolutely, Shopper Approved has been around since 2010. We are a review collection, syndication, management and distribution platform. We're a Google partner and we're a Bing partner, and what that means is that we collect Google seller ratings, also known as merchant reviews, and those are the reviews about your website. So when people are reviewing you know photofinishing as a experience with the website then that's decelerating and that review happens post-purchase. Then there's the product review, and the product review happens typically post-receipt of the product. We also do video reviews and we distribute those reviews to multiple review platforms, including our own.

DJ Sprague: 1:44

So Shopper Approved is a review platform, so is Trustpilot, so is Better Business Bureau, so is your Google business profile. So we send reviews there and then we syndicate reviews to Google to show up in your Google ads. So you see the stars in the ads, right, those come from a Google review partner and there's only a handful in the country. And we also do the same for Bing. So if you're advertising on Bing, you can also get your stars in the Bing ads. They also get syndicated to your Google Shopping. So when you see the stars in the Google Shopping results, you'll often times see product reviews or seller reviews or both, and that's kind of a new thing Google's doing is showing both the seller ratings for the website and the product reviews for the product.

DJ Sprague: 2:28

Google also has the quality store badge. Have you seen that in Google shopping results? Okay, so that is fueled by Google review partners. So if you're a Google review partner like ourselves, we syndicate those reviews to Google and then once you meet Google's qualifications for the quality store badge, then you get that nice third-party endorsement saying, hey, this is a quality website, they ship on time, they've got great reviews, they have a high number of reviews, they support their clients, et cetera. So that all comes through Google, but it's fueled by Google review partners like ourselves.

Gary Pageau: 3:09

So I have a question about the website review piece. What kind of things are people reviewing? Is it just like the experiences of the checkout? Is it what? What are they reviewing there where it's not the product?

DJ Sprague: 3:21

Yeah, exactly that. It's the experience with the website. Okay, so it's basically I'm going to give this website 4.5 stars because I found it to be helpful, useful, easy to navigate, found what I wanted, check out with Seamless. This is a great experience, right? But it really is about the user experience on the site, and that's why they call it a seller or a merchant review, because all you're doing is reviewing your experience so far with the website.

Gary Pageau: 3:52

Right. First of all, before we get into some of the things you can do to manage your reputation, how do you get reviews Right? I mean, what are some of the processes that people can do as a retailer to encourage reviews, because everyone knows that that's becoming super and super important to have lots of reviews, have reviews that are obviously way off on the high end, but you're going to have some negatives and you got to deal with those too, but for the most part, you know how do people get people to do reviews.

DJ Sprague: 4:21

Yeah, that's a great question. Well, do you want to talk about how we do it or how you can do it in general, or both?

Gary Pageau: 4:28

Well, let's do both. Let's do the shopper approved approach, and then let's just do the in general approach.

DJ Sprague: 4:33

So the way our process works is you install our software and once people check out, then we have a pop-up. It's a interstitial that pops up and says you know, would you please review this website, tell us your thoughts, how'd you like this, this, et cetera. And so it's a pop-up, so it's in line. It happens before they leave the website, which is great. Those typically get about a 30% conversion rate, so 30% of the people typically will fill it out. So you get the initial we call it an initial seller rating. Now that initial seller rating does not qualify for the Google review stars in the Google ads, yeah.

Gary Pageau: 5:16

I didn't know that. Next thing.

DJ Sprague: 5:18

Yeah, that's because it's the initial, the first thing that happens, right. And then the full review comes by email. So now you get an email from Shopper approved and you're asked to give a full review on your user experience with the website. At that point you can either add, delete, change, modify, update. That then goes to Google okay, to the seller ratings. You also are asked to leave a product review and a video review, so you can do three reviews in one.

DJ Sprague: 5:52

You can do the full review the product review and the video review, and that's how those get collected. Now you can also use our system to send multiple follow-up emails. So if they don't respond in three days, they send another one. They don't respond in five days, send another one. So they get multiple opportunities by email to leave a review.

Gary Pageau: 6:13

Now and you can't really incentivize people to leave reviews because that kind of pollutes. The experience right.

