Online reviews have become a huge factor in the growth of a business. Whether they are negative or positive reviews, it’s important that business owners encourage their customers to provide feedback. Your digital reputation is majorly affected by that star rating that your customers/clients leave when they are satisfied or dissatisfied with your service or product. Many business owners overlook this aspect of entrepreneurship, which is why I’m going to give you five reasons why you should be using customer reviews to your advantage in order to build a powerful digital presence and a more successful business.
1. Customers don’t ignore online reviews, so you shouldn’t either.
It might not seem like it, but past customer reviews aren’t ignored by incoming customers or clients. In fact, they are a huge factor in whether or not someone uses your service or product. According to a study conducted by Fan & Fuel (2016), 94% of online customers read reviews before making any purchasing decisions. For product-specific information, Spiegel Research Centre (2017) shows that 95% of shoppers read reviews before making a purchase. (medium.com)
2. Increases Online Visibility
Customer reviews from Facebook, Google, or other review platforms affect your online search ranking majorly. If these online reviews are negative reviews, they will lower your ranking, and if they are positive reviews they boost your search ranking. Businesses with more online reviews and a high overall star rating will rank on Google higher than those with less customer reviews and a lower overall star rating. Shoppers and users will see your business rank higher, and this will lead to more clicks on your websites.
3. More Positive Customer Reviews = More Sales
If a customer leaves a positive online review, other potential customers are likely to see how you satisfy your customers with the services or products you provide. Some may say that online reviews aren’t as trustworthy as personal recommendations, but this is mostly wrong. For nearly 9 in 10 customers, an online review is as important as a personal recommendation. This leads to more customers, and more sales.
Tips to Benefit From Reviews
Customer reviews are very important, but I’m sure you’re wondering – how can you get your customers to leave reviews and how can you benefit from their positive (or negative) reviews?
Avoid Negative Reviews
It’s important to put yourself in your consumer’s shoes. If your customer service is lacking, why would they leave a positive review? In order to avoid negative reviews, pay attention to customer feedback and adjust accordingly if you see a trend among the positive or negative reviews. Once you start listening to your customers, you’ll see results quickly. Your online reputation will be improved, and potential customers will be more likely to do business with you.
Social Media
Word of mouth gets around quickly on social media like Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Improving your presence on these sites can lead to more customers, and more reviews. Start posting more frequently, try to grow your presence little by little, then encourage your followers to leave feedback every once in a while and you will see results soon. It might be an arduous process, but it’s worth it in the long run.
Use Our Review Landing Page Service
A great way to get more reviews on your business is to encourage your clients to leave feedback on the review sites you use. Seriously, try it. If you ask all of your clients, some are bound to leave a review. Recently, we launched a new service to help some of our clients out with customer feedback. We create review landing pages for business, similar to the one we created for Dapper n Dashin’:
We also make a QR code to go along with your review page. Print out the QR code, hang it somewhere around your establishment, or just give your clients the link to your review page. This increases the chances of your customers leaving feedback, and you’re one step closer to improving your online presence and growing a bigger business. Good luck.
Contact us today for details and pricing on review pages!