What is review syndication?
Nothing attracts shoppers more than a product with positive reviews, and nothing deters a buyer’s interest more than a negative review, except no reviews at all.
Today, this counts not only for the online world but also for brick-and-mortar sales. Consumers get information online, no matter where the purchase ultimately takes place. Amazon is now the No. 1 product search engine, and product reviews influence the algorithm for displaying the search results page and thus guide the consumer to make a purchase.
The same applies to location reviews on Google. Whether it’s a brick-and-mortar retailer, gas station, bank, etc., consumers are influenced by online reviews on Google. Good reviews help the business, and bad reviews might lead to the consumer not even stopping by the store.
Over the last few years, software solutions have been established on the market that help companies accumulate and distribute reviews. The goal is to reach even more consumers with the existing reviews on the company’s product page. Review syndication is thus intended to distribute user-generated content (UGC) from one website to several websites.
For example, brand manufacturers can distribute customer feedback generated on their own webshop to the product information page of other e-tailers. In this example, it is also conceivable that a review from the German webshop is transferred to the company’s own English or French webshop.
Review syndication for Google or location reviews works in exactly the same way. The aim is always to make the existing reviews visible to the consumer across multiple sites.
How does Review Syndication Work?
Normally, the syndication process starts with review content generation by the manufacturer. The manufacturer or a service provider ensures that consumers write new reviews. There are now a wide variety of ways and different tools to do this, for example after-sales newsletters, social media channels, etc.
This user-generated content – star rating, review text and, if applicable, image or video material, is then brought together and passed on to the appropriate parties. This content can then be displayed either on further own websites or retailer pages etc. Through this network effect, you can reach significantly more consumers.
Using Amazon as an example, by utilizing review syndication, it is possible to transfer feedback from one country’s Amazon website to another. In other words, a review that is created for a product on Amazon.com will also appear on the product description page on Amazon.de.
The multiplication of reviews and, thus, interaction opportunities with the user must also be managed. Accordingly, companies must take care of the reviews and comments not only on the original channel but also on the other channels.
Monitoring, alerting, analysis and interaction apply here to an even greater extent.