DJ Sprague: 6:19

Yeah, that's a great question. So there's two kinds of companies. There's the non-Google review partner. That allows you to do two things One, incentivize, and two it's kind of an industry term, but it's called gating reviews, which means if they leave a review, that is one, two or three stars, delete it.

Gary Pageau: 6:44

Oops, don't let it go. I don't know what happened, where'd it?

DJ Sprague: 6:47

go, it's gone If it's four or five stars. Some people just do five stars only then put that on your website. So that's gating. You can literally gate which reviews are seen on your website and which reviews are not, and you can incentivize because you're not a Google review partner. So you can incentivize because you're not a google review partner. So you play by your own rules.

DJ Sprague: 7:03

Yelp plays by their own rules. They deprecate reviews positive reviews if you don't pay yelp, and they escalate positive reviews if you do pay yelp. Yeah, right, that's their own algorithm. Yes, they do, we all know that and they've been sued for it many times. Um, they've always won because the judges just say basically, look, it's their software, they do what they want, but the public doesn't really know, right, and they think these are like oh, that's what Yelp says. Well, yelp says what Yelp wants to say.

DJ Sprague: 7:28

So if you're a non-Google review partner and again, there's only a handful then those reviews do not get syndicated to Google. So you're not going to see them in your Google ads, you're not going to see them in your Google shopping. The only place they live is on your website. So we call it a island. So unless people actually go to your website. They're never going to see those reviews, and that's a problem, right? Because they're not helping you in search, which is your reputation side of the equation, the initial part. So, without publishing to Google and Bing and there's only two companies in the world that are both google and bing review partners for seller and product reviews we are one of then that means people really don't see them, so what good do they do right now? Here's the other thing that people, uh, don't realize, and that is they think that they want to have all five star reviews right right, because that's, that's 100, that's perfect, right.

DJ Sprague: 8:22

but the research says that, statistically, people want to see a company with a 4.1 to a 4.7. Right, and why is that? Because if it's a perfect score, you must be gaming it.

Gary Pageau: 8:34

Right, exactly Right. No one's that good.

DJ Sprague: 8:36

Right, no one's perfect, no company is perfect, no product is perfect. Things arrive late, things arrive broken. There was a quality issue with you know, that 10,000th camera that came off the line, right, and you don't know until it's actually used Right, but nothing's perfect. So people are actually, believe it or not more skeptical of companies with a five-star review. Right, then, if it's less than a 4.1, it's getting into a little bit of the you know right, just like restaurants. So we always want to see restaurants that are allowing a 4.2, 4.5, right Now. The other thing to realize is that one of the most important things that people look at is the negative reviews, or what we call the critical reviews. Why is that? Because they want to see how bad is bad, in other words, okay, we all know things are going to happen. We all know things might arrive late, broken or not work, or it's the wrong product. That happens too. That's okay, right.

DJ Sprague: 9:36

The issue is how did you deal with it? How did you respond to it? So what people are looking for? The wise consumer, and they're more wise all the time is okay.

DJ Sprague: 9:46

I'm looking at this store and I'm looking at the reviews. I want to look at some of their negative reviews. They're two star, they're three star, they're one star Cause I want to see how bad can it be? And what are people complaining about? So let's just say, for example, somebody left a two star review and you actually read it and it's like oh well, it's because it arrived two days late. So what, like, really, you gave a two-star review because it arrived two days late.

DJ Sprague: 10:10

Or the packaging was torn. That has nothing to do with the product or the vendor, that has everything to do with the shipping company, or maybe the third-party warehouse, or how it was handled in shipping Right, or how it was handled in shipping Right. So, but people are funny and they will leave a bad review because their expectation of it arriving on Wednesday wasn't met, because it arrived on Friday, or it had a tear or damaged packaging or what have you, or the instructions were missing or who knows what right. So people look at that oh, that's fine, I don't care about that, right? That doesn't deserve a two-star review. People do that. I mean, they really do that. I don't know if you do that, but I do that, and research says that that a lot of consumers do do that.

DJ Sprague: 10:54

The other thing they look for is okay so it was a bad product, or the wrong product, or a broken product, or it didn't meet my expectations. Right, that happens. How did you deal?

