Reviews are not always easy to come by, but they are an essential part of your business’ success, both online and off. Consider the fact that 97 percent of customers read online reviews, and you’ll see just how powerful they can be, and why your business can’t survive without them.
There’s no better way to get reviews than to ask!
There are many business owners out there who don’t like the idea of asking for reviews. They seem to think that any reviews that result from asking won’t be genuine or honest. But this couldn’t be further from the truth, especially if you’re asking you’re asking your customers to write a review based on their experience instead of dictating what you would like them to say in the review. By asking for reviews, all you’re asking for is feedback and for a glimpse into their experience with your business.
However, if you’re still one of those business owners who is on the fence about asking for a review, you should know that you’re not alone, and today, we’ve set out to help you understand just how important reviews are and why you should ask every customer for one.
8 Reasons to Start Asking for Reviews
#1. Bad reviews come more naturally than good ones.
When we’ve had a bad experience, it’s human nature to want to talk about it and share it. Clifford Nass, who teaches communications at Stanford University said on the matter:
“Some people do have a more positive outlook, but almost everyone remembers negative things more strongly and in more detail.”
You might be surprised to learn that the reasons for this aren’t just psychological; they’re physiological. Here’s what Professor Nass had to say about it:
“The brain handles positive and negative information in different hemispheres. Negative emotions generally involve more thinking, and the information is processed more thoroughly than positive ones. Thus, we tend to ruminate more about unpleasant events — and use stronger words to describe them — than happy ones.”
So you see, the need to share bad experiences is wired into us. In fact, a survey of that was conducted by Dimensional Research found that respondents who had bad interactions were 50 percent more likely to share their experience on social media than respondents who had positive interactions and they were 52 percent more likely to share it on a review site, like Yelp or Google.
#2. Most people won’t write reviews on their own.
While 97 percent of consumers will read reviews before buying a product or hiring a company for a service, according to Pew Research, only about one in 10 Americans will actually write reviews consistently.
Another survey, that was conducted to determine how often customers leave reviews for local businesses found that:
- Approximately 36 percent of respondents said they never leave reviews.
- Approximately 25 percent said they almost never leave reviews.
- Approximately 26 percent said they leave one to five reviews per year.
- Approximately 8 percent said they leave reviews 6 to 11 times per year.
- Approximately 5 percent said they leave 12 or more reviews per year.
No matter how happy you make your clients or how much you go above and beyond the call of duty, the sad truth is that most of them probably won’t take the time to write a review for you. However, there is hope, and it lies in asking for reviews!
You might be surprised to learn that, even though so few people will write reviews on their own, about 70 percent of consumers are willing to take the time to write a review for your business, you just have to be willing to ask them to!
#3. Reviews can boost your website’s SEO.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a vital part of any business’ success these days because it determines where you rank when people search for important terms related to your business, or even when people search for your business name! And the most important lesson of modern marketing is — if your business doesn’t show up on page one, it may as well not exist.
This is not to say that your business isn’t important or that you’ll never get any traffic to your website if you don’t show up on page one, but considering the fact that 75 percent of people never even get past the first page of results on search engines, if your business isn’t listed on page one, you’ll have a much smaller pool of visitors to work with.
How do reviews help with SEO? Reviews help your site rank in a number of essential ways — they can increase your click-through rate, help to establish trust in your business, increase the amount of unique content associated with your website and more. In fact, it’s estimated that reviews make up for approximately 10 percent of the factors that go into how businesses are ranked on search engines — which is a fairly high percent when you consider the vast array of other things Google’s algorithm picks up on, like site speed, site authority, the quality of the content, etc.
The bottom line is that, while reviews probably shouldn’t be the only thing you focus on if you want to improve your website’s organic rankings, getting reviews should certainly be a key part of your strategy.
#4. Reviews make your customers feel heard and important.
Whether you’ve provided someone with a truly great experience or a not-so-great experience, people like to express themselves and want to be heard when they do. When you ask your customer to give you feedback on their experience in the form of a review, you’re demonstrating to them that you truly value what they have to say and care about their opinion.
