06 Feb Online Reviews And Its Importance

As a business owner, your reputation is everything. Online reviews can damage your credibility and brand,  turning your business into your worst nightmare. However, they can also help you grow your business too by increasing your search ranking and turning mere visitors into customers.

What you need to know about reviews.

• Star rating is the number one factor used by consumers to judge a business.
• On average, a consumer will look at over 10 information sources before making a purchase.
• Over half of young people aged 18 to 34 say they trust online reviews more than the opinion of friends and family

Historically, word of mouth has always been one of the most powerful marketing strategies. From listening to family and friends before purchasing a product, it has now evolved, and recently it’s in the form of online reviews. Potential clients use online business reviews to find out what others are saying about a brand online, and lately, these online reviews are becoming increasingly vital for both consumers and businesses.

From the perspective of the consumers, online reviews are important because they help make a more educated buying decision while for businesses they help build an outstanding reputation which in turn increases the trust level of prospects.

Okay, Ask yourself:

When you are searching online to buy a particular product, do you like to see and read reviews? Do you favour businesses with many positive reviews over those who have fewer or no reviews? Odds are, you answered yes to both questions. The same goes for most people.

People like reviews. They trust reviews and mostly base their buying decision on reviews. People like being informed, and when you give them what they like, you win.

Some of the major benefits of having online reviews as a business owner are:

1. It makes the phone ring
2. Drives local SEO and foot traffic
3. It boosts your local search rankings, which in turn makes the phone ring the more, giving birth to even More citations, and More Customers With this I think I think it’s safe to say that:

– Businesses that have few or no online reviews are mostly overlooked while

– Businesses with more positive online reviews get the most customers.

Online reviews not only have a powerful impact on businesses, but they can also help in listing your business on as many business review websites as possible. And as search engines continue to change their algorithm, business reviews made online could have more of an impact on SEO than most people realize.

Certainly, the future of online reviews could mean a greater impact on online search and the only way to get prepared for any changes to the search engines is to have a complete web presence.

One of the ways to build this web presence is by encouraging positive online reviews, utilizing this can drive more business and increase your internet marketing efforts. If you are a company currently doing SEO to drive traffic to your business, you may also want to focus on your business reviews.

Businesses that are not completely searching for ways to incorporate online business reviews into their marketing strategy are missing out on a tremendous opportunity. To make sure your business is tapping into this opportunity and is not left behind, you should lay hold of an online review management platform to guarantee you are getting the best value from your online reputation.

Learn More

Request a demo to see how Reputation Shielder’s efficient, mobile process can help your business collect 20x more reviews than traditional platforms. This will, in turn, improve local SEO and ultimately boost revenues.

Author: Susan MillerSusan is an accomplished graphics designer, published author, and writer with 2 different publishing companies, & over 5yrs of experience. She is Elevatie's online content manager and graphics designer.