In today’s digital world, online reviews are an inevitable component of conducting business.
Every marketer worth their salt is aware of how crucial internet reputation is.
Your consumers are likely to look for you online whether you run a small mom-and-pop eatery, a computer software business, or a network of coffee shops.
That implies that one of their initial actions will be to search for internet reviews of your company.
Positive feedback undoubtedly contributes to building a reputable brand that customers are more inclined to use. However, how you respond to unfavorable evaluations reveals a lot about your company.
Why Online Reviews Have Such Influence
Yelp, Google Business Profile, TripAdvisor, and similar sites give customers a platform to research businesses before doing business with them.
For entrepreneurs? Not really.
No matter how hard you work, it seems like you’re always going to get that one negative review that might potentially overshadow all of your positive ones.
However, internet reviews are an inevitable element of conducting business online.
Reviews empower millennials by assisting them in making well-informed decisions on purchases, such as whether to spend $15 on an avocado toast at a restaurant.
Here are some internet review statistics that can sway you if you’re still not convinced.
1. Consumers Are Influenced by Positive and Negative Reviews
Over 99.9% of buyers read customer reviews before making an online purchase, according to a PowerReviews analysis from 2021.
Additionally, 96% of consumers specifically search for unfavorable reviews. 85% of this number applied in 2018.
People who search for negative evaluations are curious to learn about the company’s flaws. What areas need improvement? The researcher feels confident if the drawbacks are modest.
If evaluations are overly enthusiastic, a near-perfect rating is frequently seen as less genuine and breeds suspicion among customers.
2. Consumers Trust Online Reviews as Much as Personal Recommendations
According to a local consumer survey by BrightLocal, 49% of customers place more trust in online evaluations than they do in personal recommendations from friends and family.
It’s enticing to believe that every two people trust internet reviews as much when you consider how much we trust the people we love.
However, the study demonstrates that there are several circumstances that lead customers to doubt the veracity of a review. You must therefore be aware of this.
The following circumstances can lead one to believe that a review is not genuine:
The review is overly laudatory (45%)
The review is just one of many with comparable content (40%).
The reviewer is anonymous or employs a well-known pseudonym (38%)
The review is overly critical (36%).
There are many unfavorable reviews, and this is one of the few positive ones (32%)
There is very little language in the review, and it only has a star rating (31%).
3. The Better the Reputation, the More Reviews
According to BrightLocal’s research, 60% of customers believe that a company’s review count is important when evaluating and choosing whether to employ its services.
Despite the fact that it has decreased since 2020, this is still a large number, particularly when compared to 2019, 2018, and 2017.
4. Few Consumers Believe Advertising
Consumer trust in internet reviews is increasing, but conventional advertising isn’t experiencing the same trend.
Performance Marketing World reports that 84% of millennials don’t believe in traditional advertising.
This discovery is, if anything, a reflection of the times. People are sick of having advertisements shoved in their faces, especially those that downplay the caliber of the goods and services that corporations actually provide.
5. Consumers Check Out Product Reviews On Their Phones Outside Of Your Store A recent study by OuterBox found that 8 out of 10 consumers look up product reviews on their smartphones while they are in a store.
Shoppers will immediately perform a search to check what other people have said about the product in question before making a purchase.
Some people will compare pricing to see if they can get the product elsewhere for a lower price.
This statistic demonstrates the growing interconnectedness of the offline and online worlds. The number of sales you generate in-store may suffer if you don’t have a strong internet reputation.
6. Twitter Reviews Shared Boost Social Commerce
According to Yotpo, social media platforms’ reviews boost social commerce, particularly on Twitter. This is represented in the graph below:
Social media is often associated with increasing brand recognition. But it also works well for boosting sales.
The average conversion rate for the social networking websites shown in the graph above was recently disclosed via a survey by Shopify:
LinkedIn’s conversion rate is 0.47% on average.
Twitter has a conversion rate of 0.77% on average.
Facebook’s typical conversion rate is 1.85%.
Yotpo Data discovered that the conversion rate is 5.3 times higher for LinkedIn, 8.4 times higher for Twitter, and 40 times higher for Facebook when evaluations are shared on social media.
These data demonstrate that reviews are a very potent type of social evidence that increases conversion rates on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.
A lot of the eCommerce industry also underestimates Twitter’s power.
7. Job seekers Value Reviews Equally to Other Criteria
Think again if you believed that only customers were interested in reviews.
According to statistics from Glassdoor, 86% of workers and job seekers look up ratings and reviews of a company before deciding whether or not to apply for a position.
Companies must become more aware of their employer brand if they want to attract top talent as the battle for talent in some areas heats up.
8. Customers Accept 3.3 Stars as the Minimum Rating
The lowest rating that clients are likely to take into account when selecting whether or not to engage with a company is 3.3 stars out of 5.
If your company has a lower rating than this, it may go unnoticed and lose important customers to the competitors.
Finding out that only 13% of customers will think about doing business with a company that has a rating of 2 stars or less is probably not shocking.
9. Travel reviews Frequently Touch On Sustainability
According to the Expedia.com Travel Recovery Trend Report, two major themes in online guest reviews are the environment and sustainability.
