My recent experience

For example, I felt like having fish and chips for lunch today while I am on a business trip in Sydney. I went online to check what’s available nearby and find the following two restaurants that offer fish and chips in a similar price range. Which restaurant should I choose? It’s clear enough I’d pick the first restaurant with better customer reviews to increase my chance of having a good dining experience.

What the research says

One of the most interesting findings from recent research is how powerful customer reviews are at building your business’ online identity and creating credibility. Research also shows that many shoppers tend not to trust businesses that have ratings below four starts and businesses with better than average ratings are significantly more likely to see views leading to sales.

While online customer reviews are of paramount importance, it can take years to build up a good rating but may take only a few minutes to have it ruined by unhappy clients.

How my review impacted a business

Let’s take another personal experience as an example. I had a very sore shoulder and neck so I went to a nearby clinic for acupuncture. I told the doctor that my neck and right shoulder are very sore. Not sure if he had a very busy morning or had something else on his mind, but he barely checked my muscles and started to put needles in my left shoulder. I was puzzled by this and asked him why he started on my left shoulder and he replied: oh, I thought you said your left shoulder is sore.

What made my whole experience worse was, the nurse accidentally left three needles on my shoulder at the end of the treatment. I found out only when leaning toward the wall and feeling the pain in my shoulder. They offered a chair for me to rest on and asked if I wanted a cup of water. To which I refused and left in a shock. To let others know how bad my experience was and how unprofessional this clinic is, I immediately went online and left them the lowest rating. A few months later, I surprisingly received the following email from Google saying that my review had been seen over 3,000 times. I was delighted that I successfully shared my experience with others, and at the same time, I hope my review helped the clinic improve its services.

Other than providing an apology and waiving the fees etc., what should the clinic do to save their reputation and stop me, the unhappy client from giving them the bad review? I mean, bad things do happen and what businesses need to do is to intervene and improve. If the clinic gave me a managed link to give them a review, it is very likely I would have taken the bait. Though I might still leave a similar comment, it left space for them to provide follow-up services and try to change or at least improve based on my opinion about their business.

In conclusion, it is not the end of the world if a client has a bad experience with you, but it can be detrimental if you don’t follow up with them and build a steady stream of positive reviews! And lucky enough, when you need a managed review system, RapidReviews is here to help!

The post The importance of online reviews: years to build, minutes to ruin. appeared first on RapidReviews.

Online Google Reviews – Best Thing For Small Businesses

Google My Business online reviews rise hasn’t come without controversy, with some arguing that it’s not fair to put small businesses’ reputations on display online.

The truth is, Google My Business didn’t create the Web 2.0 movement that enabled everyday internet users to create content and share it with the whole world. What Google My Business did do, however, is harness shifts in consumer behavior to create the best marketing channel of all time for local businesses. Today, Google My Business is joined by dozens of other popular consumer review sites as the first place shoppers go to find businesses nearby. As long as they’re governed correctly, these sites are a boon to small, local businesses.

If you run a small business today, the single most important thing you can do to attract new customers is to take control of your online review score on sites like Google My Business, Facebook, TripAdvisor, FourSquare and Yelp. More on that soon, but first, let’s take a quick look at how technology has transported the classic small business storefront onto the internet.

Mobile Is Driving Local

Even the busiest business owner must recognise that access to real-time information has exploded. Internet usage around the world has almost tripled since 2001 to nearly 350 million users, and smartphone penetration has risen from 20% in 2010 to 75% in 2019 among general consumers. Everyone has the internet in their pocket all the time, and this changes everything for small businesses.

This dramatic shift in technology adoption has led to similarly dramatic shifts in consumer behavior. About 90% of global sales still happen in physical stores, but 97% of consumers use the internet to find local businesses and three in four people who use their smartphones to search for something nearby end up visiting a local business within a day. Foot traffic to retail businesses is down 60% in the past five years, but the value of every visit has tripled.

For small businesses, this means many digital stores have replaced the iconic physical storefront. Consumers are using the internet to figure out where they want to spend money locally before they go there, and their visits are increasingly prompted by real and urgent purchasing intent.

The days of window shopping and scanning the Yellow Pages are over.

Online Review Sites Are A Customers Magnet

In the past, small businesses had to rely on inefficient “push” methods to attract new customers. If you buy a radio ad, for example, the message has to do two hard jobs: Convince the customer to spend money with you and create urgency to do it now, before distractions take over.

When a consumer uses a review platform like Google My Business, the decision and urgency to buy are exactly what prompted the person’s search. If traditional advertising is a megaphone that enables businesses to shout and see who’s listening, review sites are tractor beams that pull consumers toward local businesses precisely when they’re actively looking to spend money. That’s an invaluable opportunity for small businesses with small — or non-existent — marketing budgets.

Think about it. When you’re looking to try a new restaurant or find a mechanic, what do you do? You might get a recommendation from friends or family, but you probably also do a “near me” search on Google. This is the new normal: 97% of consumers use the internet to find local businesses, and one in eight searches online for a nearby business every single day. Review sites are at the epicentre of “near me” searches.

Google Business Can Work For All Small Businesses

While there are certainly internet trolls out there, one of the great myths about online reviews is they’re all bad. In truth, more than half of all Google reviews are four or five stars, meaning most customers are logging on to rate their great experiences with local businesses.

That’s good news because 90% of customers say that what they decide to buy is influenced by positive online reviews, and 94% will use a business with at least four stars. If you run a small business, the very best thing you can do to attract more customers is to maintain a high star-rating on the most popular review sites like Google Business, Facebook etc.

Small businesses have more control of their online star ratings than they know. First, they can proactively encourage their customers to post reviews about their experience — 68% of customers will leave a review if asked. This activates the business’ happiest customers, buries any unfair negative reviews and ensures that the company’s “review ratio” is healthy.

Second, small businesses can turn negative reviews into a second chance. Everyone has a bad day, and business owners deserve to know when something’s wrong. In the past, dissatisfied customers might not even fill out a comment card — they’d badmouth the business via word of mouth, and the owner might never know anything was wrong.

Small businesses can use online reviews to uncover any legitimate blind spots and show acts of good faith for all the public to see. Engaging with dissatisfied customers in online review forums can lead to repeat business, and up to 70% of complaining customers will give the business another shot if their concerns are resolved.

If you run a small business, it’s time to embrace online review sites and use them to your advantage. Word of mouth happens online now, and small businesses finally get to add their voices to the conversation. Better yet, leaning into the world of online reviews might be the only marketing plan a small business needs these days.

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