The internet age we are living in is a genuine Godsent for customers. Mainly because the internet created a much broader competition in otherwise niche industries. For example, if, in the 1980s, you needed cycling shoes, you’d have to go to your local cycling shop, and if they had none, you’d either ask them to order or find a substitute. Naturally, there was no competition, so the price was much higher than what we are used to paying today. Nowadays, with the Internet, all you need to do is write a few chosen words in your search engine of choice, and hundreds, if not thousands, of online shops will appear right in front of your eyes. With such competition, naturally, the price goes down, and the product quality goes up. That’s just how the economy works.

While at first glance, this reality spells doom to small local businesses, in fact, if they utilize the opportunity that the internet presents, they could become the biggest winners of this fundamental change in customer behavior.

We’ve discussed in length many aspects of creating one truly immaculate website that will attract users and convert them into loyal customers. Today, however, we want to draw your attention to one of the most crucial aspects that will help expand your website’s reach, increase its visibility and grow your sales. Let’s see why reviews are essential to your business success and how to utilize them fully.

Why are reviews crucial for your business?

While ten years ago, having a good-looking website was enough to have users’ undivided attention and stand out in front of the competition, that is the norm today. So, what can truly separate you from the pack is having many genuine reviews that honestly describe your business.

With 93% of users claiming that online reviews seriously impacted their decision, it’s truly not hard to imagine why any business owner should strive to maximize their reviews count. However, online reviews bring far more benefits than just increasing your website’s visibility.

They are an outstanding social proof

It may sound strange, but today customers are far more likely to purchase a product or service if a stranger vouched for it. Before the boom of online sales, that sounded ludicrous. Today, however, 54.7% of users will read at least four reviews before purchasing. Another 44% would go through three or fewer reviews before buying. What this means for your business is that online reviews are one truly outstanding social proof, provided you generally have good reviews, of course.

Naturally, this will generate more leads. In fact, about 9% of customers will call a business immediately after reading positive reviews, and many also prefer to explore video testimonials to gain a comprehensive understanding of the customer’s experience. Moreover, around 85% of people trust online reviews just as much as personal recommendations. Naturally, this social proof increases your overall credibility.

They boost your credibility

Reviews will show your audience that you are honest with your product. Moreover, you are not afraid to address your customers’ issues with the product. In fact, they will trust you much more if you have some bad reviews in the mix. About 22% of customers would trust an all-5-star review brand.

On the other hand, if there are mixed reviews with lower scores, you will have the trust of nearly 66% of the audience. The presumption is that not everyone can be happy with a product or service, as you can’t indeed cover each and everyone’s expectations. Thus, if you only have 5-star reviews, that raises suspicions that you are either deleting bad reviews or your reviews are fake.

They gather valuable information

While bad reviews can be detrimental to your business, if you pay close attention to them, you can improve your product and proverbially change the frown upside down. Naturally, this will cost you some extra effort, but if there is a problem that a considerable chunk of your customers address, you can’t just pretend there is no such thing. It’s far better to take responsibility and ensure the problem is resolved.

They have a huge impact on sales

If you manage to get a good review score, this will instantly impact your sales. Statistics have shown that predominantly (but not entirely) positive reviews will increase your sales by 18% on average. Moreover, researchers have discovered that reviews work much better than any special discount or bonus. In fact, a good number of reviews is 50% more likely to motivate the buyer than a discount. So naturally, maintaining a high number of reviews will benefit your business greatly.

They give a huge SEO boost.

Your sales will experience a significant increase due to the rise in visits. As reviews indicate you are trustworthy, Google will instantly hop on the wagon and increase your website quality. As a business, Google aims to give its users the most valuable information they seek. So naturally, if your brand has many positive reviews, that’s a great indicator that people trust you, and Google will instantly push you up in their SERP results.

They attract attention

With better social proof, higher credibility, and better visibility, it’s not too complicated to determine that you will receive much more attention. That’s the power of social proof. The more reviews you get, the more attractive your brand will become. For example, about 64% of online shoppers agree that a trustworthy business should have at least 50 reviews. On the other hand, only 18% of customers would consider your business credible if you have less than 25 reviews. So, the more reviews you get, the better the results.

How do you get more reviews?

So how do you get more reviews? Don’t worry. We at HostArmada are not only here to provide you with the fastest, safest, and most reliable hosting services. We are invested in your success just as much as you are, so we prepared a list of 11 full-proof ways to increase your reviews numbers.

