People Are Talking - Why Your Business Should Take Advantage of Online Review Sites

In a wired world, word of mouth is still a critical factor for the success of small business owners. The difference now is that online review sites are the venue where most customer referrals happen. And people pay attention: 88% of people trust reviews as much as personal recommendations. 

43% of consumers search a business by reviews at least one time per month 

The impact of platforms such as Yelp! Trip Advisor, and even Google and Facebook is enormous. No longer are business referrals simply a recommendation between friends or colleagues. For good or bad, customer reviews are visible to any and all who search for them. What’s more, the annoying persistence of digital data means that any thumbs up or down of a business is potentially permanent.

Review Sites Cater to a Variety of Industries

Think customer ratings and reviews are only for restaurants or accommodation businesses? Apart from the big ones, there are a wide variety of online business review sites catering to many different industries including automotive, healthcare, home and garden, etc.

The Impact of Online Reviews to Your Business

How much influence can local business review websites have on customer decisions? 86% of people will hesitate to purchase from a business that has negative online reviews. 

Between one and three bad online reviews would be enough to deter the majority (67%) of shoppers from purchasing a product or service

While it would be understandable for most business owners to fret over the impact of negative reviews on business rating websites, there is a positive side. 68% of consumers say positive reviews make them trust a local business more. And many consumers will take action: 23% will visit the business premises directly after reading positive reviews. 

Making Online Reviews Work for You

Receiving positive customer reviews on local business review sites is one of the most effective marketing tools available to you, yet it’s largely out of your hands to control. Still, we’re going to suggest you harness its potential. How? By encouraging customers to share their positive experiences.

Sure, some people will take the time and trouble to share how satisfied they are with your product or service without being prompted, but that’s not often the case. Whereas we know how motivated dissatisfied customers can be when it comes to telling the world about how awful you were. And the numbers support this: a Dimensional Research customer service survey revealed that 95% of respondents shared a bad experience versus 87% who shared a good one.

Since more people spontaneously share the bad more often than the good, it’s vital that you encourage satisfied customers to share their positive experiences on the business review websites where you show up. Not everyone will go online to rate your business, but many will. 68% of consumers have left a review for a local business after being asked to do so. ^{[BrightLocal, 2017]}

Dive Into Online Reputation Management

Although people may choose to share their negative reviews, you don’t have to view these in a negative way. Nobody’s perfect and there’s always room for you to get better at what you do. Look at negative feedback as an opportunity to improve your product or service. Most importantly, it’s a chance for you to respond to customer issues and potentially win back a customer. If a business resolves its issue quickly and efficiently, 95% of unhappy customers return to your business. 

Even if you can’t resolve the issue, you can at least give context and soften the impact of the negative by (humbly) adding your side of the story to a situation.

Online Reviews Help Increase Your Visibility and Website Traffic

There's an additional benefit you should be aware of about online review websites. Because you can claim and manage your listing,  you can have control of the information that appears:

• location/address
• contact info
• hours of operation
• links to your social media platforms
• plus links to your website

This type of information on other websites, when connected to your business, is what's known as an online citation. Citations are important because they're one of the more influential factors considered by search engines in determining where you show up in search results.

This is especially true for local search results. That is to say, the searches people do when they're trying to find a business or service near their location. Google recognizes that 46% of searches have a local intent. Since business review sites are designed to show businesses based on their location, online citations (especially with website backlinks) from them have great value in search engine rankings.

As you're probably aware, the higher your search ranking, the more likely it is that people will find and visit your website, which may in turn lead to more sales for your business.

Getting started with managing online review site listings will take an investment of either your time or a portion of your marketing budget if you engage a marketing agency to do it for you. After an initial stage of claiming and enhancing your listings, a few minutes a week will be enough to keep up with soliciting positive reviews and responding to any negative ones. The end result will be a positive reputation online which will ultimately lead to increased visits from new customers.

_{All statistics courtesy of Vendasta unless otherwise noted.}