Can you and your clients trust online reviews? The quick and straightforward answer is YES! Online customer reviews, in general, can be trusted. One reason to rely on online reviews is the fact that most platforms today are successful in thwarting efforts to post unverified and fake reviews. Gone are the days when anonymous reviewers could post reviews at will on these sites.
For a moment, take off your business hat and put on your “searcher” hat. As a searcher, online reviews are particularly useful for you and people like you looking for trustworthy and useful information about the products and services you or they need.
Switching hats back, online reviewers are usually actual users who can provide details about their experience with a particular product or service. This way, consumers get a perspective not coming from the business or service provider. This is a point of view that you as the business cannot always provide.
However, as a user, you must exercise caution and due diligence when reading online reviews. A sound suggestion is to read as many reviews of the same service or product as possible. You can better understand and appreciate the particular product through many different customer experiences.
When reading reviews, it is also worth mentioning that it is important to be discerning and deciding which reviews to believe and the ones to ignore or not to take seriously. For instance, if you encounter reviews that are too exceptional or seem too good to be true, they are probably reviews that you need to take with a grain of salt.
Is It Possible to Buy Online Reviews?
Knowing the importance of online reviews to both consumers and businesses, one question that may be lingering on your mind is, “can you purchase online reviews?” or can I employ people to write positive or favorable, albeit fake, reviews for my business? Well, the answer is YES. It is quite possible.
There are many people you can find online who would be willing to write reviews for you – for a fee. But, you need to understand that this can be too risky, yet it can only yield potentially measly rewards.
For one, hiring people to come up with fake reviews for your products or services can do more harm than good to your business over the long term. Surely, no one wants to damage the reputation of their business, including you.
Buying fake or fabricated reviews is not ideal for managing your business’s online reputation. It is an established fact that good online reputation management requires a lot of time – from building your brand to establishing a good impression on your existing and target clients.
While some people may think that they can achieve success faster if they buy reviews, they are wrong. While it may look like they are initially succeeding, it will eventually come back to haunt them in the long run.
This is particularly true when people who were initially convinced by fake reviews, buy and get a first-hand experience with the product. Now, do you think these actual users will give rave reviews? In most cases, they will point out their disappointment with the product – their unmet expectations resulting from believing in fake reviews.
Keep in mind that if you employ fake reviews, you may be caught; rather, you will be caught! Maybe not immediately, but you will definitely get caught eventually. And when you finally get caught, you’ll lose not only your clients’ trust and confidence. You’ll also get punished by popular search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing.
Your website may get banned and removed from the search engines’ business listings. This is where having good Google listing management comes in.
In summary, employing fake online reviews is a downright dishonest tactic. It isn’t worth the risk. A good recommendation is to stick to doing things the traditional and right way – by using search engine-accepted review management practices.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Online Reviews
Following are some of the main pros and cons of online customer reviews gathered the ethical way, meaning they were voluntarily given by actual clients and not bought:
Advantages of Online Customer Reviews:
- When posted on a review site, an online review offers free content and promotion for your product or service on another site.
- Rave client reviews can help improve existing and potential clients’ trust and confidence in your company. Especially if you are a specialist retailer, it can provide your business with a decisive edge over your competition that doesn’t use online customer reviews.
- Your potential conversion rate is likely to increase because of your improved trust and confidence ratings.
- When you get negative reviews and immediately act on them, complaints and returns from clients will decrease.
- Online reviews help highlight your business processes or aspects that may need improvement.
Disadvantages of Online Customer Reviews:
- The lack or absence of negative reviews can potentially influence a client’s opinion about your business and their buying decision. According to research done by Reevoo, around 68% of buyers trust online reviews and the product more if they see both rave and unfavorable reviews. On the other hand, 30% suspect censorship or fake reviews when they only see positive reviews and not even one negative feedback.
- A single negative feedback on a product or service can ruin a potential client’s opinion of the manufacturer or service provider.
- Some 3rd party review websites charge a fee for using their services. Weigh first if the advantages you stand to gain outweigh the price before using the service.
- Dissatisfied clients on 3rd party websites can freely express what they really feel. Because they can say whatever they want to say, they may sometimes post damaging or malicious information. Therefore, it is up to the user to discern which reviews to take seriously and which ones to ignore.
- Online customer reviews must be kept up to date and current at all times. Otherwise, they become irrelevant and outdated.
What Review-Gating Is and Why It Is Bad Practice
Review-gating is when you learn that your clients had positive or negative experiences. Now, you only ask those with positive experiences to leave online reviews, and you discourage your clients with negative experiences from providing feedback. Obviously, this is a dishonest practice.
Fair play dictates that all clients with bad or good experiences with your services or products are given equal opportunities to share their feedback. The ultimate goal of online reviews is to get an honest assessment of the overall customer experience. Showing only the positive aspects of your business will not achieve that goal.
While favorable reviews can definitely help promote your business, negative feedback can help you pinpoint the specific areas of your business that need improvement. While a negative review here and there can harm your company, being dishonest can be a lot more damaging.
What you can do is to take the negative reviews constructively and fix the problems. Immediately address the issues raised by reviewers instead of hiding them. These problems will eventually come out into the open, anyway. The key is to properly manage your online reviews.
How You Can Encourage More Online Reviews
At this point, you must already know that online reviews are important to your business. The problem is, you are having difficulties in getting them. You can address the problem by requesting each client you serve to write a review. This may require a lot of work, however. It will not only eat up your precious resources. Likewise, it will put additional strain on your staff, who may already have a full plate on their hands.
What’s worse is that even after spending time and resources, you may still fall short of your target response rate. What will you do now?
To help you address the issue, here are some proven tips that can help you get more responses, as well as facilitate the review gathering process on your website:
Automate Your Requests for Reviews
When gathering reviews from clients, it is important to track when you are on a roll and continue to ride the streak. This is because the longer you wait to send the request for a review from a client, the less chance you will get it.
If your review gathering process is automated, you can send timely review requests. This way, you will not only save time. You will also spare your staff from the extra work they would otherwise provide if the process is manual.
Come up With a System That Is Straightforward and Easy to Use
With all things considered, an online review provided by a client is a big favor to you. Think of it as your client sparing a few minutes from their busy schedule just to give a review and help build your business’s reputation. Thus, you owe them a favor. What you can do is make the process of giving a review as easy and as straightforward as possible.
Be sure to provide a link in your request for review. Your clients have to simply click on the link to respond, type a review, and they are done.
Respond to All Client Reviews You Receive, Including the Unfavorable Ones
It is a sound practice to respond to all received reviews, not just the rave reviews. As previously mentioned, negative reviews can help you identify areas for improvement.
Google says that responding to reviews is one way of making your clients feel appreciated and heard. This will encourage your future clients likewise to leave reviews when their turn comes.
Make it a point to thank your clients every time they leave a favorable review. Do not ignore negative reviews. First, determine what the problems are, and then work with the reviewers in coming up with an acceptable solution.
Final Thoughts
Remember that all reviews you get from actual clients can benefit your business, whether positive or negative. Yes, good reviews are confirmations from your clients that you have been doing a satisfactory or even excellent job of satisfying their needs. On the other hand, when provided constructively, negative feedback can point out the specific areas of your business where you need to implement some improvements.
For more information about online customer reviews, contact us to set up an appointment and find out how we can help with your online reputation management.
