Peter-Jan Celis feeds to the evidence that second-time entrepreneurs are better at navigation the path to success.
His app, Judge.me--build to bring rich, conversion-oriented product reviews to your store, has been floating around Shopify with over 800 5-star reviews. We sat down with him to chat about what Judge.me does for entrepreneurs and how it started.
The story begins in 2012, when his app Judge.me managed online arbitrations and small court matters on the web. The business ranked #1 on Google for the same keyword, was trending on Reddit and Hacker News, and caught the eye of several prominent news websites. The only problem? Marketing.
PJ did not want to invest time marketing--he knew where his strengths lay. He knew what he loved to do. Create apps that helped people with their businesses.
With that in mind, he decided it was time for Plan B. Judge.me 2.0.
Cut to January, 2015. Saigon, Vietnam.
PJ, in a turn of events, found himself in the same room as his soon-to-be CTO Linh Dam at a Ruby on Rails agency, and this is when plans started becoming concrete.
He had already narrowed down the niche to B2B SaaS apps--now all he had to do was find a platform that would do the boring bits for him. Et voila! Shopify fit like a glove.
He noticed that despite product reviews being a substantial mover on sales, apps for generating reviews on Shopify were generally overpriced. He wanted to create an easy-to-use, inexpensive application that new entrepreneurs could afford to add to their store.
Judge.me was a huge step towards helping online retailers multiply conversions at lower costs.
But what do product reviews bring to the table?
Product reviews can be a total game-changer. Don’t believe us? Here are some statistics from a Bright Local study to convince you:
- 85% of people say they need at least 10 positive reviews before they can trust a store.
- 72% of consumers say that positive reviews make them trust a local business more.
- And 88% of people trust online reviews just as much as they would trust a personal recommendation.
These are some strong numbers that make a case for product reviews; the impact they have on conversions is undeniable.
But let’s put the math aside for a second. Have you never desisted from buying a product from a certain seller on Amazon because they had no reviews, only to purchase it from a seller who had a 3 star rating?
Every one of us has.
Amy Waldman founded her own juice bar, and was a star locally. But to reach a nation-wide audience with a product such as healthy juices, she had to establish trust about the quality. And what better way to show people she could be trusted than to let her raving fans talk about her product?
Today, she has over 500 reviews on her store, with 95 percent of them at five stars, and five percent being 4 stars: all collected and displayed using Judge.me.
The power of a third-person with no investment in the company’s success singing praises about is...that is unmatched. It builds a conversation between you and your customers, which is ultimately what contributes to your brand identity. Without active customers, there is no brand; only a store.
And bad reviews? Without these, there would be no space to grow, no space to learn!
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