1. Make it effortless

The first step you must take to ensure your customers won’t hesitate to leave a review is to make it as easy as possible. This means you should only ask for what is needed for the review – Name and email address to verify the review. Of course, the easier it is to leave a review, the more reviews you will have.

A good example is Samsung, which allows anyone to leave a review on any product. In the social proof section of their product page, they added a “Review this product” option right next to the current overall rating. In this example, all you need is a valid email for verification purposes and a nickname. We, however, advise asking for a name, as this will boost the confidence in the reviews.

Depending on your business type, you can either ask for reviews on separate products or create a “reviews” section on your home page. There, people can leave their overall score for your brand. This is a much better solution if you offer one or only a few unique products that bear your brand’s name.

2. Remind people to leave a review at the right time

“Ask, and you shall receive.” This Bible verse from Matthew 7:7 is perfectly applicable to almost any marketing situation. In marketing, you can’t leave the customer guessing what you expect them to do. You need to tell them firmly and invitingly.

However, when it comes to reviews, you can’t just force people into writing a review. You need to ask them at the right moment. Unfortunately, many businesses make the frustrating mistake of asking customers to review their product upon receiving it. When it comes to services, there are two schools of thought. The first one preaches to ask for a review immediately after receiving the service. They argue that this way, customers are prone to leave a higher-rated review.

On the other hand, the customers feel pressed and will likely refuse to leave a review. Moreover, they haven’t had the time to experience the benefits of the service. For example, if you hired a business to fix your car, you can’t judge whether they did an excellent job before you drove for several dozen miles.

The second school of thought advises giving the customer some space and leaving them to enjoy the benefits of your service. The second option is mandatory when we are talking about products. You can’t expect someone to leave a review upon the product’s arrival. Thus, we suggest asking them to leave a review at least a week after buying the service or product. For some specific products, leave them a bit more time. For example, if someone buys an inflatable swimming pool during Christmas, they will likely use it in the summer. In such cases, it’s best to create a list of customers that bought such products and send them a separate dedicated email at a more appropriate time. For the swimming pool – a midsummer is a good idea.

Needless to say, choosing the precise moment to ask your customers to leave a review will drastically increase your success rate, as if you ask them too soon, they might refuse. Still, if you ask them too late, they probably won’t bother or could have forgotten about the experience.

3. Add a dedicated CTA

If you are trying to convince your customers to leave a review, a dedicated, well-designed CTA will do wonders. Just like with sales, optimizing your CTA to attract attention and make it persuasive enough will increase your review count.

When creating your dedicated CTA button, we suggest using a different color to help it both standout and differentiate it from your sales buttons. A good idea is to make it the same color as the visual representation of your score. For example, if you use stars, make the CTA yellow. If you use blue dots, make it blue, etc. You can take a page from one of the business review website’s patriarchs – Yelp. Their CTA is the same color as the 5-star review visual representation and is positioned right at the top, where it stands out due to its color.

4. Do writing reviews mobile-friendly.

In this day and age, mobile-friendliness is crucial for your business. So, just as it is instrumental for your website to be easily accessible and navigable through a smartphone and other devices, the same should be with leaving reviews. Over 1.7 billion people check their email through their mobile phones. So naturally, if you invite them via email to leave a review, they should be able to make it through their phone right there and then. However, if your reviews section is not mobile-friendly, they will likely ignore your request, as they will forget about it before getting to a PC.

Thankfully, if you are using WordPress and WooCommerce, they are entirely mobile-optimized, so you won’t have any problems. However, ensure your “reviews” page web design will stay intact when viewed on a smaller screen and will retain its visually pleasing look.

5. Display reviews on your website

This should go without saying. Reviews are the cornerstone behind your social proof, so you must show them on your website. Moreover, it will significantly hinder your credibility if you ask someone to share their opinion on your product and disregard it by not showing it on your webpage. Naturally, you can choose to highlight your top-rated reviews, but make sure to showcase the bad ones as well.

Even if you don’t collect reviews locally on your website, you should still provide a way for customers to reach the reviews. Thankfully many WordPress plugins can integrate Social Media, Google, or other platform reviews on your brand into your website. Third-party reviews are often far more trustworthy than those collected locally, as customers are typically concerned with censorship.

6. Be careful with the censorship

Censorship is the worst idea you can have when it comes to reviews. About two-thirds of people (62%) will purposefully avoid brands that censor online reviews and do not display critical reviews. Censoring your bad reviews instead of working to reduce them will ultimately lead to far more harm than what the reviews can do themselves. This will instantly hinder your credibility, significantly reduce your leads and sales, and ultimately destroy your Google website score. Most importantly, it will deter your customers from leaving reviews in the first place, even if they are good. Why would anyone waste their time writing a thoughtful review if you are going to edit it or simply ignore it?

