How to improve your online reputation to acquire more users and customers

A good online reputation inspires your users to share positive reviews that make your business more trustworthy in the eyes of potential customers, and, in turn, increases sales. 

But it takes more than a good product to build and maintain an effective online presence. You have to actively listen to customers to understand how they feel and make changes to improve the user experience (UX).

To get you started, we cover 5 strong, yet easy-to-implement techniques to manage and improve your online reputation. You’ll also learn the different ways to use Contentsquare to uncover what users think of your brand, make changes that delight them, and grow your reputation (and revenue).

5 ways to manage and improve your online reputation

Your reputation largely depends on how your users and customers feel and what they say about your brand, product, or service on the web. That’s because 99.9% of people rely on reviews and feedback from real users before making a decision. 

So if you want to increase customer delight and improve your brand image, you need to listen to and act on their feedback. 

There are two ways to listen for and gather user feedback at different stages of the marketing funnel: active and reactive listening:

• Active listening involves gathering feedback and insights in real time, so you can spot issues before they escalate and prevent negative feedback from impacting your reputation

• Reactive listening involves addressing bad reviews after they’ve been published online (and have probably affected your reputation already)

Together, these two strategies provide a holistic way to action relevant customer feedback and insights at every stage of their journey, which results in a positive online reputation that builds trust and promotes purchases.

Let’s take a look at 5 online reputation management strategies that cover both of these listening techniques. 

1. Ask users directly how they feel to identify pain points 

Letting your customers share what they think about your product or service (while using it) provides an unfiltered view of their experience in their own words. 

This active listening strategy helps you analyze and identify common product and website elements that delight or frustrate your customers, so you know what to promote, improve, or remove.

There are two main ways to gather direct feedback from users:

Use on-site and external surveys to capture user feedback 

Surveys help you capture feedback from your users on and off your site using a variety of closed- and open-ended questions. For example, customer satisfaction (CSAT) surveys tell business owners how people truly feel about their site’s UX, product, brand, or customer experience.

Contentsquare’s CSAT survey asks customers to rate their satisfaction and why as they interact with various brand touchpoints

To make the most of your surveys, ensure you

• Have a clear picture of what you want to learn or achieve 

• Choose a survey template that aligns with the insights you want to gather

• Keep the survey short and to the point so you don’t overwhelm respondents

• Avoid asking leading questions so users feel free to provide unbiased feedback

💡 Pro tip: use Contentsquare AI to create your first (or next) survey in seconds for free.

You only have to set a goal—AI will create your survey, analyze the results, and generate summary reports on your behalf, so you can focus on making changes that increase customer delight.

Use interviews to have real conversations with your customers

Contentsquare Interviews lets you have a full conversation with your users so you can deeply understand and empathize with their goals, motivations, pain points, and priorities. Use Interviews to record and transcribe interviews, make collaborative notes, and highlight key points to make better decisions.

With Contentsquare, you can speak with your own users or find the right people to interview from our pool of more than 200,000 participants

To gather more in-depth user feedback, start the interview with icebreaker questions; you could ask interviewees about their interests to help them feel comfortable to open up. 

During the interview, ask them to share specific examples while answering your questions to help you (and your team) connect the dots. Also, don’t forget to send a thank-you email, as it shows your users you care about hearing from them.

2. Keep an eye on online channels for mentions of your business

Monitoring online mentions of your brand lets you address positive and negative comments from customers before they get out of hand and ruin your brand's reputation. 

That’s because acknowledging customer concerns publicly helps you turn a negative situation into a positive one as you work to fix it right away. 

Even though this strategy is reactive, it still goes a long way in showing customers you care about them, which also helps to manage and improve your brand identity. 

Social listening with tools like Brandwatch makes you aware of what people are saying about your brand, so you can acknowledge and address negative comments and promote positive ones

Follow these tips to ensure you don’t miss critical online mentions:

• Set up Google alerts for your business name, product names, and relevant keywords so you get notified every time someone mentions them

• Use social listening tools like Hootsuite, Brandwatch, or Mention to track comments and conversations across different social media platforms

• Always check industry-specific online review sites and address any issues promptly

• Track industry communities, subreddits, forums, and websites to see what users are saying about you (or competing brands) 

• Keep an eye on your business email for customer inquiries or feedback—customers sometimes reach out directly or respond to your emails to provide feedback 

3. Observe users as they interact with your site to spot UX issues

Understanding how people move through your site lets you spot UX issues (like bugs) and optimize your user’s journey, so they can easily accomplish their goals—whether that’s making a purchase, finding information, or signing up for your product.

