The Importance of Customer Reviews For ORM

customer reviews importance

When somebody is considering purchasing your company's products, where do they look? The answer: customer reviews. While some companies may find customer feedback as the kind of thing they need to prepare themselves to open, getting more reviews is extremely important for your business. 

These are the reasons why customer reviews can work for your benefit. 

1. People Decide to Buy Based on Reviews 

The decision to actually buy a product is often based on reviews. Research has found that reviews do feed into consumer's rationalization and that people are more likely to purchase something that has positive reviews. Especially in an age when everything is online, consumers trust customer feedback to tell them what the product is actually like when it arrives on their doorstep. 

2. You Can Understand Your Customers Better 

The importance of customer reviews relies on their honesty. These people have tried what you sold them, and their feedback shows how your future customers may receive your business's product or service. This is why getting more reviews is so important for online reputation management. 

When you receive some feedback, you can begin to pinpoint areas that need improvement. For example, if you are a restaurant and people have been mentioning that your food is too salty, you can communicate with your chef and solve this issue. Without customer reviews, you wouldn't be able to know whether your products are any good! 

3. Reviews Rank 

You Higher on Search Engines Search engine algorithms are more likely to favor businesses with tons of reviews and push them higher up the search page. This is because it highlights activity and customer engagement, which emphasizes the growing importance of your business. 

This is beneficial for you because you get to grow in visibility, which will point more customers your way. 

4. Positive Reviews Are Basically Free Marketing 

Sometimes, there's no need to hire a whole team of marketing experts to handle engagement with newer customers, because positive reviewers do this work for you! When they leave a positive review on your website, on Yelp, or even on their social media page, they are also promoting your business to people who may never have heard about you before. 

This helps you gain more customers that you may not have been able to reach before, simply because they never showed interest in the kinds of things you're offering. When a person markets a product to their friends and families, though, they are likely to trust that person and try your stuff out, too. 

5. Engaging With Reviews Improves Customer Loyalty 

Whether you've received a good review or a bad review, engaging with them online is a great way to improve customer loyalty while also displaying your eagerness to improve yourselves for your customers. 

When a positive review appears regarding your business, answering with a hearty 'we're glad you enjoyed it, thank you!' can go a long way. Negative customer reviews are a little tricky, but most of the time, engaging with them is better than leaving them be. You can ask them to explain to you (privately) about their negative experience so you can provide compensation or seek to improve matters. 

These techniques will help even negative reviewers see that you are open to improving, making them more likely to return and buy your products again. 

6. Reviews Improve Your Competitiveness 

If you've been debating between two products and you see that one has a review ranking of 4.5, and the other 2.5, it's undeniable that you will go for the product with the 4.5 rating. When you are competing against other businesses who sell very similar products to yours, having positive reviews will push you forward. 

The sheer scale of the reviews can also help you appear more desirable. If a company's products only have around 3 reviews, for instance, customers are not going to find them as reliable as another company that has a dozen. 

7. Reviews Encourage Customer Engagement 

When customers go online and find that plenty of others have posted reviews of your product or service, they are going to feel more inclined to include a review, too. This prevents the need for you to actively look for more reviews by providing sales or discounts - you can just sit still and see all the customers engaging on your site. 

Limitations of Customer Reviews 

While receiving more reviews is generally a good thing, it's important to note that the benefit of customer reviews can only go so far. The presence of fake reviews can deter people from really trusting anything they read online. 

It's also really a hit-and-miss. If you get positive reviews in general, the above points may work for your company. However, getting consistently poor feedback will tank your business's popularity and will require a lot more damage control on your part. 

Customer Reviews Are Essential for Any Business 

Overall, though, customer reviews are absolutely important for any business. Whether you are providing an online service, serving food, or selling products, it will be difficult these days to find any company with a social presence to not have customer reviews. 

This is also why it's growing increasingly important that you tap into this feedback, and turn it into something you can market your business with. You can use tools such as social listening to bolster your awareness of what people are posting in regards to your company, and you can actively engage with them online. 

Did you find this article on customer reviews importance to be helpful? Check out the rest of our CX, ORM, and SEO article sections on the Bootstrap Business Blog.

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