Gary Pageau: 11:04

with it, did you argue? With the person online Because you see that as one of those Exactly. Oh my gosh, do not call the customer stupid because they came on the day before and it wasn't ready, and so you say they're stupid, which I have seen that one.

DJ Sprague: 11:20

Yes, that is.

Gary Pageau: 11:22

You came on Tuesday, what were you thinking? You know, oh my God, exactly.

DJ Sprague: 11:26

Yes, that is a deal. You came on Tuesday. What were you thinking Exactly? Empathy, right, practice empathy and empathize with the customer and say hey, Gary, we're really sorry that you got the wrong product or the product didn't work to your expectations or didn't work at all, whatever the case may be, but, as you can see from our reviews, 99% of our customers are actually really happy. So this is a rare thing, but we're happy to take care of you. Let us take that back. We're going to send you a return shipping label. We'll take care of you. That's what people want to see Empathy. You're not bombasting the customer and saying you're an idiot, you're stupid. What were you thinking?

Gary Pageau: 12:04

Right, it probably shouldn't be in anyone's emails. Just just a little tip there for the listeners If you're going to put that in an email or a review or a response, choose not to do that.

DJ Sprague: 12:15

Choose not to because that can go public. As we know, in today's digital social media world, that email can go public, right? Everyone knows how to screenshot. Now, yeah, exact copy and paste. Yeah, you want to handle that critical review in a positive way? Sure, and you want to address all of them. You want to address 100% of your critical reviews, right, you want to probably address 75% to 80% of your positive reviews. It says hey, gary, thanks a lot for your 4.5 star review. We really appreciate the positive feedback. We love the photography world and enthusiasts and we're here to help, and that kind of a thing. Right, and now, in those scenarios by the way, a little insider tip is in a positive review, use the website's name review. Use the website's name At photofinishcom. We pride ourselves on, or we love the photo enthusiasts, or we are the number one seller of the Pentax SLR 5000, right, why? That's a keyword. That keyword can be picked up in search.

Gary Pageau: 13:20

And if you're using someone who is a Google-approved service, like yourself or your competitors, then that's going to get picked up.

DJ Sprague: 13:29

Right. So definitely use, you know, the brand in positive reviews, right. In critical reviews, don't use the brand, don't use the product. Be apologetic, Be empathetic, be sincere, be transparent, be authentic, be a nice person, but don't use the brand name. And so those are some little insider tips. And, by the way, if you go to shopreprovedcom and look at our blog, we've got all kinds of great articles on how to respond to reviews positive, negative. There's hundreds of articles there on reputation management, reviews, review distribution, how reviews work, how to collect, how to syndicate, how to distribute, how to share. You know how to collect more.

Gary Pageau: 14:09

I mean, it's a plethora of information, a plethora of information. Now, you had mentioned earlier about doing it yourself. You said doing it the shopper approved way. Now there's the do-it-yourself way.

DJ Sprague: 14:22

Yeah.

Gary Pageau: 14:22

What is that?

DJ Sprague: 14:24

The do-it-yourself way and, by the way, I'm going to back up one minute if I may on the shopper approved way.

DJ Sprague: 14:33

So we do have a unique tool called review destinations we call it a reputation management tool, and there's only two companies in the world that do this and it allows you to send a percentage of your reviews to any other open review platform of your choosing. So let's say, for example, you've got an average 2.8 star review on Trustpilot. Trustpilot is an open review platform, which means anybody can go there and leave a review. You don't have any proof of purchase. All you have to do is validate your email address. So you could be a competitor, you could be a ex-spouse, you could be a hated brother-in-law, it could be right Whomever bombasting this company because you have an ulterior motive, or you could actually and this happens a lot, unfortunately competitors pay people in other countries at very low labor rates to leave negative reviews for the competition. Imagine that, but that's what you can do reviews for the competition.

Gary Pageau: 15:25

Imagine that, but that's what you can do.

DJ Sprague: 15:27

I'm shocked to hear that. Yes, you're shocked, I know you are.

Gary Pageau: 15:30

And that's on platforms like. Trustpilot right, not like Shopper Approved or your Right, because you actually have to do a transaction and go through the system to do that, whereas other platforms are more open. But you just said you can submit your content to them and that will kind of balance it out. Is that what?

