Online Reviews: The Ultimate Guide for Business Owners

In today’s hyper-digital world, having an online presence is key to a business’s success. In addition to websites, blogs, and social media profiles, having positive online reviews can play a defining role in the success of your business.

7 Reasons Why Online Reviews Matter

Studies show that if customers trust your business’s online reviews, they’re likely to spend 31% more than with companies with lower reviews. Simply put, favorable online reviews can significantly and positively affect your customers’ purchasing behavior.

1. Build Trust and Credibility

According to BrightLocal, 79% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. Furthermore, 73% of consumers say positive customer reviews make them trust a business more. Online reviews provide valuable social proof and give consumers an idea of what to expect from businesses.

2. Impact on Buying Decisions

Consumers are increasingly basing their purchasing decisions on online reviews. One study indicates that 93% of consumers believe that online reviews affect their shopping choices. As such, businesses need to learn how to cultivate these reviews.

3. Search Engine Visibility

Getting reviews on a variety of review sites can boost your SEO ratings. Having an optimized site will improve your ranking on search engine page results and, in the end, get you more customers.

4. Feedback for Improvement

Being a successful business involves continuously improving to meet customer expectations and needs. Keeping an eye on your business’ reviews and testimonials will help you know where you’re doing well and what areas need improvement.

5. Customer Engagement

One way that customers interact with your business is by giving you reviews. You can keep customers engaged by professionally responding to reviews, especially the negative ones.

Pro tip: Use Podium’s AI Review Response Generator to quickly send personalized review responses that drive customer loyalty and improve your reputation.

6. Improved Click-through Rates (CTR)

A higher quantity of online reviews translates to a higher likelihood that your business will be displayed near the top of the search engine results. This can mean higher organic click-through rates for your business’ website, as well.

7. Differentiation from Competitors

Your reviews will help your business stand out from the competition. Even negative reviews can be helpful in this regard. These reviews allow you to show that you care about providing the best customer experience possible.

Three Scenarios Where Online Reviews Work

Scenario #1

It’s a Friday night and you and your family decide you want ice cream as a late-night snack. Curious about what your options are, you search for ice cream shops near you. Along come the top-rated ice cream shops in your area with their respective company reviews.

Scenario #2

You’re in the market for a new car. Sure, of the make and model, but unsure of the dealer, you perform an online search for relevant dealers in your area. Tada! You instantly get results and online reviews.

Scenario #3

You’ve recently moved to a new town and it’s time for a dental checkup. You want an established dentist that you can trust who is conveniently located. You do a quick online search for general dentists in your area who have good customer reviews.

How to Leverage Online Reviews and Use Them to Your Advantage

While the control of online reviews lies largely in the hands of past and potential customers, there are still several ways you can use these reviews to your advantage.

1. Increase brand exposure.

Before the internet, people would rave or complain about businesses via word-of-mouth. Today, this word-of-mouth concept has carried over into customer reviews that increase your company’s visibility.

2. Identify keywords for your products and services.

By tracking the common words customers use to describe your products and services and implementing these keywords into your product positioning, keyword targeting, tags, and content creation, you can significantly improve how your brand ranks on an array of different search platforms.

Highlight positive reviews in PR and influencer outreach campaigns.

Key individuals like local celebrities, well-known public figures, or established professionals can be used to influence others to check out your business.

3. Improve your brand with customer feedback.

Reviews are priceless ways to take advantage of customer feedback and increase sales. Furthermore, you can also use these reviews to quickly identify and solve product issues, analyze patterns, determine what customers rave about so you can deliver more of it, and keep an eye on the competition.

4. Directly engage with customers.

Whether you thank them for their business, acknowledge the constructive feedback they offer, or request additional feedback, responding to a customer’s review makes them feel seen and appreciated by your company and will help to establish a client-business relationship that boosts and solidifies your customer base.

5. Increase sales with positive reviews.

Customers respond to positive reviews as much as your willingness to resolve a negative one. They will be more apt to buy if they can recognize both the quality of the product as well as the company’s investment in its customers.

