Thanks to technology, we are truly living in times like no other. We live in a world where you can buy practically anything from the comfort of your own home. You can buy clothes without going to the store and trying them on. You can buy couches without feeling the material or level of firmness of the cushions. You can even buy a car without going on a test drive and seeing what it feels like to drive or even park.
While it is amazing that we have this technology, what lets potential buyers know that the services or products that they want to buy are worth it? You guessed it...Customer reviews!
Customer reviews are quickly becoming the backbone of any quality business. Even though potential customers may not know the individuals behind the review, they have something that they do not--experience with the service or product provided. There are a great number of reasons why customer reviews are crucial to the success of any business. We’ve provided our top reasons below:
Social Proof
First and foremost, customer reviews are essential because they are social proof that your products or services are valued and appreciated. You may be wondering if other customers really trust the opinions and thoughts of complete strangers, but you would be surprised!
In one of our recent articles, we shared that around 70% of consumers do, in fact, value reviews. With so many products and services available through the internet, reviews are the next best thing besides word-of-mouth for social proof that a product or service is worth the expense.
Establish and Build Trust
Feedback from your customers is a direct indicator of your business value to potential customers. Before they even decide to purchase your service or products, they will have a level of trust simply from reading about previous customers’ experiences.
Another way to continue to build trust is responding to comments, both positive and negative. This will show your current customers as well as potential customers that you value their opinions and genuinely want to hear their feedback. Thus, creating an online community where your customers feel that your business is trustworthy.
Enhance Your Google Rankings
When first thinking about the importance of customer reviews, you may be surprised to learn that there’s a lot more than meets the eye. Yes, customer reviews will build trust with potential and current customers. Yes, it is a straightforward form of social proof that the products or services being sold are worth a try. But, have you ever considered that reviews and ratings can impact your Google rankings for your website?
In our article, Ten Best SEO Practices to Improve your Google Rankings, we discuss how Google places a big emphasis on the E-A-T method for their algorithm. E-A-T stands for expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. So, by Google prioritizing trustworthiness when considering which pages are ranked higher, they place importance on customer reviews.
As stated above, trustworthiness is incredibly important when drawing in potential customers, but it may be surprising that it can also impact the number of people who see and visit your website on a regular basis.
Strengthen Your Landing Page
You want to have optimal Google rankings to get more page clicks, but it is also incredibly important to have a landing page that will grab your potential customers’ attention. One way to do so is by incorporating customer reviews.
Forms of social proof such as testimonials and reviews are even a key ingredient in the formula to a perfectly optimized landing page. It strengthens your brand’s reputation and expertise with potential customers.
By publishing quotes from customer testimonials and reviews on your landing page, you’ll definitely strengthen the credibility and trustworthiness of your business. As an added bonus, you could even incorporate images of the customers or logos from businesses who use and trust your business.
Real Time Feedback
Without a doubt, customer reviews are essential to inform other potential customers about the quality of the product or service that you offer. But, there is another essential reason for customer reviews….feedback.
Most businesses look over this detail, but you can use reviews as a way to scope out any areas that you can continue to improve (while also taking note of what the customers admire about your business).
Take the time to sift through your reviews and notice any trends. Are the certain things that most customers are dissatisfied with? Is there anything you can do to adjust your products or services to account for this perceived flaw? These are the types of questions you should be asking yourself when reviewing customer feedback.
You could even take it a step further by taking the time to talk with specific customers who were less than impressed. As we said earlier, trust is a huge factor in returning customers. By seeing that you’re willing to go the extra mile and learn from the feedback.
Be sure to check out Content Marketing Tips 101 to learn more about the importance of reviews in learning about your target audience’s pain points and criticisms.
Beat the Competition
At the end of the day, the goal of your business is to be the best version of your product or service on the market. Essentially, you want to be the go-to company for customers and beat out all of your competitors. There are several ways you can use customer reviews to beat out your competition including:
- Most Reviews
Having a large quantity of reviews can really go a long way. If a potential customer is looking at your page and only notices a handful of reviews, they may begin to question the quality of your business. Even if the reviews are all positive, people can feel more apt to trust a business with a large number of reviews.
With a high quantity of reviews, you are bound to experience the occasional negative review here and there. But, that’s when you take the time to respond, learn, and grow from them.
At the end of the day, having a larger number of reviews than your competitors subconsciously lets customers know that more people are buying your product or service when compared to the others in your market. And, that can make a big difference.
- Best Reviews
Yes, having the most reviews will grab potential customers’ attention, but it is still incredibly important to have better reviews and ratings than your competitors.
As we stated earlier, you are bound to have negative feedback. There is no company or business that has an absolutely perfect track record, and that is something you will need to accept. What’s important is how you cater to those negative reviews and use them to continuously improve your company. Take the time to reach out to the customer who wasn’t satisfied, offer them a refund, or make attempts to mend the trust.
Want a combination that is completely unstoppable? Try having both the most and the best ratings. By accomplishing this, you will be set up for complete success. Customers will see that your items or services are not only purchased more often that your competitors, but also that they are held in a higher regard. Talk about a win-win.
- Highest Google Ranking
Like we discussed earlier, having reviews can definitely play a role in your Google ranking, and the best way to really beat out your competition is to show up on Google higher than your competitor.
By ranking higher on Google, you will almost guarantee yourself getting more clicks and,hopefully with a convincing and enticing landing page, more business! The ultimate goal of any business should be to rank higher on Google and get more potential clients to see the products and services that they offer.
If a potential client has trouble finding your business when researching online, they will, unfortunately, never give you their business. All of this comes back to the importance of customer reviews and how they can impact all avenues of business and really help beat the competition.
When you are starting a business, reading through this article may bring some worry about the pressure that is being placed on customer reviews. Of course, they are important to the success of your business, but as we’ve said, you can always expect to have a few negative reviews. It is near impossible to make every single customer happy with your product or service, and that is okay.
Just remember, if you put your relationship with your customers first, make them feel trusted, respected, and listened to, positive reviews are bound to come your way. They will feel that you truly care about them, and in turn, feel that you truly care about your business and the quality at which you work and produce your products and services.