DJ Sprague: 15:51

We direct. What we do is we direct people to. Let's just say, I want to send 10% of my reviews to Trustpilot, because I have a 2.8 or a 3.8, whatever, and I want it to be at least a 4.1. So I'm going to say I'm going to send 10% of my reviews to Trustpilot. I'm going to send 10% of my reviews to Better Business Bureau. I'm going to send 10% of my reviews to reseller ratings or site jabber and the rest go to shopper approved. You can do that and that's a true reputation management strategy. So I just want to get that out there.

DJ Sprague: 16:23

Now back to doing it yourself. Oh, you can also send them to your Google business profile. Used to be Google my business, now it's Google business profile, so that's another place that you can send your shopper approved reviews to. And, by the way, your Google business profile is an open review platform, which is crazy, but it is. That is one of the more popular places that people look for reviews, because obviously it's owned by Google, so it shows up in search very, very well. If you have a local brick and mortar and a website, obviously you have a Google business profile, so that's a great way to send reviews there. Okay, back to collecting reviews yourself. You can ask people. You can just simply say whether it be email or whether it be over the counter in a retail situation. Hey, would you mind leaving us a review on Google? Google's easiest, because there's fewer processes to leave a review.

Gary Pageau: 17:16

Right Because it's open. Right Is that? Because you don't actually have to do a transaction. You could just say, hey, just review our coffee shop and off we go.

DJ Sprague: 17:25

Off we go. Trustpilot is also open. You have to verify your email address and other review platforms like reseller ratings, consumer affairs, et cetera. You still have to leave your email address and they verify your email address. So you're a human, could be a bot, because bots can have email addresses, so that's coming with AI. But in any case, so you can do that. You can just ask people. You can even give them a QR code. Hey, would you scan this with your phone and that'll take them right to Better Business Bureau or Google or wherever you want to send them and they can leave a review. So that's an easy way to ask people manually to leave reviews, and that's one way you can do it. Or an email right Post-purchase, send them an email. Hey, larry Susie, you bought this product from us. Would you mind clicking this link and going to leave us a review on google or wherever you want to send them? So that's how you can do it on your own sounds rather laborious so it's laborious and you don't get a lot.

DJ Sprague: 18:31

Uh, typically, depending on you know how you do it. But, yep, you can incentivize. Hey, leave me a review and you see this at restaurants all the time and get a free dessert right, it's the appetizer. Get a free beverage right. So they're incentivizing reviews. Um, now, with video reviews and we collect video reviews at shopper approved, you can incentivize video reviews. Google doesn't have any requirements against that, but with the seller ratings and product reviews, definitely celebrating. So, believe it or not, google has two different review teams. They have a celebrating review team and a product review team.

Gary Pageau: 19:06

Okay.

DJ Sprague: 19:07

Celebrating review team does not allow any incentives. The product review team, you know, technically you're not supposed to, but some people do provide some kind of a you know, bounce back coupon or whatever. But video reviews are open territory. They can say leave us a review and we'll send you a 10% off coupon for your next purchase, or whatever. It is right, that's how that works.

Gary Pageau: 19:35

So let's talk about the whole idea behind reputation management, as you're a small business owner and you think you're great in your community, right? And it seems to me like in today's hyper-competitive world, even now, locally, that has become ever more critical than even traditional. You know, even traditional advertising is managing your reputation.

DJ Sprague: 20:23

Absolutely. You know the old saying you never get a second chance to make a first impression. Right, there's your reputation. So think about this. And we all do this.

DJ Sprague: 20:33

We all go to a search engine. 90% of us go to Google, 10% go to Bing roughly. And you're going there because you're looking for information, you're looking for resources, you're looking for an answer to your question how does this work? Where do I find that? Why does my toe hurt? Yeah, I'm looking for this product, this solution, this resource. It's a big question and answer database is really what it is. So you're going to go there, you're going to look for products, you're going to look for brands, you're going to look for solutions, you're going to look for information, you're going to look for whatever it is.

