5 Benefits of Online Reviews

Reviews are an important part of building a positive online reputation and growing any business. Whether you’re completely online, a brick and mortar business, or you do business in both your physical store and online, you want your new and potential customers to trust you. Reviews from past customers will help you build that trust, especially when they’re displayed right on your website!

 Did you know that (according to Spiegel Research Center) almost 95% of shoppers check online reviews before making a purchase? Or that having the reviews displayed on your website can increase conversion rates by up to 270%?

 Those are some pretty impressive stats, right? To better understand why reviews are so effective, let’s take a quick look at some benefits of online reviews.

 1.  Reviews act as great “word of mouth.” In the digital age where people are more likely to rely on reviews instead of asking what their neighbor has to say about a product, it can be easy to see how reviews are the next big “referral program.”

 2.  Reviews make your company and products more visible. No matter where your reviews live (hopefully on your website, but we’ll get more into that later), when new reviews are being added consistently, the searching engines see this added content and will rank you higher. Content is still king, and new reviews will put you on top!

 3.  Increase your trustworthiness to potential customers. Taking into account the fact that most people are checking reviews before they purchase, you can see how honest and positive reviews can help you build trust with your customer base. The more positive reviews you have, the more trustworthy you will become.

 4.  Reviews have a direct impact on sales. Again, going back to the fact that more and more people check reviews before they make any decisions, the more honest reviews you have, the more likely people are going to be to make a purchase. Now of course they will be more likely to pull out their wallets if you have more positive reviews, but even increasing your reviews ranking by the slightest amount can increase your chances of making a sale. In fact, one study showed that just increasing your Yelp rating by just 1 star proved to have a 5-9% increase in sales.

 5.  Opens up a conversation with customers. We are seeing an increasing trend of users going out of their way to leave a negative review instead of contacting customer service and asking for help. For cases like this, we can actually be thankful that we have reviews. When a bad review happens, you as a company, have the chance to reply publicly and offer your help to correct a problem. Even though the initial review may be a negative one, what comes out of these situations (most of the time) is positive. Other potential customers will also see this interaction and customer service in the reviews and will be reassured that if there is a problem you are more than happy to make it right.

Now that you can see the benefits of customer reviews, you may be asking, “but how do I get reviews directly on my website?” Planned Growth has the answer with our Review Management service.

 With Review Management by Planned Growth, you can:

• Secure a Review

• Push Reviews to multiple online platforms (Google, Facebook, etc)

• If you are a service based customers with technicians, people from your team can “check-in” at a job

• Start a live conversation with website visitors (an added bonus!)

• Build better local SEO

• Enhance your site with maps of checks, pictures added by reviewers, and new reviews mean new content!

• Share reviews from your website right to your company’s social media sites

With real and honest reviews displayed directly on your website, your future customers won’t have to look far to see what people are saying about you. When you’re ready to take your company’s trust building game to the next level by adding reviews to your website, Contact Us at Planned Growth and we’ll put together a plan that will best benefit your business.