Customer reviews are a very important aspect for any business that provide a service. It is usually one of the deciding factors for a customer to use your service, for example, if someone is looking for co-working space (*cough*The Hive*cough*) then how would they make their choice? How would they see which office provides the best support and best space for their money?

Customer reviews are there to give other visitors a better and honest insight into your business, and can help push one’s decision to use that business, which is why it is important to encourage users to leave reviews.

In this week’s blog, we will go through customer reviews in more depth and how you can use them to build trust with your customers and increase sales.

So, why are customer reviews important? Well, let the numbers talk!

• Nine out of ten people read reviews
• 88% of customers say they trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations
• Three quarters of customer say that positive reviews make them trust businesses more
• According to Reevo, adding rating and reviews can help increase sales by 18%

The stats are pretty good, and it just shows how important reviews are for a business. If a lot of internet users are reading reviews already to compare products and you do not have one then you will be left behind.

More positive reviews means more customer trust and loyalty, which results in high chances of sales!

On top of being a great tool to retain and bring new customers, and increase sales, customer reviews are great for SEO. As we’ve discussed in previous blogs, SEO is something all businesses should be looking into if they want to rank higher and reviews can help with that. Reviews get indexed and are used as search results, plus they can help target long-tail keywords, giving you added SEO!

For more information, check this blog about how reviews can help boost local SEO.

But what if you get bad reviews?

Don’t worry too much about it! It’s rare that a business gets a clean sweep of positive 5/5 reviews, and if they do then they are probably not all real. In fact, Reevo suggests that 30% of customers suspect fake reviews when they don’t see a negative review and also bad reviews can help improve conversion with 68% trusting reviews more when they see both good and bad ones.

So, don’t sweat it if you see a bad review, but of course, don’t ignore it either! If you find a negative review, make sure you respond to it and deal with it in a professional and friendly manner. Doing this can show you care and can hopefully turn a bad review into a better one. Check out one of our previous blogs on how to handle negative reviews.

Okay, so how do you get customers to leave a review?

Around 10% of customers are going to leave a review, which does seem quite low, but there are a few simple tricks that can help encourage customers to leave a review.

1. Ask! Simply asking your customers to leave a review will definitely help. While you get proactive users who will leave a review, not all customers are going to think about it, so why not ask them to and remind them that they can? You can send them a post-purchase email asking them to leave a review, linking them to the review page. Simples.
2. Easy: Make sure it is easy for customers to leave a review. Have a separate review section on your website or a review bit on each product. Another easy way would be to include it in the account area, you could have a purchase history section. Whatever you choose, just make sure it is easy to find.
3. Incentives? Incentives are always a good tool to get customers to do something, and this includes leaving a review. You could a discount if they leave a review, or if you have a points system on your website, offers a number of points for X number of reviews they leave.
4. Set up accounts of different review sites, such as Facebook, TripAdvisor, or Amazon (if you are ecommerce). Many people prefer leaving reviews on specific websites, so make sure you don’t fall behind and get yourself on those websites too.

These simple tricks are great to help boost your reviews, and while it won’t make every one of your customers leave a review, they will definitely help your business get a batch of reviews that can potentially bring more customers!