Even if you or your team dropped the ball with a customer, taking the time to ask them to write a review and share their feedback could help to steady the course. This is especially true if you utilize their feedback to make changes within your business. Because you took the time to ask that they share their feedback in a review and listened to that feedback, they now feel like they are involved in your business and had a hand in shaping your services or products.
#5. Reviews help to increase conversions and sales.
Do you sell products online? Did you know that including product reviews on your product pages themselves could actually help you make more sales? One study found that 63 percent of customers are more likely to purchase a product with a review than a product without a review. Another study found that by simply having reviews on your website, you can increase your sales by up to 18 percent, which is incredibly impactful, particularly since most e-commerce websites only covert at one to three percent.
Not only does having reviews on your products help to increase sales, but as we discussed in our third point, those reviews will also help your products rank higher in search results!
#6. Reviews help you gain insightful feedback into your business.
Most business owners understand how important is it for their customers and clients to leave happy and satisfied with their service, and their number one goal is to earn that satisfaction. If this describes the kind of business owner you are, then you should know that there’s no better way to get real, honest feedback about your business than in a review.
Asking for feedback in person is great, and while most people will be fairly honest with you in person, some aren’t willing to complain or seem rude in order to get a point across. However, when you ask for a review, it gives them a chance to be truly honest and straightforward about their experience without having to actually look you in the eye.
While not every review will have substantive feedback that will help you mold your business into one that better suits your clients and meets their needs, the more reviews you get, the more insight you’ll have.
One other reason as to why reviews are so important is that they give you a glimpse into how your customers perceive your business. Perception is reality, and when you’re busy helping customers and getting things done in the moment, it’s not always to figure out how your customers are perceiving your business. But when you are able to read their review, you’ll know exactly how they perceive you.
#7. Reviews make your business appear more credible.
Back in the day before people started searching for everything from plumbers to coffee on the internet, most people turned to their friends and neighbors for referrals when they needed to work with a new business or buy a new product. And while word of mouth is still incredibly powerful today, the vast majority of consumers will first look to a Google search on their mobile phone before calling a friend for a recommendation. These days, reviews haven’t exactly replaced word of mouth, but they are the modern-day equivalent.
It’s not easy to trust a business you don’t know or have never heard of with your money, and reviews help to provide consumers with more confidence about their purchasing decisions. If they can see that you have a lot of reviews, they’ll see your business as more credible and trustworthy because other people have vetted your business for them.
It’s for this reason that having a negative review or two is so important as well. If you have all five-star reviews, a lot of people see that as fishy and will automatically assume that at least some of those reviews are fake. Consumers understand that the people who operate businesses are human beings who make mistakes, and when you have a mix of both positive and negative reviews, it brings out your humanity and helps to establish more trust and credibility.
#8. Reviews help to make all of your marketing efforts more effective!
Marketing is an important part of getting your name out there and spreading the word about what you do, but it takes an investment of time and money in order for it to be effective. But luckily, reviews can help to make your marketing efforts more effective and successful for free!! Here’s how:
- Reviews give your marketers insight into what truly matters to your clients, which will help them to highlight those features in ads.
- Reviews help your marketers understand the kind of language your clients are using when they search for your product or brand online, which they can use to further boost your organic online presence.
- Reviews can provide valuable knowledge to your marketers about which product or service gets talked about the most so that they can highlight and feature them on your website and in ads.
- Reviews tell your marketers which questions need to be answered and which concerns need to be mollified in ads or descriptions.
Now that you know why it’s important to ask for reviews, it’s time to learn how to ask for them, which we’ll be discussing in our next blog.
With Top Rated Local®, you’re in control over your online reputation.
Asking for reviews is an essential part of maintaining the kind of online reputation you want, but a good online reputation involves more than just getting reviews. And with Top Rated Local, you’ll have all of the tools you need available to you to help you build and maintain the kind of online presence you want for your business. Best of all, this one-of-a-kind program helps to eliminate all of those things that trip up business owners when it comes to their online reputation, like fake reviews, competitor reviews and more. Not only does this help businesses keep dishonest and fake information from ruining their online reputations, but it also gives consumers a more honest insight into what working with the business is really like.
If you’re ready to start taking your online reputation into your hands, get your business listed for free today!
