Newer generations are born digital. Millennials and Gen Zers are the first Internet-savvy generation. They do not need to see something or read about it — they just Google it, check it on social media, or find it on their app. These younger generations are also more distrustful of businesses than previous generations.
A bad experience is quickly shared online, and businesses must understand the importance of online reviews. Social media has made it easier for businesses to reach out to potential customers, but that can work against you if a negative review spreads quickly on social media sites like Facebook or Google.
Online reviews are one of the most important factors when potential customers decide whether they want to give your business a try or not. If you want people to come back again and again, read ahead and learn why online reviews are so important.
Online Reviews Quick Background
Let’s start with a quick review of what online reviews are and how they work. When someone finds your business and needs help, one of the first things they do is check reviews. In 2019, around 70% of customers read online reviews before visiting a store or buying from a website.
Online reviews are written testimonials about a business, service, or product. Reliable Reviews, Google, Facebook, Trustpilot, and others host these reviews and show them on search engine results and social media pages. These reviews are written by customers who have used your business in the past.
By providing them with an easy way to write a review, you can help improve your online presence and make your business more trustworthy. You may also ask friends, family, and co-workers to leave online reviews. This is called peer-to-peer review, and it can make a big difference in your online presence.
Popular Online Review Sites
There are many online review sites where customers can leave a review after a purchase or service experience. The most popular ones are:
Reliable Reviews
Reliable Reviews is a robust resolution to cultivate and manage your customer feedback and online reviews. With dozens of options, and customizations, to satisfy your customer experience goals.
As Software as a Service (SaaS) based solution, it constantly adds and enhances features to grow with the internet and the industry. Small businesses, multi-location, and enterprises will find the right combination of features to drive your business up.
Amazon
The eCommerce giant has been around since the ’90s. With a huge customer base and easy-to-use review system, it is no wonder that many people look to Amazon first when they want to leave a review.
While not only used for reviews, this may be the most important site to monitor, especially if you’re in a service-related industry. We’ll get more into that below.
It’s also a social media site, but it has a review section that can be helpful if you are in the service industry. It’s easy to leave a review on Facebook.
Yelp
This site has long been a haven for personal reviews of all kinds of local businesses. It’s a great place to leave reviews if you are a customer of a local business.
Those are the most popular review sites, but many others might be more relevant to your business. You can also use third-party review sites like Trustpilot, ShopperApproved, or G2Crowd.
Why Are Online Reviews So Important?
If you need a reason to understand the importance of online reviews, look no further. These reviews will help you make your online business more successful, and they can also influence your local customers’ decision to buy from you. Online reviews are important because they are extremely influential.
More than 90% of consumers make purchasing decisions based on reviews. This means that your potential customers will be influenced by what others have to say about your business.
Some ways that these reviews can help make your business more successful include:
Build Trust For Potential Customers
A satisfied customer is the best marketing tool for any business, but that isn’t always the case. 90% of customers say they’ve chosen to buy from a brand that has an average or above-average rating. This means that you must maintain a high rating even to remain competitive.
Attract New Customers
If you have a positive online reputation, you can attract more customers as they search online for products and services. If potential customers see bad reviews, they will likely go to a different business.
Help Nurture Relationships With Existing Customers
If you ask for feedback, reviews, or complaints from customers, this can help you find issues that need to be fixed as well as areas for improvement.
Drive Customer Acquisition
If you have a positive reputation, you can use reviews to bring in new customers. This is called reputation marketing.
7 Tips To Help You Get More Reviews For Your Online Business
One of the best ways to get higher ratings and more online reviews is to ask for them. It may sound silly, but people expect to be asked. If you don’t ask, they probably won’t leave a review. Here are some guidelines to help you get more reviews:
Be Authentic
Reviews are the real opinions of your customers. They are a great way to reach out to past customers and show them you appreciate their business. The more authentic your reviews are, the more likely you are to get more reviews.
Be Flexible
Online reviews are valuable, but sometimes you may see some negative reviews. You should not delete negative or bad reviews just because you feel bad about them. Instead, use those reviews to understand what you can do better.
Be Consistent
You can help increase your online reviews if you allow customers to leave reviews on your website at any time. If you only let customers leave reviews after they have purchased something, you may miss out on reviews from satisfied customers.
Get Permission
People don’t like to be forced to leave a review, and they probably won’t. Instead, you should make it easy for your customers to leave a review if they choose to do so.
Make It Easy To Find Your Reviews
Make sure that your reviews are easy to find. Put links to your reviews on your website. If there are bad reviews, make sure that you respond to them.
Include Reviews In Your Email Campaigns
You should include your reviews in your email campaigns. This can be done by including a link to your reviews with each email you send. This can help you increase your review count by encouraging your past customers to leave reviews for you.
Ask For Feedback
Asking for feedback from your customers helps you improve your business. It also gives you valuable information about how to better meet your customers’ needs, what you could improve on, and more.
Bad Reviews
Negative reviews can impact your sales and your customers’ trust in your brand. They can also severely hurt your business. The best way to avoid this is to make sure that your customers are happy. If an unhappy customer leaves a review, you should try to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.
Avoid Getting Bad Reviews
Here are some ways to avoid getting bad reviews:
Communicate With Your Customers
Communication is extremely important, especially when a customer has an issue with a purchase. You can solve the problem before it gets out of hand and turns into a bad review. If a customer has an issue with their order or service experience, you need to respond quickly. Communication is key when it comes to customer satisfaction. You might also want to consider using a customer loyalty program to reward customers for coming back.
Be Proactive
Reviews usually occur after a customer has a bad or good experience with your business. And that’s when you need to be proactive. You should ask for reviews when the experience was positive, but also if there is room for improvement. Manage your online reputation with a customer service tool like Intercom.
You can put a review request on your receipts, send automated messages asking for reviews, and use the other features to manage your reviews and respond to them as quickly as possible. You can also send emails to your past customers asking if they would be willing to review your business.
If you’ve done quality work, reviews will come in over time, but you can speed up the process by reaching out to past customers.
Respond Quickly
When someone leaves a review, you need to respond quickly. Whether good or bad, it’s important to respond and let the customer know that you have heard their feedback and are working to improve.
You can use online review management software to respond to customer reviews quickly. It will also help you keep track of which reviews need a response and which ones you’ve responded to.
Reward Loyal Customers
When people come back to you, they have shown interest in your products or services. You can reward them with discounts and other benefits. Many businesses use coupons and other discounts as a way to promote themselves.
But this is often short-lived and the benefits are only seen by new customers. Create a loyalty program that rewards customers who come back to you. This will help you retain customers and encourage others to make more purchases.
A loyalty program can be as simple as rewarding customers with points whenever they make purchases. You can then give out discounts for a certain number of points or give access to special items to the highest-ranking customers.
Conclusion
Reviews matter — even more so within the millennial and Gen Z age groups. Make sure you are doing everything you can to get positive reviews and respond quickly to bad ones.
Reviews are a great opportunity to showcase your strengths, as well as identify room for improvement. A bad review can be an opportunity to learn from customers and improve your business, while a good review can help build trust with future customers.
If you want to improve your sales with the help of reviews, make sure you encourage your customers to leave them. It also helps if you know how to get more reviews if you don’t have any yet.
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Why Is It Important That Online Reviews Be Trustworthy?
The Meaning Behind Reviews and How They Help Sell Your Business
