We all know customer reviews matter, of course they do, but why do they matter so much? Reviews allow potential customers to see the public opinion on your business or brand. Word-of-mouth reviews are a great (and free) way to gain recommendations for your business, yet lack the physicality that online reviews hold. Whilst both can have many benefits, they can also have a lot of drawbacks. This blog will cover the benefits, negatives and how to get more good quality reviews. 

Why reviews matter

Benefits

The benefits of customer reviews broadly outweigh the negatives. Reviews can not only boost brand reputation and provide insight into what your customers really think, but they can also improve SEO and visibility. 

 

Reviews can improve customer trust and allow them to determine whether a business is ‘legit’. Reviews are also a form of UGC (User-Generated Content). UGC content has always been important, but increasingly more so over the past few years. Users like to see honest opinions of the product so they can gauge whether they will like the product/can trust the company before purchasing.  

 

Boosting SEO

Reviews can improve SEO in many ways. They can enhance local SEO by helping businesses rank higher in Google My Business and Maps, especially those with consistent, high-quality reviews. Customers also often naturally include keywords in their content, even better if they add photos, and product names in their reviews. 

 

Reviews can also help to improve click-through rates (CTR) by making listings appear more appealing, signalling to search engines that the business is relevant and important. 

 

Negatives

However, as with anything left to public opinion, there is no guarantee that you will get only positive reviews. In fact, it’s almost guaranteed that your business will at some point get a negative review. 

Negative reviews can harm a business’s reputation and lower overall ratings, which can put off potential customers. These reviews can also make it harder to rank higher in search results, especially if a business has a lot of low ratings. Furthermore, with the rise of AI, businesses run the risk of fake reviews from both people and AI tools. Tools such as Birdseye and Typil AI allow businesses to generate AI reviews to increase their rankings.  

In some extreme cases, when disgruntled employees and customers have taken to social media to voice their concerns, businesses have been swarmed with negative reviews from people who have never visited or purchased a product. This can permanently damage a business’s reputation. 

 

How to handle bad reviews

Bad reviews are part of having a business, but your response can make or break it. Here are a few ways to deal with bad reviews correctly and professionally. 

• Stay calm and collected, read the review and check what happened, don’t take it personally. You can’t please everyone.
• Reply with care, acknowledge their experience and feelings whilst apologising if needed, and offer to fix things.
• Move it offline, give them a way to contact you directly and sort it out rather than in public.
• Learn from it, take feedback as a chance to improve and train your team.
• Report fake reviews. If it’s unfair or spam, flag it for removal.

 

How to make the most of your reviews (and get more)

The best way to get reviews is to have good customer service and good quality goods/services. It goes without saying, putting care, time and effort into your business, with good customer service, is the best way to ensure as many good reviews as possible. However, its important to note you can’t please everyone, so don’t get discouraged if you do receive a bad review. Bad reviews can almost always be turned arround, so dont ignore them.

Fun fact: 5 star reviews can actually have a negative impact on your business. Reputation theorise that 5 star reviews look suspicious and even ‘fake’. Arguing that 4-4.7 stars are the ‘sweetspot’ when it comes to reviews. Reputation suggest that 3-4 star reviews are the most trusted. 5 star reviews are ‘too good to be true’ and 1-2 stars could be ‘fake or don’t tell the full story’.

 

Speeding up the process

If you already have those factors in place and want to increase your positive reviews, there are a few ways you can speed up the process:

• Rewards programmes for previous customers, i.e discounts – make giving reviews a requirement for entry to rewards (be aware of guidelines and laws such as GDPR)
• Follow up post purchase for reviews via email or preferred form of communication (don’t spam message people, this will only get you bad reviews)
• Encourage customers to generate their own content for you to repost
• Respond to existing customer reviews. 

When asking for reviews, you can always guide the direction of their comments. If you want their review to mention the quality of the product, when asking for a review, suggest something like:

“How was the quality of the product? Was it up to your expectations?”

Prompting them to comment on the quality.

 

For more information on gaining customer reviews, and building websites that stand out, contact us today.