Online reviews assists in bridging the gap between the traditional word-of-mouth and a viral form of feedback to influence customers’ opinions. With the emergence of online platforms, customers can share their experience with the world in just a few clicks. Nowadays, not only are reviews found on e-commerce websites such as blogs and forums, some websites are dedicated to customer reviews such as Yelp, BritainReviews, and TripAdvisor. These sources enable customers to give their opinion about products, whether positive or negative, and is a valuable asset for any company and crucial for business.

Importance of Customer Reviews

• Provides a better understanding of your customers and improves customer service

Going through the reviews left by your customers helps you to always aim towards customer satisfaction, as they help to provide your business with insights into what your customers truly want. By making use of this information, you would be able to improve your customer service and resolve the issues commonly faced by customers, thereby creating a positive experience for the consumer and helps you focus on their needs.

• Credibility and Social Proof

Humans are highly social creatures imbued with the need to know what others think before making our decisions. Online review sites help to provide this information for companies with just a few clicks.

• Provides room for companies to compete with more established ones.

Reviews enable new businesses to compete with their more established counterparts and potentially gain a positive outlook in people’s expectations. Customers generally would prefer to purchase goods from companies that have a higher rating in the mind of the general public.

• Allows customers to have a voice and creates customer loyalty

Customers that take the time to leave an online review for your products are more likely to patronize you again, especially if you consider their suggestions. Through the act of leaving a review and establishing a customer relationship, it provides customers with a voice to give positive and meaningful feedback.

• Improve rankings

Reviews tend to be an essential factor in local search. It helps businesses rank well even if they have low-quality profiles. Pages with reviews that have a keyword and/or the name of a city were found to rank higher in Google’s local rankings.

• Consumers are doing your marketing for you

Positive online reviews provided by customers are essential and can offer your business a large number of benefits in the long run that a marketing campaign can’t offer. They serve as a means of marketing at the grassroots level that keeps working long after the review has been posted. It helps to give a positive image to potential customers and creates a collective brand awareness that brings benefits in the short and long term.

• Reviews generate more reviews

When a review has been posted about a company’s product, other people are encouraged to leave their feedback. The appearance of several reviews can act to provide potential customers with the incentive to submit their opinions on a particular product or service.

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