The power of reviews is sometimes still underestimated by companies, especially when they have no online business. Yet it turns out that reviews can work to your advantage if you pay serious attention to them. On the other hand, they can also work to your disadvantage if you ignore them. Below, we explain why the subject of reviews is indeed important for your business.

Why are reviews posted?

This is perhaps the first question that needs to be answered. The answer is quite simple. One has a particular opinion about your company, product or service and wants to voluntarily share it with parties involved with your company, product or service. From here, there are actually two possibilities. One is satisfied and wants this known or one is dissatisfied and wants this known. Of course you prefer to have only positive reviews, but it is almost impossible to avoid the occasional negative review. Moreover, as the number of reviews increases, the chance of negative reviews also increases. Keep in mind, however, that this is not necessarily a bad thing.

As a rule, few reviews are actually posted when you, as a company, meet customer expectations. Instead, reviews are more often posted when you exceed or fall short of that expectation. What do we mean by this? Suppose you delivered a product extra fast, you provided good advice or the quality is better than expected then customers tend to write a positive review about it.

With this, the customers are basically rewarding your organization. On the other hand, of course, it works the same way. When a delivery takes one week instead of the promised one day, customers are disappointed and may post a review about it. The important thing is that you do not see these negative reviews as an attack but as an opportunity to make improvements.

Some arguments

More than three-quarters of consumers consider the importance of a review as great as the importance of a personal recommendation. This is a strong argument since online you do not have the opportunity to address a visitor personally. Second strong argument is that three quarters also read reviews before making a purchase. On top of that, they also look at the response the organization in question has given to the review.

The number of people writing reviews also continues to rise. These days it is already estimated to be almost one quarter. In addition, there is another nice side effect. With positive reviews, there is a possibility that consumers are willing to pay more than originally intended. All in all, reviews work to increase conversion.

Build confidence

There is always still a degree of uncertainty when considering online purchases. Reasons for this are that you 'have' to trust a company on the text and images of the site because you have no personal interaction with them and that the past has shown that the trust of visitors is often abused. Logically, visitors are going to read up on your company or the products/services you offer to remove the uncertainty.

Your site itself can already contribute to this. The more transparent your expressions on your site, the more confident you come across. In addition, reviews also generate a lot of trust. This is because customers freely give their opinion about the experience they have with you. Think of it as a new version of word-of-mouth advertising. If 10 people tell you positive stories about a site, product or service, you are more likely to accept it.

How do I collect reviews?

Reviews can be collected in many different ways, of course. For example, you can ask a customer to leave a review in an e-mail and then display it on your site. The only question you have to ask yourself is how much confidence this inspires in a visitor when you display your own written review on your site. That is why you often see companies using a party like Trustpilot, Kiyoh or Yelp because they are independent.

They don't benefit from someone writing a good or bad review about your company, product or service. This reason also causes visitors to interpret these reviews as truth and factor them into their purchasing decision.

Each party has a plug-in that can be implemented in the back-end of your site that allows you to start collecting reviews. The next thing is to invite people to post a review, how do you do this? For example, after a purchase, you can include a link in the order confirmation that refers to placing a review.

It is also possible to inquire a short time after a purchase how they liked it and then invite them to post a review. Another option is to persuade people with a discount coupon, for example. You can invite someone by email to post a review in exchange for a 10% discount on their next purchase.

Of course, Google cannot be missing from the list about reviews and Google is important to consider first but really just to actively pick up. Obviously, again, reliability with visitors is an important factor but also take online visibility into account. The better the reviews the higher the ranking in Google is and thus the sooner you are visible to organic traffic.

What do you need for this? A "Google My Business" page. Search for Google my business and you can create a business page relatively easily. Make sure this page is as complete as possible so that Google has as much information about your business as possible and can therefore share it with potential visitors. An additional benefit is that your business is immediately visible in the search engine when someone searches your business name in Google, and here it is also immediately visible what score the reviews give you.

Positive reviews

These are of course the reviews you prefer to get but what can you glean from them? First, of course, that people are satisfied and happy to share this with other people. Think of it as digital word-of-mouth advertising that makes others more inclined to visit you. As a company, also show that you appreciate it when someone has left a review. A short reply with a thank you shows that you are actively engaged with them and that provides extra appreciation.

In addition, a positive score can also be used as an additional sales tool, for example, if your product scores a 9.5, visitors will certainly take this into consideration when considering a purchase. Try where possible to steer towards an extensive review because the more (relevant) information is mentioned the more a visitor will be persuaded to make a purchase.

While it may be difficult to understand, there can also be a negative side to positive reviews. Suppose you have 1,000 reviews all with 5/5 stars then this can arouse suspicion. Again, trust plays a big role here. By nature, we find it hard to believe that everything is good, so it is not a bad thing to receive a lesser or bad review. Just be careful how you handle this. More on this in the section below.

Negative reviews

You may not escape the fact that someone is dissatisfied and wants to express his or her dissatisfaction. As stated earlier, we tend to share our opinions when something is above or below expectations and here we will assume the latter. The important thing with negative reviews and how you handle them as an organization. We recommend viewing a negative review as a learning opportunity, investigate (when necessary) the reason and see how you can avoid it in the future.

In addition, you also need to come up with a solution for this particular incident and also make sure that you share this transparently. In this day and age, people are no longer satisfied with the answer: contact us so we can resolve this. People want to read a substantive solution when reading your response to a review. This creates transparency and trust. Remember that a negative review can be turned into a positive review through the right actions.

We advise against going on the attack with a response to a negative review. This is disastrous for the buying process. Let's transfer it for a moment to a physical store where you bought a product and are not satisfied with it. You like to go back to the store to complain and you are met with an attack which is at best customer unfriendly. As a result, you are sure that you will never buy anything from this party again and of course you want to avoid that.

In online reviews, show understanding for the situation and provide a substantive solution or possibility for resolution in your first response. When visitors read that you actually make an effort to solve the problem, this also creates trust. You ensure that a threshold is removed because you show that, when things go wrong, you work proactively toward a solution.

In short, reviews provide many opportunities and are almost all about trust. You compensate for the lack of personal interaction by acting transparently and ultimately contribute to points such as better conversion and loyalty. First, think carefully about what you want to convey and how you want to convey it, and then make sure your product or service reflects this. When this is all in order, chances are that you will meet expectations and people will be satisfied after purchasing your product or service. Add extras, for example, and you perform above expectations which challenges customers to leave a positive review.