Customer Reviews Still Matter! - Web-Feet Blog

For years, local businesses have been told that customer reviews sites like TripAdvisor can make or break them, but is that still the case?

According to reliable sources and obvious online campaigns, some local business owners are starting to doubt those ways, many restaurant owners that we have spoken to over the last six months to a year have reiterated their lax attitude on TripAdvisor reviews to us.

The potential anonymity of TripAdvisor and its use as a punching bag for hated figures in the media has given owners and customers alike a healthy dose of scepticism when approaching reviews on any particular restaurant. Can you really trust customer reviews anymore?

Formerly, Yelp was in a position of power because restaurants would pay it to be able to manage its page, and restaurateurs were extremely interested in the reviews they got and maintaining high ratings. But now TripAdvisor has become the go-to spot on the web to try and get a heads up on a dining establishment. Now, customers share some of the same doubts that owners share…

Consumers are changing.

While some data supports the argument that “TripAdvisor is beyond its prime years already,” the competition comes from mainly rising review stars like Google and Facebook. On the whole, more consumers are now turning to online reviews more than ever before meaning what you read may not be so genuine.

40% of consumers will trust a local business after reading just one to three reviews, and 90% of consumers are ready to make a decision after reading 10 positive reviews.

Thanks to BrightLocal.

At the same time, consumers are becoming a tad more sceptical. The vast majority are willing to trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation, but only if the reviews are thought to be authentic. This increased scepticism is not surprising given the rise of fake reviews, a report by Econsultancy shows why we are so .

Numbers matter!

Also not surprising is the fact that consumers rely more heavily on star ratings than they do on the old customer reviews. The implication for businesses are unreasonable reviews from disgruntled customers probably doesn’t require the legal cavalry. As long as a business is maintaining good ratings, on the whole, consumers are probably going to ignore the review by the person who gave a one-star rating because a restaurant didn’t provide free bread.

Some businesses are even having fun with complaints, incorporating them into marketing campaigns, menus and the like.

Put simply, now that online reviews are ubiquitous, the name of the game for most local businesses is to encourage more positive online feedback and gain a critical mass of reviews (and ratings) so that the negative reviews are just noise.

Does your business rely on good reviews? Let us know in the comments below!