When a customer researches your business online they will look for reviews. In fact, 91% of people read reviews and 84% trust online reviews as much as they trust personal recommendations. Your online reviews have two components. The first is the actual comments that people put in their reviews. The second component is the star rating. How many stars (out of 5 stars) will someone give your business? This is called the star rating. 58% of people say that the star rating is the most important criteria for judging that business online. Furthermore, 54% of customers will visit a business’s website after seeing positive reviews.
Facebook has a star rating option for all the businesses that use their platform. A business can turn this feature on or off. When you think of Facebook for your business you may not think of reviews. Yet, it is one of the most important elements of your social media presence.
How do you improve your reviews?
Asking customers for reviews seems like a simple task. Yet, many store owners struggle to maintain a consistent process for collecting reviews.
In reality, you should be asking for reviews everywhere. The store owner needs to ask for reviews. The staff needs to be trained to ask for reviews. Your email blasts should ask for reviews. Posts on social media should ask for reviews. Request reviews in newspaper ads and on the radio.
Sure, you can get creative with how you ask. You can offer tips to the employee that gets the most reviews that mention their name. You can create a raffle of all the customers who have reviewed you online.
There is a lot of information online about how to generate reviews for your business. Thus, we won’t go into depth here. When you think of social media, specifically Facebook, think of being a star. Put in place a strategy that helps you be a star.
Hint – your best strategy may be providing 5-star service to customers every single day.
Amazon understands the value of reviews. In fact, Amazon has star reviews on all sorts of things on their website. Amazon allows fulfillment from multiple sellers. Not only do all the products on Amazon have star reviews but so do all the sellers. Customers select the product with the best reviews and buy it from the seller with the best reviews!
Your reviews keep you in the running. It is almost a guarantee that consumers can find what you are selling on Amazon at this point. When they find it on Amazon they can also find a highly rated seller. Chances are that you don’t have reviews of your products on your online catalog like Amazon does. But, on Facebook and Google you can showcase that you are a highly rated seller! You may be able to garner even more stars and positive reviews than the Amazon sellers!
Star reviews keep you in the hunt with your competition. Remember, 58% of consumers say that star rating is their number one criteria for judging a business online.
Stay competitive, be a star.