What’s the magic minimum number of online reviews?
If you are a small business, online reviews can be the life blood of your revenue. But the question is always asked, how many reviews do I need before customers begin to choose my business? This is an important question, so I will try to break that down in this article and show you what we found.
Online reviews, what’s the number?
There are many variables to this question, so before saying a number, we should consider:
- How competitive is your industry?
- How many reviews do they have?
- How do you stack up to Ratings within your genre?
- If you are a local business, how are customers finding you, is it on Yelp, Google Maps, Rating Bee?
As an example, although we say an average of 10 reviews are needed, if your local competition has a rating of 4 Stars and 100 reviews, well, your 10 reviews may not stack up well, and 1 bad review bumps you down in ratings. The stats below do not always apply to every business, it is an average.
So we write this article considering that it takes on average 10 (4 Star reviews) to begin to see positive results and to have customers responding to your business. You can also see an Online Ratings Calculator here to help you understand how revenue is affected. What’s important here is that you’ll see that these 10 reviews from your customers will help potential customers to not only trust your business, but also they begin to pay close attention to the comments in these reviews. If they’re spending 3 minutes plus reading reviews, we have to make sure that those reviews are positive and if they’re not, then focus on responding to the negative reviews with an emphasis on customer satisfaction.
As you know we’ve written tons of blogs on online review responses, we find that responding to good or bad reviews can really help the customer to get a sense of your commitment to their satisfaction. Customers would much rather frequent a business that focuses on customer service!
According to Bright Local’s “Local Consumer Review Survey 2019″
The study also found that the average consumer reads 10 reviews before showing trust in a business and spends an average of 13 minutes and 45 seconds reading reviews.
Shelley Polansky is president/CEO of BBB Serving Northern Colorado and Wyoming.
More Yummy Stats for Online Reviews
According to the survey’s key findings, there are some interesting statistics from the past year:
- 90% of consumers used the internet to find a local business.
- 76% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.
- 52% of 35- to 54-year-olds always read reviews, compared to 28% last year (and compared with 82% for all age groups this year and 86% last year).
- 97% of consumers read businesses’ responses to reviews.
- 91% of consumers are more likely to use a business after reading a positive review.
- 84% of consumers believe that online reviews older than 3 months are no longer relevant.
- 53% of consumers will consider using a business with 3 or fewer stars.
- 27% of consumers will contact a business after reading positive reviews.
Click here to view original web page at www.wyomingbusinessreport.com
Reviews older than 3 months become irrelevant… except for Ratings!
So this may be true that customers don’t go past three months, but I will say that every single review that shows up on your profile is a reflection of your overall history of reviews and can cost you money. Granted, your potential customer will probably look at the last couple months of reviews and read through them, but your overall rating is affected from the reviews from years past. This is one of the failures of the online review industry
84% of consumers believe that online reviews older than 3 months are no longer relevant.
Shelley Polansky is president/CEO of BBB Serving Northern Colorado and Wyoming.
How long do bad reviews stay on?
So this has always been a major problem and one of the reasons why we created Rating Bee. We wanted to make sure that online reviews are never more than 3 years old. It is important to us that every small business gets a chance to improve, and also to potentially keep the customer, even if they had a bad experience, businesses change. A business listed on Rating Bee will demonstrate improvement on going by responding to all reviews. When someone leaves you a bad review on Rating Bee, they have the opportunity to solve the issue through a resolution process or they can leave that bad review. However…
Bad online reviews are renewed YEARLY
Customers leaving a review of 3 stars or below must return to that review one year later to keep the review posted. During that time you have the opportunity to respond to the reviewer. They will see your improvements, and your desire to solve the issue with them. If that reviewer does not renew that bad review every year, it is then removed.
The bottom line for you as a business: We believe it is the responsibility of the poster to manage bad reviews YEARLY.
We do not allow reviewers to just tag a business….
Bad reviews happen, we understand that, what we don’t understand is that a business should pay for a bad review for 10 years. Companies change, management changes, entire business plans change, Rating Bee makes sure that you as a small business will have a chance to improve and get better Ratings.
Get signed up to begin getting the kind of reviews that help your business
Yes it’s important to have your profile in other review websites, but quite frankly they’re not doing you any favors, they often decide what are good reviews and bad reviews. Some businesses actually leave stickers on their door inviting customers to leave reviews in with these companies. I’ve said before on other review blogs, they’ll put the bad reviews up no problem, but the good ones… they’ll question whether or not they’re good reviews and possibly archive them. Amazing.
Your good reviews stay up with Rating Bee, we vet these good reviews as well as bad reviews manually, it is not automated. Nothing replaces the human eye when deciding the future of the business and their online ratings.
Don’t wait, list your business on Rating Bee now!