DJ Sprague: 21:09

And there's a couple of things at play there that, statistically, the top five search results get 69%, 69.1% of the clicks. The top five, the top three, get about 53, 58%. So the lion's share goes to the top three, and certainly top five. Why is that? Subconsciously and we've studied this, we've actually done surveys ourselves first party research. We've also read a lot of second party research that validates the exact same thing One of the reasons people click on those top search results is because they think they're the most credible, trusted and authoritative. Why? Because Google would not have put them at the top, or Bing would not have put them at the top if they weren't.

Gary Pageau: 22:03

That's the assumption, and is that a correct assumption or an incorrect assumption?

DJ Sprague: 22:09

It depends on the day, because the Google algorithm changes, right, yeah, and so one day they're going to serve up something that's really random. It's like. Why is that? Because they're they're constantly testing and experimenting with different algorithms there. There's over a hundred different algorithms in their, in their search algorithm, or I should say, a criteria in their search algorithm. So constantly testing, tweaking, experimenting, sometimes things those randomly show up that like wow, okay, but usually generally they're the more popular, high traffic sites with the best content, the most authoritative content, the most helpful content, the most backlinks, which are basically votes of authority and credibility.

DJ Sprague: 22:49

So a backlink is when you're linking from one site to another. My camera store website and I have 752 links from other websites that are higher authority than mine. So there's a authority rank which goes from zero to a hundred. Wikipedia is like a 97. Webmd is like a 96, right. So these are like the high, high authority websites. Mayo Clinic is like a 96, right. So these are like the high, high authority websites Mayo Clinic, cleveland Clinic, et cetera, very high.

DJ Sprague: 23:21

And then your small, just starting out mom and pop website. It's probably going to be like a eight or 12, just to give you an idea. But a good website is 45, 50 plus. That means they've been around a long time. They've got a lot of backlinks authoritative backlinks, trusted backlinks, not from a link farm, which is a company that just you buy links from and it's just a worthless website.

DJ Sprague: 23:46

But Google knows about that and they don't work anymore. That's old school. But in any case, yes, usually the highest trusted, most authoritative website that's been around a long time has history on the web serves up at the top. But another thing that serves up the top and part of an algorithm is what Google calls EAT. It's a part of the algorithm. Stands for experience, expertise, authority and trust. So if your website shows, or your content shows on your website, that you have experience on that topic that the person is searching for so let's say, I'm searching for SLR cameras and you have a lot of really good content that talks about the mechanics and the pros and cons and the ins and outs of.

DJ Sprague: 24:31

SLR cameras I'm going to see is Google. Well, this writer, this author, is an expert.

Gary Pageau: 24:38

Right.

DJ Sprague: 24:39

And you show expertise. So you've got experience and expertise, and then authority would come into play with. You know how long the site's been around, how long the content's been around, awards, certificates, you know things like that that you display on your website.

Gary Pageau: 24:54

Certifications of being.

DJ Sprague: 24:55

Certifications you know, yep, you got it. Endorsements and then trust. A big part of that is ratings and reviews. The biggest part of that is ratings and reviews from a Google partner. They don't care so much about reviews that came from a non-Google partner. Probably reviews you collect yourself because they can't verify them.

DJ Sprague: 25:16

They don't know if those are fake or not, right, so that's part of their algorithm. So getting reviews seller end product reviews is a big part of your SEO or search engine optimization, which brings you to the top of the search results. Back to that reputation question. So now I'm on Google, I'm looking at the top search results. That gives me a sense of authority and credibility about those companies that are there. I'm also looking for stars in ads, stars in the organic search results. Right, because that is social proof hundreds or thousands or tens or hundreds of thousands of people that have shopped from this website or bought this product and endorsed it, basically through a positive review. So that social proof is huge.

DJ Sprague: 26:07

And in fact, google says in a great research study that they did, called Decoding Decisions, making Sense of the Messy Middle. You can download it for free. It's a study that they did. They actually did an update to it just about a year ago and they said that reviews are the gold standard of social proof, Trust, like they really look for reviews, right. Obviously they have to be credible reviews Right, because they know the difference. Right, and they know who the Google review. Right, because they know the difference. Right and they know who the Google review partners are and who they aren't. So they said that's flat out. They literally said that Reviews are the gold standard.

Gary Pageau: 26:47

Now, when you use the word social proof for those who don't know what that means, what does that mean?