There are three primary ways to observe users in real time using Contentsquare:

Replays

Session replays capture and replay how users behave on your site—what they click on, ignore, and where they get confused or frustrated while browsing.

For example, the team at Golf Digest Online (GDO) noted that users were stuck in a loop while trying to use the online booking system.

By reviewing session replays, GDO discovered that a confusing error message led users to hit the back button—an action the booking process didn’t support—resulting in frustration and site abandonment.

After seeing the replays, GDO knew what to fix to improve UX for future visitors.

Heatmaps 

Heatmaps reveal how users navigate through your site—you see where users click on a specific web page, how far they scroll, and what they interact with or ignore.

Contentsquare Heatmaps helps you identify which design elements and CTAs get the most or least interactions and where users stop scrolling on your most important pages

To get more actionable user insights, determine the most important pages on your site (such as your homepage, product pages, or checkout pages) and focus on them. Use heatmaps to identify

• Which elements users interact with the most and least

• Where users frequently hover over elements on the page without taking action

• How far users scroll down the page to see critical below-the-fold content they miss

Also, review heatmap data for mobile users—as over 92% of internet users access websites using mobile devices—and make changes to improve their experience. 

Funnels

Creating a sales funnel and finding out where users drop off or become paying customers is crucial in site optimization. If your site isn’t easy to use and people can’t complete certain steps, your online reputation will take a turn for the worse. 

For example, if your site’s analytics reveal that a lot of people in a certain country aren’t completing their purchases, use Contentsquare Funnel Analysis to figure out why and make it easier for them to buy.

Contentsquare Funnel Analysis lets you identify your lowest-converting steps and compare your marketing channels to see which ones convert users better than others

Knowing which steps in the sales funnels are preventing people from converting allows you to make changes to your site that improve your user’s journey, giving you happy customers who are more likely to leave positive feedback and reviews that attract other potential users.

4. Respond to negative reviews promptly and professionally

Addressing negative feedback promptly shows users you take their concerns seriously and are willing to improve their experience. It also humanizes your brand and reminds customers that there are real people behind the business who care about satisfying their needs.

On the other hand, unresolved issues are likely to result in more negative comments, which could damage your reputation even more. To manage (or improve) your reputation, make sure you

• Respond to negative feedback as soon as possible with a solution 

• Maintain a courteous tone in your response, even if the feedback is harsh 

• Always acknowledge your user's concern, so you can understand their frustration

• Be concise and to the point when addressing your customer's concerns

• Be transparent about any steps you plan to take to rectify the situation

• Use negative feedback as an opportunity to learn and improve

💡 Pro tip: use Contentsquare Voice of Customer to ask users about their feelings and experiences while using your site. The feedback collection widget also lets you collect users’ email addresses so you can

• Follow up with questions to better understand and address an issue they highlighted

• Let them know once the issue has been resolved

• Send a personal note to appreciate their feedback

Contentsquare’s feedback widget from lets your users highlight parts of your web page they like or hate and asks them why they feel that way to help you spot areas that need improvement on your most important product pages

5. Share customer reviews and testimonials across your channels to gain trust

Social proof—like positive user reviews and testimonials—gives people a reason to trust your business, helping you acquire new customers.

Hearing your existing users share their stories and specific results they got from using your product helps you create an emotional connection with your target audience that marketing copy alone cannot achieve, no matter how compelling.

How to use social proof to gain trust and improve your online reputation:

• Share good reviews and testimonials on various online platforms, including your website, social media profiles, and review sites to show users the benefits they will reap

• Use real names and photos of the customers who left the testimonials, with their permission, to make the reviews more credible and trustworthy

• Share detailed success stories and case studies that break down how your product or service solved a specific problem or achieved remarkable results for a customer

• Encourage customers to share their experiences on their own social media profiles and tag your brand

Spot and address issues early to improve your online reputation 

So, there you have it: 5 ways to manage and improve your brand’s online reputation. 

While keeping an eye on online channels and addressing negative feedback are helpful strategies to manage your reputation, you need to proactively gather customer feedback at every stage of the user journey so issues don’t escalate beyond your control and hurt your reputation in the process.

Use a product experience insights platform like Contentsquare to understand your users’ experience and learn what’s working well, so you can improve what isn’t. That’s how you build a loyal user and customer base who trust and recommend your brand to others unprompted.

FAQs on improving your online reputation