Many infographics have been made concerning the statistics regarding reviews. Depending on how your reviews are currently stacked up, some reviews are better in comparison with others, but all of them are equally noteworthy. Here are some of the common statistics:
- 72% of consumers trust online reviews as much as recommendations from friends and family
- 70% of consumers say they trust online reviews, an increase of 15% in four years
- 55% of consumers feel that the opinions of “people like me” have the greatest impact on their buying decisions
- 4 out of 5 consumers say they have reversed a purchase decision due to a negative review
- 92% of consumers around the world say they trust word-of-mouth recommendations from friends, family, and strangers above all other forms of advertising
- The typical consumer checks 10.4 information sources before buying a product or service
- For specific example, U.S. internet users generate more than 500 billion impressions on each other via word-of-mouth channels specifically regarding products and services (more than a quarter of the # of impressions advertisers make)
- 90% of typical U.S. consumers read online reviews; 6% write them
Down to the detail
Handling reviews
- Firstly, the negativity of a negative review depends on how you handle it. The way you handle can mean everything. You need to realize that you need to make those once unhappy customers happy again. How? Business owners who are already registered on sites like Yelp and Google reviews can contact reviewers directly; this capability is a powerful tool not only to help soften negative feedback, but to prove you care about getting concerns resolved.
- Second, no matter what your product or service, the stats overwhelmingly say that what your customers think impacts new leads, so encourage reviews.
How to get more reviews
As you can see, reviews are extremely important in the buying process. In order to get more reviews for your product or service, you need to make sure your customers know you value reviews and you need to encourage them to create them. Reviews consist of three stages:
Get Customers Into the Funnel
Customers generally have little motivation to write an online review. They often forget, find it too difficult, or they can’t find the time. Unless customers are part of the 6% of super reviewers or have a really awful experience, there’s a small chance they’ll write a review. In order to combat this, invite customers to give feedback. When crafting this message, be careful with your wording. Don’t put pressure on your customers. “Invite” them to write a company review instead of “asking” them.
Guide the Customer Through the Process
Third-party review websites are ideal because sites like Yelp, Angie’s List, Urbanspoon, Tripadvisor, and Yahoo! Local are the sites other consumers use to discover, evaluate, and compare companies, products, or services like yours. However, the ranking of these different sites changes. To make it easy to change which review site you ask customers to use, create a landing page to guide users to.
Monitor and Reply to Reviews
When reviews don’t reflect the reputation aspire to have, you should address them immediately. You must constantly monitor what people are saying about your brand by using tools like Yext, Yahoo! Localworks, or ReviewTrackers. Be sure to respond to any negative reviews promptly (within a few days at least) because if you let a negative review linger for too long, the damage will be even greater. Remember, your most recent reviews matter most of all.