The Impact of Online Reviews on SEO

Of the over 200+ ranking factors in Google’s search engine algorithm, almost 10% of the total weight is estimated to be review signals. It’s presumed that Google’s local algorithm, which is different than generalized SEO algorithms, weighs reviews more heavily.

Click-Through-Rates

Click-through rates (CTR) are a key factor within Google’s local algorithm. Online company reviews tend to receive more engagement, or CTR, with increases in yellow stars. This, in theory, means that a higher quantity of star reviews and a higher CTR translates to a higher likelihood that your business will be displayed near the top of the search engine results.

10 Best Online Customer Review Sites

So, which online review site is right for your business, and which should you focus on?

1. Google Reviews

Google is arguably the most prominent online review site, so make sure you claim your Google Business profile. For starters, Google reviews have the potential to put you near the top of the search results page, which means more traffic to your website and more business for you.

2. Yelp Reviews

One of the most popular review platforms today, Yelp touts an astounding 135 million unique users. The online site’s reviews can also show up in Google search results and show your hours of operation and photos from user contributions.

3. Facebook Reviews

With nearly 1.4 billion monthly active users and 890M daily active users, Facebook can be a valuable review site for a wide range of businesses, including retailers and e-commerce businesses. Most of your customers use Facebook and will already be logged in, allowing you to easily direct them straight to your review page.

4. Amazon Reviews

When it comes to increasing product sales, there is no better site than Amazon Reviews. Data shows that products with reviews on Amazon get an increase in sales by 20%. Consumers are also 65% more likely to purchase an item with positive Amazon reviews.

5. Angi

This is the site many use to find and book contractors; therefore, reviews are likely to be trustworthy. Angi can be a useful site to get reviews for service-based businesses, like furniture makers and HVAC or plumbing contractors.

6. TripAdvisor

TripAdvisor is geared towards providing reviews for travelers and vacationers. Getting positive reviews on this website can be helpful for businesses like car dealers, medical spas, and wellness centers, which are often useful for tourists.

7. Choice

Another site for those that have business with listings on travel sites, Choice is an ideal place to make sure you get reviews.

8. Trustpilot

This is another site that verifies consumer reviews. It is trustworthy and will help build your SEO ratings. It is a great site to encourage your customers to leave reviews on, especially since 73% of consumers surveyed say that a good Trustpilot score makes a brand seem more trustworthy.

9. TestFreaks

TestFreaks is another site that collects user reviews of products. This review site has a large following of consumers reading through the reviews, with over 20 million reviews distributed over 200 product categories.

10. Consumer Reports

One of the most well-known review websites is Consumer Reports. This is a site many visit when they’re looking to purchase appliances or use a service-based business. However, unlike other review sites, Consumer Reports uses its own testing labs and survey research centers to publish product reviews. Consumers can submit products to be tested by the organization, as well.

Why You Should Respond to Online Reviews

According to a recent study, 70% of respondents said their opinion was changed after a business responded to a review. Therefore, you should choose a review–to–response ratio that is realistic for you and do your best to stick to it.

Taking time to respond to positive reviews is a great way to show that your business cares and is proud of the experience they were able to provide.

Responding to Negative Reviews, Positively

On the flip side, responding to negative reviews can have an even larger impact. 41% of consumers see a brand’s response to an online review as a sign that the brand cares about its customers.

Know when a negative review goes live so you can respond quickly to the customer, and make sure the same mistake doesn’t happen again with any other customer. It helps to have a platform that aggregates and monitors reviews in real-time from sites across the internet, then notifies you of a review you should attend to.

What happens if the negative response isn’t legitimate? Hootsuite suggests that regardless of whether or not the complaint is legitimate, you should address it and apologize. Tell your side of the story sympathetically and offer to help correct the issue in any way possible.

How to Get More Reviews

It’s been made abundantly clear that getting a higher number of reviews is the goal here, but how do you do it? B2B SaaS Reviews has found that the common components of effective review generation are timing, incentives, multiple channels, and adding a personal touch.