The following are some of the phrases that can be most frequently found in reviews:
sustainable power
bulbs with LEDs
charging an electric vehicle
disposable plastics
Recycling
According to Expedia, travelers in the millennial and Gen-Z generations are more likely to seek eco-friendly travel alternatives.
10. Online Reviews Are As Trusted by 18 to 34-Year-Olds as Personal Recommendations
91% of people between the ages of 18 and 34, according to research, trust online evaluations equally as much as personal recommendations.
Consider for a moment that we now place the same level of trust in online comments as we do in the opinions of those we know and love.
This demonstrates the tremendous regard Gen Z and millennials accord online reviews.
Dan Burn ignites Newcastle’s victory over Leicester to advance to the Carabao Cup semifinals.
11. Minor Subject Line Modifications Can Increase Reviews
The majority of firms send post-purchase emails to customers asking for evaluations.
Yotpo looked at the subject lines of 3.5 million of these emails asking for post-purchase feedback to see what works and what doesn’t.
Although there are many more statistics in this, here is a summary of the best subject line changes to make to earn more reviews:
The review response rates are not significantly impacted by an emotional appeal.
To increase reviews, mention your store’s name.
In every industry, incentives encourage more reviews.
Submit a query as the subject line.
Reviews for food and cigarette companies are improved by exclamation marks!
A term in your topic line should not be in all caps.
Reputation Management Software Is Profitable 12.
According to a very interesting analysis of online reviews published by Podium, 94% of local businesses that use reputation management tools recover their costs through increased revenue.
What shows up in terms of your bottom line is heavily influenced by how your organization appears online.
As a result, businesses are making record-high investments in their reputations.
They achieve this, among other things, by purchasing reputation management software. This enables them to understand how internet reviews of their company are made.
13. Clients Think a Product Needs at Least 100 Reviews
Recent data from Power Reviews on the number of reviews consumers seek is noteworthy.
43% of shoppers say they would prefer to read more than 100 reviews for a product in an ideal world.
View the following table to discover what consumers anticipate in terms of review volume:
Customers claim that a noticeably large number of reviews can significantly increase their chance to make a purchase.
64% of those polled said they would be more likely to buy a product if it had over 1,000 reviews than if it had only 100.
Furthermore, if an item gets 10,000+ ratings as opposed to 1,000 reviews, 54% are more inclined to buy it. Therefore, when it comes to quantity, more is always better.
14. Not Many Travelers Write Unwanted Hotel Reviews Online
Additionally, 78% of visitors to websites never provide unsolicited hotel reviews, according to research by BrightLocal. You cannot, then, merely rely on clients to publish hotel evaluations of their own volition. It is necessary to motivate them to accomplish this.
Customers claim that the following are the main methods used to request reviews:
through email (41%)
In-person/during the sale (35%)
Whenever a bill or receipt is received (35%).
SMS texting (27%).
When you contact clients and urge them to post a review, you need to be careful. You definitely don’t want to come off as aggressive. At the same time, you want to encourage visitors to leave a comment.
An excellent strategy is to provide an incentive, such as a special price or admission into a contest.
15. Customers Are Growingly Skeptical Of Facebook Reviews
Although internet shoppers rely on recommendations to guide their selections, many are wary of bogus ones. In fact, 93% of those who have Facebook accounts are wary of phony reviews on this social media site.
Only 7% of people, as seen in the table, feel absolutely no skepticism about Facebook reviews.
Additionally, users have little faith in Yelp, Amazon, and Google reviews.
16. The majority of customers use rating filters
Did you know that 7 out of 10 customers use rating filters to find businesses?
The most popular rating option is to limit a search depending on the rating it is, for instance, to only see hotels with ratings of four stars or higher.
Customers can view items, places, and services only if they meet their standards thanks to this. Nobody wants to waste time on things that are inappropriate!
17. Clients anticipate a 7-day response timeframe for complaints.
Customers anticipate a response when they make critical comments about a brand. They don’t want to wait around for it, in addition to this.
According to Review Trackers, 53% of customers want businesses to answer complaints within a week.
Three days or fewer is the maximum period that one in three consumers have.
As a result, you must make sure that you are monitoring your reviews and giving relevant responses.
18. The way you respond to a review can alter how customers perceive your company.
According to Podium’s 2021 State of Reviews report, 56% of customers have altered their opinions about a company as a result of a review.
We are aware that receiving a negative review from a consumer might make you feel ill to your stomach. However, this figure demonstrates that there is a chance to make a difference.
Customers will feel that you genuinely care about them and the quality of the service they receive if you reply empathically and make an effort to understand them. A dissatisfied client might be converted into a devoted one.
Technical optimizations are essential for SEO.
Even if the customer who complained does not respond, the fact that you made an effort to address their complaint will reflect favorably on your company to other people who read the review.
The Verdict Regarding the Effect of Online Reviews
Online reviews are significant and will continue to be so, according to these facts.
Simply said, customer trust and the development of social proof are directly correlated with online reviews.
You ought to view them as a way to connect directly with your customers rather than as something to be feared.
