A disgruntled customer would have a somewhat limited audience when it came to sharing news of their negative experience—they might tell their immediate group of family and friends, but widespread dissemination of that verbal review would be extremely unlikely. Not so in the age of the internet.
More than 8 in 10 consumers now trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations—which means that as consumers, we’re all conditioned to seek out online reviews before doing business with a new company.
They’re everywhere
This trust has led to new review sites popping up all the time, fueling the availability of online reviews and giving consumers even more outlets for their opinions and experiences. Reviews as a format have also grown in prominence, and you’ll now see star ratings appearing alongside organic search results, in Google Local results (the local pack) and even alongside AdWords paid search ads.
Online reviews are also infiltrating social media and with Facebook now the second most popular reviews and recommendations platform in the world, you don’t even have to be proactive about soliciting reviews for consumers to share their opinions of your company.
As a business, you simply can’t hide from reviews—they will be displayed about your business online and with so much consumer faith placed in the experiences of both friends and strangers, the upshot is that online reviews can make or break a small business’ bottom line.
They’re a ranking factor
Research carried out in 2017 confirmed that online reviews were an important ranking factor and there was a clear correlation between volume of reviews, responses and number of negative reviews with local search results.
Reviews can improve click-throughs from GMB profiles
Consumers put their faith in online reviews—87% of consumers look for 3-5 star reviews before they will use a local business. If you aren’t regularly achieving an average 3-5 star rating or aren’t actively soliciting reviews, chances are that those potential customers will look elsewhere.
Reviews act as social proof
Social media is a crucial part of the consumer purchase process. With so many business pages indexing highly in Google for the business name, it’s easy for a shopper to turn to a business’ Facebook page to find out more information. Just as they do on review platforms and search engines, Facebook reviews and recommendations act as social proof of the quality of your business.
Social commerce is also on the rise, meaning reviews on social platforms can impact on purchase decisions in other ways, too. A 2017 research report by Open Influence found that 47.7% of US social media users had made their most recent purchase from Facebook.
You can use reviews as trust signals on your site to increase conversions
Your business’ reputation is your #1 asset. More than ever, potential customers go online to look at reviews so they can make decisions about which local businesses to patron, which products to purchase or which service to use.
With more than 8 in 10 consumers trusting online reviews as much as a personal recommendation, displaying carefully chosen 5-star reviews on your website emits a strong trust signal and validates their decision to do business with you.
Furthermore, a growing number of consumers read more than 11 reviews before they feel they can trust a business—so the easier the access to reviews you can provide on your owned media channels, the higher the likelihood of conversions.
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