DJ Sprague: 26:53

Great question. So that was coined by Dr Robert Cialdini, who wrote the book Influence. The Psychology of Persuasion First came out in 1984, and he's had several updates since. But he is a behavioral scientist and he has seven principles of persuasion. One is social proof, and that is what are other people saying about you? Are other people speaking kindly positively about you?

Gary Pageau: 27:20

Does the credibility of the speaker come into play at that point?

DJ Sprague: 27:30

or is it just the overall aura? So that would be experts, Experts, authorities. So if you have a review from a known expert or a known authority, that's even more weight than just reviews from average consumers, right? But yes, that is part of it as a component of social proof. So Dr Cialdini says that social proof is really any indication that other people, particularly especially other people that you would trust their opinion.

DJ Sprague: 27:56

So other so other photographers right are voting and saying this is a great website, this is a great brand, this is a great product, etc. Think about mcdonald's. Their signs say what over 10 billion served. Right, right, that's social proof, right?

Gary Pageau: 28:13

I'm not sure they're saying that anymore, but it's but it is but they anymore. But they were alleging that for a long time.

DJ Sprague: 28:20

Yeah, maybe it's billions and billions.

Gary Pageau: 28:22

Now I think it's billions and billions, because I think it was too arduous to keep upgrading that number every couple of months.

DJ Sprague: 28:27

That's right. That's right. So that's social proof. Another way of social proof would be you could display on your website. I advocate you put it on your homepage.

DJ Sprague: 28:36

Predict, you know, preferably above the fold. So it's the first thing people see. Because you have milliseconds to establish trust and credibility. Milliseconds, which is why design is so important, usa is so important, branding is so important. But in any case, if you can establish trust, credibility and social proof at the very beginning of the user experience, then you have a much better chance of converting people. So if you were to say, for example, in business sense 1992, over 12,000 customers served 4.8 average star rating from 6,712 reviewers. Average recommendation rate is 94% I was like okay, wow, you've been around a long time, you served a lot of customers, you've got a lot of reviews, you've got a really good average star rating. 94% of people would recommend this company. I'm good.

DJ Sprague: 29:35

The first barrier, or what I call friction point, is now addressed, because we go into buying environments with a series of cognitive decisions that need to be made Do I trust this company, do I trust this product? Do I trust this transaction? Right, all these things. And they have to be addressed and that can be done through social proof. We have a new product. We call it the Trust Bar. It's just coming out. Actually, we've done a lot of research and testing around this, but at the very top of that homepage it's a bar that will show the percent of people that recommend the company, the number of views collected, the average star rating and the average satisfaction. And what's cool about that is we tested that on one of our clients' websites and just by putting that on their homepage alone, they increased conversion rates by 41%. Wow.

Gary Pageau: 30:26

And that was just using information they already had.

DJ Sprague: 30:28

Yeah, and what we do is we update that through our API that will update that to keep current with the reviews. So, unlike the McDonald's sign, you got to change that sign every time. It's done on the fly, in real time.

Gary Pageau: 30:41

Okay, cool, that's cool, so you're constantly building.

DJ Sprague: 30:43

Yeah, and that's just an example of statistically, scientifically, how social proof really does drive those decisions and what we call cognitive biases. Cognitive bias decision-making Because what you want to do is you want to use ethical influence to drive more people to make the decision in your favor. So social proof is one of them, limited time is one of them, limited supply is one of them. So anytime you can say you know 12 left in stock, right, and six people looking at this product right now, well, we've all fallen for that, especially on like a travel stock right, right, and six people looking at this product right now Well we've all fallen for that, especially on like a travel site, right Bingo, there's 300 people looking for that same flight to Las Vegas for the trade show you're going to go to.

Gary Pageau: 31:28

You better bite the bullet now.

DJ Sprague: 31:30

That's right. That's right. So limited time, limited supply, and they're different from each other. Limited time is this sale, or this price ends at midnight tonight, that's limited time. Or Black Friday is right, this price ends midnight Friday. And then limited supply, because that creates urgency and urgency is one of the Cialdini's seven behavioral principles. And then you've got limited.

