Reviews can make or break your business.
When you get a positive review, it gives you the credibility and confidence to take on new projects and customers. When you get a negative review, it helps you identify what went wrong so that you can improve in the future.
That’s why reviews are such an important part of any business – they’re a great way to learn how to run your company better and become more efficient at serving your customers’ needs.
How do Different Demographics Treat Reviews?
A recent survey created by WorldFirst took a look at how reviews affect purchases. Some of the interesting statistics they found were:
Gender
The findings of the study indicated that women value reviews more than men, with 87% of female shoppers saying that reviews directly affect whether they will buy from a company, compared with 78% of male shoppers who said the same.
Women are also almost twice as likely to check reviews regardless of the price of the product compared to men (23% vs 12%).
Age
With technology always expanding, do younger generations have a better grasp on what reviews are? And where to find reviews?
The study found there were some interesting differences between generations and how they value reviews:
Generation X (1965 – 1980)
74% use reviews to inform their purchasing decisions
Millennials (1981 – 1996)
92% use reviews to inform their purchasing decisions
Generation Z (1997 – 2012)
89% use reviews to inform their purchasing decisions
This means, even though the youngest generations are the most receptive to reviews, a significant 74% of Generation X also use reviews when making buying decisions – all the more reason to prioritise reviews in your business strategy!
Beyond the different demographics, an incredible 90% of consumers are said to read online reviews before visiting a business. 88% actually trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. If you’re not collecting and using your reviews, could you be missing out on 90% of your potential customers?
Do Reviews Really Increase Trust?
72% of customers actually say that positive reviews make them trust a local business more, so the clear answer is yes! The more reviews a business has, and the higher their rating is, the better their reputation is.
That all goes to strengthen the chances of customers automatically choosing that business over others without shopping around, just from knowing and seeing their reputation through their reviews!
This makes sense because people are busy and they don’t want to waste their time on businesses they don’t think will provide value. If you’re able to show your customers how much value you provide through your reviews, then it will be easier for them to make buying decisions on the spot when they need something done quickly like having someone fix their plumbing or making sure their car is in good shape before an important trip.
So, What Now?
If you’re wanting to improve your business’ reputation through reviews, the obvious next step is to collect more reviews! But, how many is enough to access those benefits?
One study found that 68% of customers form an opinion by reading up to six reviews, which doesn’t seem like a lot. Now, imagine those were six (or more), detailed, recent and positive reviews – wouldn’t you want your customers to see them and see how much you value them?
A great way to increase the value of those reviews even further is to make sure you’re responding to them. Studies have shown that businesses with a reply rate of 32% achieve an 80% higher conversion rate than direct competitors who only replied to 10% – for something that only takes a few seconds per review but can get you 80% more conversions, why wouldn’t you?
We have a bunch of blogs on why you should be responding to reviews and why it can only be beneficial to do so: