How much influence might a single review online have upon your business? With the search engine Google’s star rating regulations, the impact is substantial.
Until just recently, if you only received one review online, it would not be registered by Google. As a matter of fact, Google forced businesses to have 5 or more reviews prior to attaching a star rating to your company in search results.
Google now only forces one review for your star ratings to show. It’ll remove the urgency from building up review volume just for the sole reason of having star ratings appear within a search.
But, it still is vital that you ask for reviews online from all your customers — one review will have the power to shape your business brand each time a prospective client locates you on maps or in search.
Star Ratings Will Influence Customer Behavior
At a fast glance, a five-star brand appears like a winner — whether that reflects the opinion of only a single customer or hundreds of customers. Having just a one 1-star rating, on the other hand, may make prospective customers question your brand’s quality.
Recent studies illustrate why Online Review Management is so critical. While people were surveyed about how reviews online and social media influenced their purchasing decisions:
• 90% stated positive reviews online influenced their purchasing decisions.
• 86% percent stated negative reviews online were a quotient in their process of decision-making.
• 69% percent of prospects seek advice and opinions out on services and goods prior to buying.
Online Reputation Management is Crucial to being Successful
Even if your brand’s location gets a four-star rating or above with just a single review, it might not last long. Google will base its system of scoring on a simplistic average, offering the same weight to each review.
For instance, having 1 five-star review and 1 one-star review offers you 3 stars. As you increase your amount of positive reviews, you’ll possess the power to keep your rating high.
Not having a massive body of representative reviews is dangerous to your business for a couple of reasons. Firstly, having just one or a few will fail to accurately capture the quality of the service your company delivers. Second, a smaller rating volume will penalize your locations in search, and make it difficult for prospects to locate your business.
While you cannot (and should not) attempt to control what prospects say, you may manage your online presence to ensure your reviews and ratings are representative and accurate.
Building up your review volume, as well as improving your reputation is going to require a system for asking for reviews from all your customers. Be certain that you frequently monitor your reviews in order for you to respond to complaints and then correct any issues.
If you want social proof of your company’s quality, you must formalize the way in which you manage your reputation online.
For more details on online reputation management contact Soaring Away at (910) 471-5030.