DJ Sprague: 31:56

So we did limited supply, limited time, social proof, likability, liking, and Do I like you, do you like me? Are we friends? Believe it or not? Having a welcome and a smiley face on your homepage make people feel more at ease, more welcome. Right, okay, small thing Used to be in the old days we called them welcome pages. That's literally what they said. And then people got away from it. But you know what Research says. That actually helps drive engagement and likability. Tribalism is another. Are we part of the same tribe? Do I relate to you? Do you relate to me? That's important, so that's really good in niche industries. Obviously, the photography industry is some degree of tribalism. Look at Harley-Davidson. Harley-davidson has done a masterful job of creating a tribe. Right, you buy a Harley, you're part of the family, you're part of the tribe, we ride together, we hang out together.

Gary Pageau: 33:00

Camera brands can be the same way.

DJ Sprague: 33:01

Oh, absolutely Absolutely. Nikon versus Pentax versus.

Gary Pageau: 33:06

Canon, Sony, all the people.

DJ Sprague: 33:08

Go on right. Yeah, I remember my sister. My oldest sister was into cameras and she was a Pentax.

Gary Pageau: 33:16

Yeah, you mentioned Pentax a couple of times, which is interesting Cause that's probably you know, out of the three horse race of the top brands, they're probably number five. So, that's the one my sister always talked about. That's awesome. That was interesting, cause I mean that that brand made an impression on you very strongly.

DJ Sprague: 33:31

I was going to say my sister was a, was a real photographer, and she just, for whatever reason, maybe cause back in the seventies Pentax was a thing.

Gary Pageau: 33:39

They were huge, yeah, but that's what she bought, that was the starter camera for a lot of people was the Pentax K 1000. You know, if you were going to start an SLR photography in the 70s, that was probably the camera that a photography instructor recommended. Was that camera. There's millions of those out there. There you go.

Gary Pageau: 34:02

So, you mentioned something earlier I want to get back to. You mentioned the phrase friction, which I think is interesting because that's where I think a lot that's something that a lot of retailers could be addressing is removing barriers to either making choices or purchases for a customer, Because sometimes I think they almost make it hard for consumers to give them money.

DJ Sprague: 34:26

Yeah, yes, you're absolutely right, because here's what happens. This is crazy, but it happens all the time. The web designer or somebody in marketing or somebody in sales will say well, but I want to capture all this information before they get to checkout, right, right, because I want to use that for sales or marketing, guess what. The customer doesn't want to give that information, right, so you've created a friction point, a major barrier. Why does Amazon work so well? One of the reasons one-click checkout, right, you put in your information one time, your mailing address one time, your credit card one time and you click buy now and you're done. They've removed the friction.

DJ Sprague: 35:07

Now they've done a couple other masterful things. If you look at all their product pages, they have product reviews, they have Q&A and website security very prominently displayed so you can see oh, it's a secure transaction. I can see all my Q&A about the product right here, so I get all my questions answered and I know that they've got reviews because I'm looking at them right here. That is what we call familiarity. So now Lowe's, home Depot, walmart, best Buy, target they've all adopted the same thing. Why? Because people like to buy from websites that look familiar, have a familiar user experience, navigation, features better up Now the reviews, let's say, on those sites.

Gary Pageau: 35:45

where are they coming from?

DJ Sprague: 35:48

They can come from. Like Amazon collects their own, they have their own proprietary platform. Right, if you're selling on Walmart, you can use reviews that are sent to Walmart from a review collection company like ourselves. So we have a partnership with Walmart. So if you're also selling on Walmartcom, we can collect product reviews for you and send them to Walmart so they'll show up on your product page.

Gary Pageau: 36:13

But if you have a store on Amazon, you can't do that, right it's all closed Because I know there are some camera dealers who have stores on Amazon too, but they can't use another review platform. They have to use Amazon's.

DJ Sprague: 36:28

Yeah, those are collected through Amazon. They have their own proprietary everything like Yelp, yeah Right, the only way you can get reviews on Yelp is is collecting them through Yelp or people leaving them on Yelp, but then Yelp does whatever they want with those reviews.

Gary Pageau: 36:45

So what is the biggest misconception that a retailer has about managing their reputation? What is like the thing that they're telling you that you're just inside your brain, shaking your head, going no, that's not true. What?

