7 Quick Tips to Collect Reviews Easily and Increase Social Proof in Your Online Course

Social proof is a fundamental part of any successful business, especially when it comes to selling online courses.

If you are just starting out, it might be challenging to collect reviews to showcase on your new site.

Below are 7 tips to easily gather students reviews and boost social proof for your online course!

#1. Ask Your Students and Email List

The businesses that get the most reviews are those that ask for reviews the most!

If you are not proactively asking your contacts for their feedback, you may be missing out on opportunities to gather reviews on your site.

Before launching your online course, you should have gathered a list of email contacts, and maybe you already have a few active students in your program.

Simply send each of them an email asking them to write a review for your online course.

This can also help you to gather feedback about your online course content and understand the biggest pain points of your audience.

If you have zero contacts in your email list and no students enrolled in your program yet, try asking your family and friends for honest feedback about your online course, or better yet, consider pre selling your online course and collecting feedback from some initial beta members.

#2. Embed a Form in Your Online Course to Collect Reviews

Many creators miss out on collecting feedback from their students simply because they do not ask them!

Your students may not see your email asking for a review, but they cannot miss a form embedded right inside your online course.

There are a large number of tools available online that you can use to embed forms on your website and even inside your online course lessons.

In this article from our blog, we cover all the tools that you can embed on your online course website to improve the student experience: Embed These Tools in Your Online Course Software to Improve Student Engagement and Create an Awesome Learning Experience

Google Forms is a great (and Free!) tool you can use to generate any kind of form and easily embed it on your site. You could create a simple form asking students to leave a review of your online course.

Add this as a lesson at the end of your online course to make sure that your students won’t miss it!

#3. Collect Testimonials From Your Social Media Accounts

Oftentimes your follower will leave positive feedback on your social media pages. Don’t forget to include these on your site to increase your credibility!

You can simply take a screenshot of the comments, posts or message containing the feedback and add them to your online course page.

This type of feedback can work even better than standard reviews, as it is more authentic to the eye of your site viewers.

If you are taking a screenshot that includes people's names or pictures, don’t forget to either conceal sensitive personal information of the reviewer or directly ask them for permission to add their feedback on your site.

#4. Give a Reward in Exchange for Reviews

Your students may be more incentivized to leave a review in exchange for a small reward, especially if they had a positive experience with your online course.

The reward should be small (you certainly do not want to bribe people) but interesting enough to convince your contact to take the time to write a review for you.

Early access to a new product, a small discount for another online course in your program, or a free digital product such as an eBook, a worksheet are great incentives you can use to collect feedback.

If you are giving out a reward, you can expect a higher effort from the reviewer. Try asking them to send you a video testimonial explaining how they benefited from your online course.

Video testimonials are a fantastic form of social proof: not only are they more entertaining to watch and attention-grabbing, they are also the most authentic and genuine form of reviews.

Check out the video testimonials we have collected for Heights Platform from our customers, and see how impactful they are for yourself.

#5. Make it a Challenge!

Starting a social media challenge to collect more reviews is a great way to both increase your social proof, entertain your followers and increase online engagement and visibility.

If you are hosting an online community for your program (such as a Facebook group, a private community or, if you are a Heights customer, your discussion board) you can start a challenge there.

As an example, you could ask your group members to share their reviews or video testimonials and then choose the best one that will receive a reward (ex: a free access to your online course, a digital product or a gift of physical merchandise from your brand).

A similar approach allowed us to collect a significant amount of reviews for Heights Platform.

The reward you give out here should be higher than the one discussed in Tip Number 4, as you are only giving it out to one or a few people.

Overall this strategy can be great to collect reviews, but also to gain a higher online visibility, as you can ask people to share your social media profile as part of the challenge.

#6. Reply to All Reviews

Once you start receiving a few testimonials from your students, following up and replying to them is a critical step in increasing your online credibility.

Write a polite reply to all reviews, good and - more importantly - bad ones.

If you provide a reasonable and polite explanation to negative reviews, potential customers will not be discouraged by reading your negative reviews. In fact, negative reviews will not only help uncover ways to improve your business, but can also potentially win you new customers! The way you respond to negative reviews show can show how much you care about your customers.

#7. Include Names and Pictures in the Reviews

If you can, include the full name and picture of the reviewer in each testimonial you receive.

To do this, you can simply add a step to your review form where students are asked to insert their name and upload their picture.

It is important to always ask permission before sharing personal information of your reviewers! If you plan to share information that some might consider private, add a box asking for permission or simply write a small disclaimer in the review form.

Adding full names and pictures to your testimonials can help you increase your credibility and social proof to the eye of potential customers.

No matter what strategy you prefer to collect reviews, the best way to gain positive feedback is to create an online course that truly helps students achieve results.

To accomplish this you need to create great content, and choose an online course platform designed to help your students achieve results.

Heights Platform is the all-in-one online course software that offers all the features creators need to build and sell online courses and membership sites that produce real results for their learners. In the last year alone, thousands of creators from 100+ countries joined us to create their online knowledge businesses.