Have you folded online review requests and management into your day-to-day activity? Do you prioritise online reviews as much as you do updating social media or creating a new blog? If you answered yes, good for you! Online reviews are incredibly important and they are an ever more powerful sales tool. If you aren’t yet convinced that you need to direct resources to online review monitoring, requests and responses, here are a few of the many ways that a strong review profile can actually help you sell more online.
Reviews create trust
For more than 9 out of 10 shoppers, online reviews help to create the sense that they can trust you. This means that if you’re in a competitive field, or are an eCommerce retailer selling the same or similar products as other sites in the search results, a good store of reviews next to your brand name could push a shopper to use you, rather than a competitor.
By the same token, 82% of consumers say they are less likely to spend their money with a business that has negative reviews. If you aren’t assigning time or personnel to monitor reviews and respond quickly when issues arises, you could be sending potential web traffic elsewhere simply by looking the other way.
Shoppers look for a minimum star rating
Stars equal sales. Today’s online shoppers are savvy. They know they have a choice of brands and websites and they have certain criteria that must be met. Just 53% of shoppers will use a business with less than four stars. Right away, if you dedicate time to gathering online reviews, you’re able to access the 47% of consumers who would have written you off without a star rating.
Consumers are most likely to visit your website after reading your online reviews
Even if you have a successful SEO stratgy in place and use tools such as PR, social media and advertising to drive traffic to your site, it’s simply not possible to have too much of it. Online reviews are another way to drive interested, high quality prospects to your web page with research showing that the most popular action taken after reading an online review is a website visit. This right away gives you the opportunity to grow your sales.
Other people next steps include visiting the business or contacting that business – meaning a review gives you a direct opportunity to begin speaking and engaging with new customers.