Yotpo vs Trustpilot
Who to Choose as a UK Ecommerce Brand
It’s a tough decision and one I’ve been pondering for the last six years running Perfume Direct.
In the first couple of years of business, we simply weren’t generating enough revenue to justify the significant investment in either of the leading review platforms. Instead, we opted for a budget-friendly solution called TrustSpot. True to its name, it was spot on for what we needed at the time.
By March 2020, with annual revenue hitting £3M, we’d outgrown TrustSpot. That was when I faced the big decision:
Yotpo or Trustpilot?
Both platforms offer very similar core features:
- Automated review invitations
- Widgets and logos to display across your website and marketing materials
- Analytics and customer insights
But here’s the crux of it…
On the one hand, Yotpo is a feature-packed platform designed to leverage user-generated content—reviews, photos, and videos—to foster trust and deepen customer connections. Yotpo’s review platform also integrates effortlessly with its other tools, including loyalty, SMS, email, and subscription services.
It’s an impressive platform. However, if you were to stop a random person on the UK high street, chances are they wouldn’t recognise Yotpo.
On the other hand, Trustpilot is widely regarded as the gold standard for trust in the UK. When potential customers want to validate a company’s legitimacy before making a purchase, Trustpilot is often their first stop.
Trustpilot also boasts the largest selection of widgets and logo options, which can be easily added to marketing materials to increase conversion rates—assuming your star rating is high enough.
The Problem
Both platforms have their strengths, so why not use both?
Unfortunately, this presents a few challenges.
Both Yotpo and Trustpilot require your ecommerce store to integrate directly with their platform to send automated review invitations post-purchase. After discussing this with both providers, it became clear that connecting two platforms to one site isn’t recommended. Here’s why:
1. Reviews would be split across two platforms, meaning it would take longer to build a substantial and varied bank of reviews, which is vital for building trust.
2. Splitting reviews would require significant development work to ensure customers receive invitations from the correct platform. Even then, there’s a risk that some customers might receive multiple review requests, which could frustrate them and harm their post-purchase experience.
And of course, neither platform is cheap. Depending on your business’s size and order volume, you’re likely looking at £15k–£30k per year for each platform. So, making the right choice from the outset is crucial.
Trustpilot’s Sneaky Move
Here’s an interesting quirk: Trustpilot pages can be created by anyone, not just the business owner. While some might argue this promotes transparency, others see it as a clever tactic to nudge businesses into signing up for a paid plan.
This means that even if you choose Yotpo as your review platform (as we did), you’ll still need to monitor your Trustpilot page. Most businesses in the UK will find themselves in this position.
Decision Time
When I evaluated both options in 2020, Yotpo felt like the obvious choice for Perfume Direct. It was slightly cheaper, and in addition to the reviews platform, we gained access to their UGC and SMS tools. The integration with Shopify Plus was seamless, and our dedicated Customer Success Manager, Effy, based in Tel Aviv, provided outstanding support.
We also launched Yotpo’s loyalty programme, enabling us to reward customers with points for leaving reviews or bonus points for including photos or videos.
Looking back, I underestimated the weight of a Trustpilot review and just how many UK customers rely on Trustpilot before making a purchase.
While we built a strong bank of quality (mostly five-star) reviews on Yotpo, we neglected our Trustpilot page. This was a mistake. As we weren’t actively collecting reviews on Trustpilot, our review numbers dwindled, and a few negative reviews—largely linked to undelivered parcels during Royal Mail strikes—dragged our score down to around 3.2.
We were in a bind. We loved Yotpo’s features and integration but couldn’t ignore the fact that Trustpilot needed urgent attention.
Our Solution
Here’s what we did:
- We kept Yotpo as our primary review platform. It’s great value, packed with features, and offers excellent customer service.
- We claimed and optimised our Trustpilot page, adding branding and business details, but stayed on the free plan.
- We committed to responding publicly to all negative reviews (and positive ones when time allowed).
- To grow our Trustpilot reviews, we manually emailed customers who left Yotpo reviews, thanking them and politely asking if they’d also leave a review on Trustpilot.
This manual approach wasn’t the most efficient, but it worked. Out of every 10 customers we contacted, two or three would leave a review on Trustpilot. Over the course of a year, we managed to improve our Trustpilot rating from 3.2 to 4.2 (as of May 2024).
Conclusion
For UK brands that only require a review platform, Trustpilot is the obvious choice. Its widespread recognition and trust within the UK market make it a powerful tool, and since a Trustpilot page is likely to exist for your business anyway, it makes sense to maximise its potential.
However, if you’re looking for a platform that integrates with additional marketing tools to drive more reviews, repeat customers, and higher customer lifetime value, Yotpo is the way to go.