Online reviews have a significant impact on your business because the large majority of customers actively seek them out. In fact, 88% of online shoppers incorporate reviews into their purchase decision-making process. They know that reviews are an unbiased, legitimate source of knowledge, and so they trust them to inform their purchasing decisions. Online reviews aren’t just relevant to online shoppers, many people will research products first before then buying in-store.
Potential benefits:
Your business can benefit greatly from positive reviews and be hurt from negative reviews. The potential to gain business from online reviews is high however.
- Glowing reviews can benefit your business by increasing sales: products with positive reviews sold 200% more than those with no ratings.
- Having positive reviews means a customer is more likely to trust your business.
- 75% of businesses claim that collecting online reviews helps to gain new customers.
- Having more reviews, especially good ones, will increase SEO rankings.
Sources for online reviews:
Reviews should be in a third-party site because this helps your audience to feel that the opinions are unbiased. Of course, you can display the best reviews on your site or social media pages.
- Yelp is the largest source for reviews of local businesses.
- Amazon is the go-to digital retailer of products and reviews are an integral part of each product’s page.
- Google reviews are favored by the search engine and will pop up prominently with your business listing.
- Facebook allows users to leave a review on your business page.
Negative reviews:
Don’t neglect or be afraid to check reviews! Managing your online reputation is important to growing profits. While you may fear a negative review and the customers it could lose you, it doesn’t make sense to ignore them entirely. Be sure to respond promptly to any negative feedback. Customers will leave reviews of your business whether you ask them to or not. Managing them puts your business more in control of your image.
When you have a large number of good reviews, it won’t hurt your overall rating as much if someone leaves a negative one. If you don’t have many online reviews, a single bad one can drag down your entire ranking.
Increasing reviews:
Providing excellent customer service is crucial to receiving rave reviews, but enticing customers into giving them is also helpful. It’s important to encourage your audience to leave you reviews because you’ll cultivate a good number of positive ones quicker.
If you’d like help in managing your company’s reputation online, we’re experts. Contact us today!