DJ Sprague: 37:02

is the biggest misconception. That's a really good question. I've got enough reviews, I don't need any more reviews. That's a really good question. I've got enough reviews, I don't need any more reviews. Big misconception because, first of all, they aged out Google, for example. You've got to be continuously collecting reviews because they age them out. After a year they don't even count. So the reviews you collected 14 months ago don't qualify for your seller ratings today. Number one, number two you can't have too many. Why? Because it's social proof, because the more reviews you have, the more votes of confidence you can display.

DJ Sprague: 37:34

And you can never display enough confidence, enough trust, enough authority, right, so more is always better and I don't need to respond to reviews because I already collected it. Yeah Well, right, you want to?

DJ Sprague: 37:50

show that again that that empathy and that connection, that that tribalism. And the other one is they're on my website. I don't need them in search. Oh well, how are people going to get to your website if they don't see you in search? You really want your reviews to show up in search, which means you really want Google qualified reviews through a Google review partner. You want them in your paid ads, your Google shopping, your organic listings. You want your reviews in as many places as possible. Show all the ways you can leverage social proof reviews ratings across the web to create a positive reputation, more visibility, better search results, more clicks and more traffic In search.

DJ Sprague: 38:37

There's something we call persuasion. It's actually a book that Dr Cialdini wrote, but we use it in a little different way. Persuasion in his book is it's what you do in context and the environment and the timing that leads up to influence. So, for example, you're at a five-star resort, four-star resort, whatever, and you're getting a cup of coffee in the restaurant for breakfast. You're gonna expect to pay 12 bucks for a cup of coffee in a nice resort, but 12 bucks at McDonald's.

DJ Sprague: 39:08

Right, completely different bucks at McDonald's, right. Completely different context, completely different environment, right. So it's the environment in the search, with the top search results and the review stars that create the persuasion, which means they're predetermined to buy. Why? Because they're coming to your website with a positive impression, right. They're already mostly convinced this is a credible company because they came up in the top five search results. They're showing positive reviews, and lots of them, ideally. So I'm already pretty much convinced. It's now pretty much up to you to throw up too many friction points and barriers to determine from buying. You already have a positive impression of your brand. So that's what we call persu-suasion, reputation management in search. And then you continue that on your website stars on your homepage, your category pages and your product pages.

Gary Pageau: 39:58

And you just mentioned the book, which is the last thing we want to talk about is the book which actually the listeners of this podcast can go get a copy of it. Where can they go get more information?

DJ Sprague: 40:12

Yeah, we're giving away literally the digital and audio version of Reputation King and the strategy guide. So Reputation King is a 228 page full color book 91 illustrations, graphs, charts, examples, before and after screenshots the whole nine yards, 49 citations from studies and research, and that's all available at reputationking. com. You can fill in the form name, url, phone number, download it. You can also buy it for $19.97 cents covers. It is shipping and handling. We send you the book.

Gary Pageau: 40:50

Can I leave a review of the book?

DJ Sprague: 40:52

You can leave a review of the book on on on Amazon. We also sell it on Amazon. We just launched the website yesterday so we don't have the review component set up yet. But yes, it's also an Amazon. So reputation King on Amazon, that reputation kingcom. It's a better deal on the website because with Amazon it's $19.99, so a whole couple cents more. But you don't get the strategy guide and you don't get the cool free little gifts we give you inside the reputation kit, which is available.

Gary Pageau: 41:25

So the audio book and the digital copy are free. But if you want the physical copy with the additional, the audio book and the digital copy are free, but if you want the physical copy with the additional goodies, that's the $19. 95, which is well worth it. Yes, okay, exactly, awesome. Well, thank you so much, ej, for your time and your expertise. This has been wonderful. I've learned a lot and I hope everyone else has too. Thank you so much, and can you tell people again where to go for the book and to learn more about Shopper Approved.

DJ Sprague: 41:52

So to learn more about Shopper Approved ratings and reviews reputation management, go to shopperapprovedcom. To learn more about the book, or get the book, go to reputationkingcom. Awesome, well, thank you so much. Thank you.

Gary Pageau: 42:04

Gary, awesome. Well, thank you so much. Thank you, Gary.