You’ve probably heard it time and time again that listing your company’s review on websites and social media pages is a crucial step to your ongoing visibility and a great opportunity for customer service. But why is that?
This article will take you through how consumers are influenced by online review, the importance of online and how that affects your SEO and lastly few cool tips to get those positive reviews flying across all your various channel and straight into your consumer’s heart .
If still not convinced of the value reviews provides and how that relates your business’ visibility, then this one’s for you.
How Consumers Are Using Online Reviews before Making a Purchase?
Before we get into the data surrounding how online reviews impact consumers’ purchases, it’s important to consider where online business reviews fit into the purchasing cycle for desired products and services.
Typically, by the time someone has started looking at review websites like reviews on your product pages or Facebook, Caroselle, Twitter or elsewhere, they have already figured out what they need and how a business might ideally fulfill that need.
The critical thing to note is that the mental gap between reading a review and making a decision is ridiculously small and customers typically decide yes or no almost immediately. So, as a small business, your online reputation can directly influence your bottom line.
But, how many consumers actually read online reviews?
According to one recent survey, 84% of shoppers said they trusted online business reviews as much as a personal recommendation from friends or family.
But exactly how many reviews do they read before making up their mind?
About 68% of consumers will read four or more reviews before they can trust a business.
Consumers are also changing their habits when it comes to reading positive reviews. After reading a positive review, customers are now less likely to go on to visit a business’ website straight away.
While that affects your e-commerce traffic, customers who read positive reviews are far more likely to get directly in touch over the phone over via email, or by visiting in person.
5 Main Reasons Why Online Reviews Matters for Your Business Growth?
1) Give you valuable feedback with regards to what your clients actually want
Analyzing both the good and bad reviews people leave for you helps keep your ear to the ground with regards to overall customer satisfaction and public opinion.
Reviews provide insight into how your average consumer thinks about your service or industry, rather than what you think about what you offer.
It provides a unique peek behind the curtain, allowing you to learn about the real value you provide to your customers.
Analysing your reviews can be a surprising avenue for market research and honing in on your value proposition.
2) Raise your credibility and endorses social proof through words of mouth
Human being are inherently social creatures, and we like to know that someone else has had a good experience with a company before we make a buying decision.
Much like we would ask friends and family for recommendations, review sites allow us to do this online.
Online reviews are also a valuable thing to pursue if your company is quite new but you have a few happy customers under your belt.
Look at it this way – which company would you rather buy from – one with fifty 3-star reviews or one with five 5-star reviews?
Overall, reviews enable new companies to stand shoulder to shoulder with more established competition, and potentially gain a positive foothold in people’s estimation.
3) Provides other consumer valuable insight that you may not have thought of.
Reviews do not only gives you information on what should be improved but also other new consumer details about your product/ services.
Hence, certain minutiae that you hadn’t given a second thought could be stated which some might find impressive and attracted to your product/ service.
Negative reviews too help to qualify leads.
If someone mentions that you don’t provide a certain product or service, their review will inform others in need of that service to look elsewhere.
4) Reviews are becoming more significant to people’s purchasing decisions
It is in fact a trend that shows no sign of going away. As the older generation are coming online and the younger generation growing bigger, online reviewing is only set to grow further.
According to Vedanta, 92% of consumers in 2016 read online reviews compared to 88% in 2014. Your business may as well stake its claim within this growing arena!
The more people are attracted by your good reviews and become satisfied customers themselves, the more good reviews you get.
It is as simple as the more good reviews you get, the more people come.
5) Reviews can have a positive impact on search engine visibility
Search engines are acutely aware that online ratings sites provide a popular and usually reliable picture of a company’s quality.
Because reviews have the potential to show prominently on Google search results pages, people may see how awesome you are before they even go through to your listing page or website.
Why Online Reviews Matter For Local SEO?
Search engines loves online reviews because consumers love online review
Review provides consumers with what the believe is the most accurate information which help them predict and make decisions about their future purchases.
The faster they can do that, the more consumers will turn to them time and time again.
Additionally, according to MOZ’s Survey, online reviews are thought to make up 10% of how Google and other search engines decide to rank search results.
Strategical Tips to Get More Positive Customer Reviews on Different Reviews Sites
On your on website
- Make it easy for customers to navigate through your website and complete a purchase,
- Minimize the number of steps to actually buy your product or services
- Try to stick to 1-2 sites to collect a large number of reviews rather than spreading a few reviews across several sites
- Start by focusing on the sites where you have the most reviews and create your strategy from there.
- Email your customers after they’ve purchased something from you. Send your customers an email from a real person
- Follow up your customer after purchase by opening few lines of communication then politely asking them to leave a review
- You can request a review for the specific product they purchased, subtly weave it into an email with an alternative goal, or include a link in your email signature.
- Create A Testimonials Page On Your Website
- Consider reaching out to past customers to be featured on your testimonials page
- Use social media platforms like Instagram to search through your tagged photos and look up branded hashtags for your products.
- Send direct messages to the individuals who have posted about your business and thank them for sharing, with a polite request for a more formal review
- Your reviews and star ranking are one of the first things a user see upon visiting your Page.
- To collect reviews, make sure your reviews tab is activated. This is done through your Page Settings under General.
- Some companies have private Facebook groups for customers. This would be an ideal opportunity to pop your head in and share a link to the site you’re collecting reviews on.
- D not re-target ads on Facebook because it can be useful for encouraging conversions, but not ideal to request a review.
- Just be sure to avoid annoying your customers by capping the frequency at which they see the ad.