How Important Are Consumer Reviews For Online Marketing?

When you think to buy anything online, what you do first (leave the price tag)? The answer is you read “ONLINE CUSTOMER REVIEWS”. After you are convinced with consumer review and other features, you then only decide to buy. This is not the tendency of only your’s but the fact is many consumers read online reviews before visiting a business or purchasing products online. They even trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.

In a research published by BrightLocal.com, they have stated below findings that clearly indicate the importance of consumer reviews for online marketing.

• 88% consumer read reviews to determine the quality of local business

• 85% consumers reported to read up to 10 reviews before taking final decision.

• 72% consumers say that positive reviews make them trust local business more

• 88% consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations

Let’s now discuss about 5 importance of consumer reviews for online marketing:

1. On-site Ranking Benefits:

This first benefit to rank first is the most important need of every marketer in the digital marketing area. All wants to get ranked on the first place or at least be in the first page. Enabling consumer reviews help to improve organic search ranking of your website. This also creates an awareness about your website in the other people when you get ranked in Google. When any review about any product is written on your website it increases the chances of your website to get ranked on the keyword like ” Product Name + Review”

2. Built Trust:

Review not only helps to improve ranking, but it also helps to built trust among the consumer. If you provide a real and authentic reviews, consumer is automatically going to visit your website before making purchase decision. So for online marketing both good and bad review are important about your brand and other brands. In a research it says that 68% of consumers trust reviews more when they see both good and bad reviews for any product, while 30% suspect it as fake reviews when they don’t see any negative review about any product or services.

3. Increase Conversion Rate:

If your website not only publish reviews about any product but also offer buy option to user, there are chances that website will have an increase in conversion. If the consumer is satisfied with reviews mentioned on your website and you are not hiding anything makes them feel that you are sincere about your reviews. It’s a simple rule that the more authentic review you have, the more you are going to sell, as long as you are not hampering other products by posting fake negative reviews.

4. Make User to Become a New Marketer of Your’s:

This is an added benefit of the customer reviews for online marketing. If one consumer becomes a regular visitor of your website, he/she will definitely tell the others about your website. For this you need to be faithful to review you have on your website and let the user trust you blindly.

5. Importance in Local SEO ranking:

Google now gives importance to Local SEO ranking. If you are searching shops nears to your locality, Google will let you see the reviews website which are near to your search zone. This ranking gives importance to your website. So build trust and get ranked in local search.

After knowing the importance of online reviews website, now lets look at a few key points about how to present reviews and rating so that user gets the idea about the website in very first look.

1. Try to give stars and catching heading at the very beginning

This is a simple concept that people first look at the star rating / title and then only read the complete review. Try to make users leave stars and title before writing the complete reviews.

2. Make review process simple

Make your review process simple. Try not to make the login process difficult and asking unwanted question that have no connection to review.

3. Try to add a filter

The filter helps consumer to select which review they want to read. All 5 stars review or 1 star reviews. Don’t forget to add the filter option on your website.

4. Use the chart to display the number of reviews

Chart make user know how many reviews are posted for any products. Try to divide the number of reviews in a different section.

5. Give details about the consumer who has posted the review

After reading the review, consumer reads the details about the person who has posted the review. Try to add things like name of user, location and date of joining the platform and date of posting the reviews.

Conclusion:

Hope this article helped you know the importance of consumer reviews for online marketing. With few efforts and proper planning you can rank well in online review business and make consumer leave reviews on your website.