Manage & Collect
More Than Just Review Collection: How to Leverage the Full Potential of REVIEWS.io
December 5, 2024
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7 min read
As a small business owner, you might think reviews are an optional extra or something that works better for larger companies. But the truth is, reviews are crucial to growing your business - both for attracting new customers and boosting your revenue. Here's why.
While word-of-mouth (WOM) has always been a powerful marketing tool, it's evolved in the digital age. Now, potential customers don't just ask their friends for recommendations - they do their own research online. Nearly 70% of people consult reviews when deciding which businesses to consider, so if you're not actively gathering reviews, you're likely being overlooked.
Whether you're collecting reviews or not, customers will leave feedback about your business. The problem? Most of the time, those reviews are negative. Without a strategy in place to collect and manage reviews, you're leaving your reputation at the mercy of organic, unfiltered feedback.
By proactively collecting reviews, you take control. You can showcase the positive experiences, address negative ones, and continuously improve your services.
Trust is essential for any business, especially small ones. Reviews provide social proof that your products or services are worth a try. In fact, 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.
Displaying reviews on your website and in your Google Ads (through Seller Ratings) boosts your visibility and shows potential customers that others have had a positive experience with you. Google even emphasizes how important reviews are for improving your ad performance and overall ranking.
Whether you're collecting reviews independently, or not at all, your customers will still be leaving reviews for you on Google Local, whether shining or scathing. However, most reviews left naturally online take more of a negative nature.
If you're not managing your Google Local reviews, you're missing a key opportunity. If your Google Local reviews are inconsistent with the reviews on your website, it can confuse potential customers. That's why using a platform that helps you manage both local and site-specific reviews is so important.
Your Seller Ratings and star ratings in the SERPs may say one thing - 4/5 stars - and your Google Local another - 2/5 stars - which you can't manage, therefore displaying inconsistency for your customers. This difference in rating potentially raises questions as to which to believe. Not the desired effect, as stars are meant to solidify trust.
With our unique Local Reviews solution, you can collect reviews not only on your own site and get your ratings in the SERPs through your Seller Ratings in your Google Ads, but you can also collect Google Local reviews. This feature enables your small business to choose what percentage of invitations you'd like to send to your site and Google Local, helping to improve your ratings here, and create a consistent reputation online through your stars.
Reviews do more than just build trust - they also act as powerful promotions. When your customers speak highly of you, they act as free advocates for your business. These organic endorsements resonate more with shoppers than traditional marketing messages.
You can feature what people say about your services including areas such as delivery, ease of experience, and customer service.
Build up those voices, garner more small business reviews, and boost your brand though this advocacy.
You might worry about the occasional negative review, but don’t stress - it’s not the end of the world. In fact, 52% of buyers trust a business more if they have a few negative reviews, as it shows authenticity, with 30% assuming that the reviews are fake if there are no negative reviews.
You're already doing all you can to create great service, but your small business isn't going to be for everyone, and you may have had an off day and someone received the brunt of that. Use a negative experience to reach out to rectify the problem.
Don’t forget - you can streamline this with our Auto-Generated Replies tool. Perfect for managing high volumes of reviews, the tool now generates more personalized, on-brand responses by learning from your past replies. It understands your brand’s tone of voice, whether you use emojis, and even includes relevant contact details - like your support email or phone number - where needed.
So even when feedback isn’t perfect, you can respond faster, stay consistent, and show you're committed to improvement – without spending hours writing replies.
And remember, those negative reviews? They’re also gold for improving your customer experience. Often, they highlight gaps you might not have seen, helping you build a better product or service.
With increased trust and promotion for your Small Business using reviews, you see further prosperity than just the figures above. With the presence of reviews, customers will choose to visit your site online over others, enhancing click-through rates. Businesses with reviews have experienced 22% greater traffic than those without, and with that conversion has improved as well.
Reviews enable social proof, and if your customers can see their needs will be met, that turns a browser into a buyer. A whopping 89% of users will make a purchase within one week of reading reviews, and those who interact with reviews spend 11% more than those who don’t.
To spread your image further afield using small business reviews, and if you still staunchly support WOM, you can share your reviews to social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram with our Social Proof feature. Again you promote your brand, enable a form of thank you shout-out for your customers, to essentially drive traffic towards your Small Business further.
Collecting and publishing small business reviews also keeps the content on your webpage fresh. Customers are able to see activity through the reviews left, informing them your business is not stale, and if others are buying from you - so should they! If you're worried about a dry spell, or simply that you won't get enough custom, don't fret, keep reading to find out how you can easily start collecting reviews.
You can harness the power of your previous customers using our Review Booster, which sends an invitation to them asking them to leave a small business review for your business. Not only that, as you collect and publish your reviews, this improves your online reputation, increases traffic to your site as well as conversion, creating an exponential well of reviews and fresh content on your webpage, and Google Local.
With REVIEWS.io you have your very own company profile page which displays all your reviews, your overall seller rating, and your recommendation percentage.
We help facilitate all review benefits, and get you your Seller Ratings in Google and reviews in Google Local, so you can proudly exhibit those brand-boosting, purchase-affirming stars, cementing trust and enabling dialogue with you and your loyal customers.
To start collecting reviews on REVIEWS.io, get started today!
