How do online reviews affect business? Well, when it comes to brand growth, online business reviews play a huge role. Indeed, just a one-star increase in Yelp rating leads to an astonishing 5-9% increase in revenue. There are amazing implications between online reviews and business reputation, and in today’s post, we’ll explore the power they hold for brand growth.
Related 👉 5 Ways to Find and Connect with Potential Customers Online
Do Your Business Need Review Sites to Increase Customer Loyalty?
Online reviews have an enormous power to drive acquisition and brand loyalty. If you have a business community, they can be awesome for driving member retention as well. I don’t know about you, but at least for me, I pay special attention to online reviews every time I buy. Indeed, most customers read reviews before they buy a product and they trust them at least as much as personal recommendations.
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So, it’s not overstating to say that online reviews affect business. In fact, they can make or break a business. Collecting reviews it’s very important, not only because they can help you with marketing and sales, but also because they give you valuable feedback. They are a learning opportunity to create a business that aligns with your customers’ needs and wants.
Especially bad and neutral reviews can give you priceless insight into your product and brand. Why do people didn’t leave a positive review instead? You can analyze the situation and explore how to improve.
Ok, Online Reviews Affect Business. Now Give Me Some Tips!
It’s smart to respond to every review, but it’s especially important to respond to those not-so-good ones. Showing customers you care for their opinion and doing the necessary work to improve based on the feedback goes a long way.
Additionally, is important to ask for reviews in the proper stages of the customer journey. For example, you can ask for feedback after a prudent period to give people time to try your product. You can also ask for reviews after customers show contentment with your brand, or after a repeated purchase.
On the other hand, it’s wise to monitor your business reputation. You can do this with SEO tools such as SEMRush, Google Alerts, or Mention. Tools like these allow you to track every time someone mentions your brand, respond accordingly, and assess bad experiences before they turn into something bigger.
If you want to improve your branding strategy by using reviews and collecting feedback, there are many online communities that can help you. You can join communities such as Makers Club, CoFoundersLab, or Indie Brand Builder to meet like-minded business owners and discuss branding strategy and reputation management.
💡 Avoid negative reviews by testing your product first
Communities such as uTest help you collect honest feedback from skilled people. Join the uTest community ⋙
With that said, there are many online review sites that can help you collect reviews for your business. We will cover the most relevant ones later. But for now, let’s say that it’s very important for your business to appear on some of these sites. You can collect great feedback and even display some of them on your website or other marketing material.
What to Do With Negative Reviews?
Negative reviews shouldn’t be ignored. They give you relevant insight about something that can be improved in your business operations. Additionally, bad online reviews affect business even more than positive ones, so it’s important to pay attention to them.
Firstly, is important to understand what really happened. Was something relative to your product, the customer felt disappointed, or did something go wrong in the distribution phase? Depending on what failed, you can start to think about how to avoid that happening again.
For example, if customers are constantly disappointed when buying online from your business, maybe there isn’t a proper alignment between your marketing materials and what you actually deliver. Keep in mind that when people buy online, the only way for them to interact with your product is by what you display digitally. Copy and media have to be aligned with what your product is and offers.
After you analyzed the review, the next thing to do is to respond. It’s important to respond quickly, with tact, and provide a solution. This way, that unhappy customer and others who later read the review will know your business has the best intentions in mind. Sometimes, the only thing people want is to be acknowledged.
How Negative Reviews Can Impact Your Business?
Negative reviews can make or break your business. While a bad review in a pool of positive ones won’t do your business any harm, if most of your reviews are negative they will impact your bottom line.
Indeed, according to a report from ReviewTrackers, 94% of consumers say a bad review has convinced them to avoid a business. But additionally, customers don’t trust a brand that has less than a 4-star rating.
This isn’t an excuse to pull down bad reviews or censor customers’ feedback. This will make your brand look even less trustworthy.
As we covered earlier, the best way to deal with bad reviews is to address them. See how to improve, respond honestly to the review, and actually work on it.
Top Sites for Online Business Reviews
Now that we have covered how online reviews affect business, it’s time to list some of the most popular review sites for your business to appear in. All of these online business review sites are great to start collecting reviews and building a reputation for your business.
1. Yelp
Any business can create a free profile to get Yelp reviews. Customers can rate businesses on a five-star scale, and you can respond to all reviews. Additionally, Yelp allows customers to include photos or videos, making it easier for other interested buyers to know exactly how the product/service really is. And with more than 178 million unique monthly visitors across mobile, desktop, and app platforms, Yelp is a must, especially for local businesses.
2. Google My Business
Setting up a Google My Business profile helps you tremendously improve local SEO. Indeed, Google’s algorithm uses distance and location parameters to deliver improved local search results to users looking for a business in a specific area. It’s completely free to create a profile in Google My Business, and it’s worth it with Google being the largest search engine in the entire world. Additionally, Google reviews allow customers the possibility of adding photos or videos, and it gives you the opportunity to answer every review as well.
3. Trustpilot
With over 529,000 websites reviewed, Trustpilot is one of the most widely used online business reviews sites. It has many categories for you to choose where to list your brand. Additionally, it comes with powerful SEO tools to help you rank in SERPs and metrics from people that interact with your brand inside the platform. Moreover, it offers many integrations with tools like Shopify, WooCommerce, Zendesk, and Zapier.
4. TripAdvisor
If your business is in the travel, hotel, airline, entertainment, or restaurant industries, you may want to take a look at TripAdvisor. Is another well-known online business reviews site, and with over a billion reviews and opinions, it’s a must for businesses that target travelers. Indeed, 74% of travelers visit Tripadvisor before booking a trip, so it can give your brand plenty of visibility and traction.
5. Niche-specific review sites
Until now, we have covered general review sites. But you can also benefit from creating a profile on a niche-specific review site. For example, businesses in the restaurant industry can benefit from being on UrbanSpoon or OpenTable. On the other hand, if you are a SaaS brand, you may want to look into G2 Crowd or TrustRadius.
Make your research, choose a handful of online business review sites, and start collecting feedback to drive brand growth. Additionally, make sure to show off those impressive reviews on social media or on your business’ website!
Branded communities can help you tremendously to build your business’ reputation and gain valuable feedback through online reviews. Explore what is an online community in business and build one in only a few steps!
