3 Benefits of Website Reviews and How to Handle Them with Ease

Website Review Benefits

Table of Contents

Getting website reviews for your website offers numerous benefits, and reviews should be managed to ensure the happiness of your customers. This guide will help you increase product or service reviews on your site, in addition to explaining how to ask your customers for their opinion and what to do if you receive a bad review.

Benefits of Reviews

Online reviews have been shown to affect the shopping behavior of a potential customer. If you would like to increase your brand’s image, consider including the opportunity for certified buyers to review your products on your website.

Reviews are becoming a basis for buying decisions.

Consumers are more willing to trust the opinions of other customers over any testimonials that a company may post. According to a survey by BrightLocal, 88 percent of consumers “read reviews to determine the quality of a local business” and trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation. Consider this. Most online shoppers trust the opinion of a perfect stranger in determining the worthiness of a purchase.

What does this mean as a marketing opportunity for businesses? Ignoring the potential of user reviews could mean alienating 88 percent of your buying population, forcing them to go elsewhere. “For local businesses in all sectors,” the survey explains that this result “underlines the importance of reviews and the priority that business owners should put on managing their reputation and ensuring their online reviews are plentiful, positive and fresh.”

On-site customer reviews can positively affect your company’s organic search rankings.

It increases the unique content your site offers on each product, raising your authority on the item. With the higher relevancy, your pages are more likely to be ranked by search engines. It’s even possible to format the reviews in such a way that Google will index them as “rich answers” for user queries. This will allow the answers to be featured in other search results.

The more reviews a site has, the higher the potential conversion rate.

Even bad reviews can positively affect conversion rates because shoppers consider negative reviews a show of honesty and transparency. That is, assuming that the product also has a larger number of sincere good reviews.

Why Manage Reviews?

It’s important not only to encourage reviews from your customers but also to monitor the existing reviews on your site. Unanswered bad reviews can ruin a company’s reputation in the same way that a lack of positive reviews will.

Understanding how to manage and respond to online reviews – both positive and negative – is an important part of a company’s online presence.

Encouraging Customer Reviews

Organizations need to ask for feedback and make it easy for individuals to rate their shopping experience. Prominently feature calls-to-action in natural locations throughout your site, such as after a purchase. Companies also are sometimes successful in obtaining reviews from their social media followers.

It’s also important that reviews are prominently placed on product pages for use by potential buyers. Some companies aggregate total reviews into a rating score for easy consumption and quick, yet informed decision-making.

Responding to Reviews

When responding to customer reviews, you need to be sensitive to your customers’ emotions, particularly if they’ve had a bad experience. If someone is frustrated with your company, it is an opportunity to turn the problem into a good impression. Respond positively and don’t make light of someone’s complaint. Take the opportunity to apologize and make it right, turning a dissatisfied customer into a contented one.

Regardless of whether you receive a positive or negative review or comment, find the time to respond. Someone took time out of their day to post a review of your company and your reply is evidence of a dedication to customer service and support.

Make It All Simple

Putting the time and effort into asking for and responding to reviews is worth it. Individuals who arrive at a site from searching reviews are more likely to become paying customers than if they arrived through social media sites or other avenues.

Getting customer reviews can seem like an insurmountable challenge, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Learn the best time to ask for reviews and the most effective methods for getting and leveraging them. Red Canoe Media can help. Don’t hesitate to ask!

2 Responses

  1. Does Google recognize text on a website that is of a review nature, or do the reviews have to have been generated by a review system in order for Google to recognize it?

  2. Angela, Google sees all the content on your site, so yes they see the reviews. They give them very little weight, however, because you control the text on your own site and could just make them up. Reviews on other sites are trusted more, so getting them on Google, Facebook, Yelp, etc, all helps in the long run much more than having them on your site.

    There are good reasons to have them on your site, though – they’re great trust factors and help improve sales. But they shouldn’t be used/considered for SEO benefits. Check out the reviews over at https://stlbeds.com/reviews/ – this page is linked in the header of their site and helps, as I said, to boost the trust for the brand.

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