7 reasons why positive reviews are important for your business

A 2019 study found that 91% of shoppers regularly look for customer reviews of companies on the Internet. 84% trust what is written in a review to the same extent as the recommendations of relatives and friends. 68% of people make decisions based on what they read on sites like Yelp or Booking.com.

Regardless of the business niche, reviews increase customer confidence in your brand. In addition, clients responding to your business provide important feedback. Based on the information gathered, you can improve your company's promotion strategy.

Let's take a closer look at the importance of customer reviews to buyers and why they matter to your company.

The higher the brand’s rating on review sites, the more potential customers are interested in its services. The star customer rating system has become so popular that even Google has included it in the search results snippet. The information allows the customer to intuitively determine the quality of the service, without even clicking on the link to the site.

The Coast Digital website published the results of a study demonstrating the relationship between consumer frequency and rating systems:

If a company is recommended by its audience, then consumers are more likely to complete their first order. Recommendations and reviews online are one of the important factors in increasing business sales. Therefore, many brands encourage their customers to leave feedback.

According to the results of the Revoo study, having online reviews increases sales by an average of 18%. Raising the rating by one star on sites such as Yelp increases this figure by 5-9%.

Seriously Silly Socks managed to increase the average check by 60% due to high ratings and positive customer reviews.

Most users search for a specific product or business in search engines, such as Google or Bing. Each of these systems has its own algorithms for indexing and ranking sites, but unique and regularly updated content is always a priority.

The Search Engine Watch study shows the importance of online surveys in improving the ranking of a corporate site in search engines and promoting it to the top search results. According to SEO experts, reviews make up 9.8% of search engine ranking factors.

The medical center "MedQuest" was able to improve their rating on review sites and increase the number of positive reviews by monitoring comments and responding to customer questions.

The main problem with online purchases is that there is no way to experience the product directly and the lack of guarantees. For many buyers it is important to be confident in the company's reputation and the quality of its products. Fresh reviews and comments gain the trust of your target audience.

Studies show that most buyers do not trust brands whose online rating is below 4 stars. On the other hand, customers can distrust too many extremely positive reviews, viewing them to be fake.

You can read more about the impact of rating on consumer confidence here.

Therefore, it’s important not to remove negative comments. However, you need to make sure that they are as infrequent as possible.

Bad reviews unanswered by company representatives deprive you of sales and profits. Interact with the audience and try to resolve conflict situations in a way that benefits both sides.

With the right strategy, the author may delete a negative review themselves or change it to a positive comment.

The more consumers leave posts on the Internet about you, the more recognizable your company becomes. Even a few comments can motivate other customers in the future to share their review without additional rewards. If you have just entered the market, think about how to motivate the first customers to leave a review on your site or a service like Foursquare or Yelp. Read in more detail about review sites for various business niches in our other article.

A search engine reputation management (SERM) agency can help increase the number of positive posts about your company. In the case of orthopedic surgeon Matthew Warnock, the agencies GetFiveStars and Search Influence improved his rating and secured his first 100 reviews within six months. To do this, employees contacted the doctor’s clients and asked them to share a review of the reception and treatments.

As a result, organic traffic from search engines rose by 23%, and the number of hits also increased. Users began to leave comments more often on various review sites like Healthgrades.

Testimonials help improve your business processes, making it clear what needs to be corrected to meet the needs of your audience.

For example, Buffer used feedback from a customer complaint to improve its product. In this case, many customers requested a video feature be added to Twitter.

Having a strong reputation on the Internet determines the success of the company and its competitiveness in the market. Firms that have a constant influx of comments and respond quickly to a negative review are more likely to receive orders and requests from interested shoppers. These brands grow their audiences of regular customers faster, providing a larger profit.

A study conducted in 2018 by Wayne Huang and other Harvard Business Review experts revealed that the faster the airline responds to a tweet, the more a customer is willing to pay for a ticket.