How Positive Online Reviews Can Help Your Business

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A very large percentage of consumers turn to online reviews when it comes time to make a purchase decision. Whether it’s an electronics product or a leisure activity, online reviews influence purchases in every industry imaginable.

Indeed, word-of-mouth referrals are the best kind of marketing, And in the digital age, they are usually in the form of online reviews. The rise of their importance for consumers represents a huge opportunity to successfully promote your business.

Why are positive online reviews important?

With so many options these days, especially online, it’s important that your business stands out from the competition. If a consumer has two activity options, one with negative or no reviews online and another with several positive reviews, which one are they going to pick? The average consumer is going for the business with positive reviews every single time.

Apart from this significant fact, here are additional reasons why you should use positive reviews in your website and overall marketing strategy:

Improve your search performance

Google will also thank you for the reviews you’ve displayed. Your position on search engine result pages can improve after adding good customer reviews on your website.

Online reviews provide you with fresh material for your website. This, in turn, contributes to your SEO metrics.

And when it comes to search engine ads, Shopify found that review-based ads receive 4x higher click-through rates and a 50% decrease in cost-per-click than average.

Build trust

It has been proven that customers trust offers with ratings more than those without. People do not trust companies anymore. They need other customers to built trust before purchasing.

In today’s digital age, customers are no longer passive consumers being led by billboards and TV ads. They won’t be easily fooled by another boring sales pitch, and they certainly don’t care about your marketing objectives.

Customers are looking for a more human connection to the brands they choose and are choosing brands that promote the same values they do.

When potential customers see other customers engaged with your brand by writing reviews, it sends out a good message and creates trust; helping you build a loyal community around your brand.

Instead of blasting your audience with promotions and ads, you encourage your audience to participate and feel like they belong to something bigger and more meaningful.

Influence purchase decisions

When it comes to making purchase decisions, many of us rely heavily upon the opinions of our trusted friends and family or from strangers online with personal experience from making the same purchase. AdWeek found that  93% of consumers say online reviews are helpful when making a purchasing decision.

Reviews are a more traditional and common, yet a very helpful form of UGC. When potential customers do an online search for your tours and activities, your company reviews on TripAdvisor, Facebook, and Google may be one of the first search results they notice. While you may not always receive only positive reviews, you can still benefit from the negative as well.

For example, use them to learn from your mistakes. Reply to the review quickly and let the upset customer know that you apologize for the trouble, show them that you understand them and sympathize with them, and thank them for their honest feedback and assure them you will use it to improve customer experience. This will show the upset customer and anyone else reading the review, that you care about your customers and take your business seriously.

Recommended reading: How to Deal with Negative Customer Reviews

Free yet priceless feedback

Every review that is posted, negative or positive, gives you priceless feedback from customers that you can use to improve your business. This feedback helps you to identify your biggest strengths as well as your biggest weaknesses and areas that you need to focus on.

Give your customers the chance to express their honest opinion and show the it’s valued.

And in the end, that’s what matters most – the customer. When the customer is happy, that satisfaction with your product or services drives repeat sales and makes YOU happy too. Win, win, win!

How to make the most of your online reviews

As you can see, there is no reason to not use online reviews on your website.

And with the Regiondo booking solution, you get your very own review module. This is a widget that you can embed on your website to highlight customer reviews. It also helps you collect reviews automatically. After every event, your customers get an email to leave a review.

Collect online reviews with your own module

 

Don’t leave the power of reviews to the big guys like TripAdvisor. Use your own Review module to collect valuable feedback from your customers in your own database.

Here’s why:

  • You have the control over the reviews and their visibility,
  • Everything is in one place
  • Let the communication still be from your own brand

The base of your review module is the customer database in your dashboard. There you find all your customers with the corresponding reviews. This database is also very important for every customer relationship activity.

A good process to collect reviews

1) Send a post-event email – automatically

The best process to collect customer reviews is an automatic one! Do not spend time contacting all your customers after the event. The message to the customer to leave a review should be automatically sent out right after the event to catch the customer while the feelings are still present. You are now in the position to ask for a favor. In the Regiondo review module, you can easily customize every email to the customers in your own way.

2) Use auto-reminders to get a few extra reviews

It is possible that your customers forget to leave a review or don’t have enough time to reflect on the experience. No problem – just send them a reminder. A few of them will take the chance to give you feedback. You can answer the reviews directly from your Regiondo dashboard.

learn More about the Review ModuleLEARN MORE ABOUT THE REVIEW INTEGRATION

 

3) Highlight your reviews in the most visible parts of your site

As already mentioned, reviews are a great way to identify potential improvements. But online reviews are also very good to show your strengths to your potential customers. Don’t miss the chance to grab the amazing possibilities from the first part of this article with the help of your good reviews. Be sure to display the reviews in the most visible parts of your website. To make things easier, we developed the review module with a customizable design so you can tailor it to your needs.

Don’t forget about TripAdvisor

Apart from your own review module, collecting reviews on TripAdvisor is still important for acquiring new customers. In contrast to people who already know you and your offers, TripAdvisor can reach others who’ve never heard of you before.

learn How to connect Regiondo with TripAdvisor

In addition to your own review module, Regiondo gives you a connection to TripAdvisor Review Express. This is also an automatic process to collect customer reviews. The difference is that the reviews will be only visible on TripAdvisor. TripAdvisor sends your customers an email after the event to ask them for feedback.

Do you already have TripAdvisor reviews? Click here to improve your TripAdvisor ranking.

Conclusion

You really have to use your customers’ reviews. They give you free feedback so you can improve your business. Reviews also have different advantages when it comes to marketing. – such as SEO benefits and being your digital word of mouth.

We recommend your own review module as a good review management base. You will always have full control and see everything in one place. With this base, you can also use review sites like TripAdvisor to present you and your business to a wider range of potential customers.

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