Here are a few tips that will help you get more reviews:

• Lay the proper foundation.
• Giving your customers stellar service each time will make them happy customers who are more apt to leave a positive review.
• Ask your customers to leave a review.
• Many won’t take the time to do it, but you will be surprised at how many will take you up on the request . . . and the more, the better!
• Make it easy to do.

Your customers don’t want to do anything inconvenient or time-consuming. A quick, two-question popup survey works well, as does shooting a text after a call or purchase.

How to Ask for Reviews—What Works?

Many businesses that already have a review strategy in place will tell you that collecting and managing reviews isn’t always the easiest thing to do, especially for new customers. So, what’s the best way to generate them?

Consider the following:

1.     Why do you want your customers’ reviews?
2.     Who should you ask for a review?
3.     How should you send the invitation to leave a review?
4.     When should you send the invitation?

Should You Incentivize for Online Reviews?

As a rule of thumb, don’t incentivize online reviews.

A good alternative to incentivizing is to choose an online review management platform that works for you and your customers. There are many online review management platforms out there, but choosing one that works for both sides (your small business and your customers) is key.

Employees Collecting Reviews—The Why & How of It

Encouraging your employees to collect reviews is one thing, but getting them to do it is another. Follow these two guidelines, and you’ll enjoy an increase of reviews flowing in in no time.

Build trust with your employees. They need to know that your motivations are pure and that asking for customer reviews is a worthy task to incorporate into their daily routine.

Since money is a huge motivator for employees, enticing them with incentives to collect reviews is a sure bet to increasing invitations to review.

What about buying teviews?

If you’re wondering about buying reviews, yes it’s possible. However, it’s ill-advised.

Buying fake reviews is against Google’s and Yelp’s (and other sites’) guidelines. The risk isn’t worth it. If you want quality reviews, it’s better just to earn them.

Why You Should Use Review Monitoring Tools

Generating online business reviews is one thing, but managing online reviews is another. Knowing how people are talking about your business, what they are talking about, and what they are or are not saying about your company as a local business is an ideal way to oversee your online reputation.

The Benefits of Using a Review Monitoring Tool

Through online reputation management using a review monitoring tool, businesses can monitor and quickly respond to good reviews and negative feedback on Google, Yelp, and Facebook.

There are other benefits. The first is that review monitoring can increase revenues by raising your overall star rating, proving to customers that you have a quality business. The second benefit is greater customer loyalty.

What to Look for in a Review Monitoring Tool

Things to look for in online review management tools are:

•         A cloud-based solution that can be managed from anywhere, at any time.
•         Plenty of insightful data.
•         Ready-to-send review invitations that are easy to email or text to your customers and professional review response templates.
•         Seamless integration into the business applications you already use.

As it turns out, Podium offers all of this and more.

Manage and Get Online Reviews with Podium

Podium offers a range of resources to help you get more reviews, and this means more business for you. For instance, you can use Podium’s Google Review Link Generator to make it easier for customers to submit reviews for your business.

Through its features, Podium has helped thousands of businesses manage and get more online reviews. The platform uses AI to automate review invites and provide response suggestions to customer feedback. Another tool that businesses have found to be incredibly helpful is Podium’s AI assistant.

All these features make it easier to manage your online reviews and improve your online reputation and bottom line.

Online Reviews FAQs

Q: What is the best site for reviews?

A: It is important to have reviews on a range of sites, but when it comes down to it, Google My Business is the most popular review site. Yelp and Facebook make a close second and third.

Q: Where can I find website reviews?

A: There are several sites where you can find reviews, including Yelp, Consumer Reports, Amazon, Facebook, Angi, Consumer Reports and Yelp.

Q: How do You know if an online review is legit?

A: There are several ways to tell if a review site is legit. Check the time stamps on reviews and see if the review is for a verified purchase. It’s also a good idea to check the history of the reviewer.