Authenticity and transparency are crucial factors when users decide on purchasing. So naturally, for retailers, censorship can be detrimental to their business. That includes fake bad reviews, as it’s far better to address them and let your customers know that those are fake than just simply deleting them. However, not every bad review is bound to be fake. Everyone makes mistakes, and owning them will elevate your authenticity and credibility.

7. Do NOT allow any fake positive reviews

The only thing worse than having censorship in your reviews section is having fake positive reviews there. 67% of consumers think fake reviews are a problem and will deter them from using the brand’s products or services. It stands to reason that if 93% of internet shoppers are adamant that reviews impact their decision and they can’t trust the authenticity of your reviews, this will stop them from purchasing. Naturally, you should avoid fake reviews at all costs. Still, if they are negative, you shouldn’t delete them, as it’s far better to call them out.

8. Implement Google’s tools

With 81% of customers using Google reviews to assess local businesses, it’s not hard to determine whether one should implement any Google tools that could help him get more reviews in the search engine. Submitting your business to Google and getting a Google My Business listing will bring you a long way in this regard. That’s the most frequent place where people will look for your service, and if you gather enough reviews there, you will not only gain credibility and more leads but will also rise in Google’s search engine results.

Another great idea is to add your business on Google Maps. This way, if you are a coffee, for example, and a person on the road is looking for a place to take a quick cup, you and your reviews will stand top and center. Most importantly, they can leave a review through the same apps, significantly increasing the number of received reviews.

9. Implement other platforms

While Google, without a doubt, is the biggest reviewing platform on the internet, containing 73% of all business reviews, it’s a good idea to add some other platforms to the mix. Keep in mind that local reviews are a great idea to increase your sales, but it only accounts for 12% of all reviews online. Moreover, it has little to do with generating leads and traffic.

If you want to be as visible as possible, we suggest adding three more review platforms to your portfolio. Yelp accounts for about 6% of all reviews worldwide and is especially helpful in the US. Facebook and TripAdvisor are the other two, which both have 3% of the reviews. Of course, not all products and services can be implemented in TripAdvisor, for example, but still, make sure to add your business to as many of these platforms as possible. This way, you will make the whole process of leaving a review much more accessible.

10. Add a benefit to leaving a review

Usually, if your business has already received several hundred reviews, getting more is a matter of time. However, if you are new in the industry and desperately want to get your first few reviews, a good idea is to add a benefit to reviews.

For example, you can add a discount to anyone that adds an honest review to your website. This is an excellent way to get a positive review as well, as those not impressed with your products will likely disregard the opportunity to purchase further from your store. Another way to get additional reviews is to make it a requirement for a contest. For example, you can offer a free gift to one person that leaves a review on your webpage.

These are a great way to start your review-gathering journey and will instantly give you relatively good feedback. Don’t worry about the bad feedback, though. It will come on its own.

11. Most importantly: Respond to all reviews

People love to be heard by brands. This way, the brand shows that it’s not a faceless corporation but is actually a partner. Regardless of whether the review is good or bad, you must respond. With good reviews, this is much easier, as all you need to do is thank the person and invite them to be your client again. However, things are a bit more complicated when it comes to bad reviews. Firstly you need to be fast with your response. 53% of consumers expect a fast response to negative reviews. Considering this, it’s genuinely astounding why 75% of businesses simply don’t respond to negative reviews. It’s far more practical to give your side of the story, to disprove the negative claims when they are wrong, and to own up to your mistake when they are true.

Moreover, seeing that your brand is open to a conversation will push more customers to express their opinion and voice what they like and dislike about your product or service. This way, you can perfect your product or service and actively show your customers that their reviews are actually taken under consideration when improving the product. This will inspire loyalty from your satisfied customers and leniency from the disappointed ones.

Having many reviews is not enough

Getting reviews is relatively easy when you know where, when, and how to ask for them. Still, more than getting reviews is needed for your brand to be successful. You need to have predominantly good reviews that would overwhelm your critics.

Unfortunately, not all bad reviews are connected to problems with your products or service. Many bad reviews are related to the website’s poor design or speed. We at HostArmada have the perfect solution for the latter. Our fast, safe, and reliable hosting services will guarantee that your website will never experience downtime, no matter how many customers you get. This will significantly reduce the number of bad reviews and will ultimately help you increase your credibility, customer base, and revenues. Contact our team, and we will help you choose the most suitable plan for your needs.