(This is a contributed post)
The majority of consumers will check online reviews before making a purchase and most people say that they trust online reviews just as much as a recommendation from friends and family. But a lot of business owners still overlook their importance and don’t devote enough space to them on their website. Reviews aren’t just about convincing people to make a purchase, they benefit you in all sorts of ways. These are some of the main reasons that customer reviews are important to your business.
An Increase In Sales
The most obvious benefit of reviews is that they increase your sales. The majority of people will browse a range of different products and then look at the reviews to decide which brand to go with. If you have a lot of positive reviews out there, people are going to choose your brand more often. It’s usually the reviews that give the customer that last push to make a purchase, so good reviews will make a huge difference to your sales.
Combating Counterfeits
This is something that a lot of businesses don’t consider but it can be a big problem. If there are a lot of people out there selling fake versions of your products, it can seriously damage your business and you may lose a lot of sales. It’s important that customers can tell the difference between a fake and the real thing, and reviews can help there as well. If there is a website that is selling counterfeit handbags, for example, they’re likely to have a lot of reviews letting people know that they’re fakes and they shouldn’t buy. It’s equally important that sites selling the real thing have plenty of reviews to confirm that it is legitimate, otherwise, people may not trust it.
Driving Traffic To Your Site
Driving traffic to your website is important if you are going to boost sales, and reviews can help there as well. If there are reviews of your product on third party websites, they will often include a link to the original page on your site so people can go straight over there if they’re interested in purchasing it. That means that you’ll see an increase in traffic and all of that traffic will come from people that already have an interest in buying your product.
Improving SEO
When you are drawing up a marketing strategy, maintaining a strong online presence is absolutely vital. Driving traffic to your website is a big part of that and while reviews can help with that directly, they also have an indirect impact. SEO is the easiest way to drive traffic to your website and a lot of people don’t realize that online reviews contribute to your SEO quite a lot. Reviews will be considered original content by the algorithms and if there are a lot of them out there, it’s enough to boost your search engine rankings, especially if a lot of the reviews link back to your website.
Online reviews benefit your business in these different ways and if you aren’t taking advantage of them, you’re missing a golden opportunity.