As a business owner or marketing expert, you already know how quickly trends change – and how crucial it is to keep up. That’s especially true when it comes to managing online reviews on platforms like Yelp and Google, making it vital to watch for new patterns and developments in online review management. After all, if you don’t know how consumers feel about business reviews or responses, how can you know that your strategies for collecting and responding to reviews are working?
The short answer: you can’t.
That’s why we’re dedicating this week’s blog post to a new survey conducted by local SEO platform BrightLocal, which asked more than 1,100 participants questions about how they use, perceive, and engage with business reviews. The survey, which is the latest version to be released in BrightLocal’s annual series, provides businesses with actionable insights into the state of online reviews — and how consumers feel about them — as we head further into 2023. Read along as we cover some of the highlights, and be sure to check out the complete survey here.
As you browse the stats below, here’s a question to keep in mind: Is your review management strategy totally aligned with consumers’ wants, needs, and habits in 2024? Or are you losing out on potential business because of the way you’re currently managing customer reviews?
And if you’re in the second category, isn’t it time to make a change?
Stat #1: A whopping 98% of people say that they read online reviews for local businesses, and 76% read reviews “regularly.” This underscores the importance of creating a business page on various platforms, such as Google, and ensuring your business listings are accurate and up-to-date.
Stat #2: Google is becoming even more important than it was in the past, while Facebook is losing influence. 87% of consumers reported “us[ing] Google to evaluate local businesses in 2022” compared to 81% in 2021. Conversely, use of Facebook for the same purpose dropped to 46% in 2022 from 54% in 2020.
Stat #3: Here’s another reason to lean into Google: consumers trust it more than other platforms. According to the survey results, “Google is the most trusted review platform across all industries, although Tripadvisor still has its place for accommodation businesses, Yelp maintains a strong share of trust for food and drinks businesses, and BBB [the Better Business Bureau] is trusted for businesses in professional trades and real estate industries.” Apple Maps, Healthgrades, Yellow Pages, Angi, and Trustpilot also stood out in importance, albeit to a lesser extent.
Stat #4: Fewer consumers are leaving negative reviews, and more consumers are leaving positive reviews. In 2021, 34% of consumers said they had written a positive review during the past 12 months, while 7% said the same about writing a negative review. In 2022, the first number climbed from 34% to 37%, while the second number dipped from 7% to 6%. There’s never been a better time to start asking for reviews, which leads us to our next statistic…
Stat #5: 12% of consumers “always” leave a review if asked, and another 22% leave a review “more than half the time.” On the other hand, a full 20% of consumers say they’ve never been prompted to leave a review, exposing how many untapped opportunities exist for businesses to obtain customer feedback.
Stat #6: Customers are most likely to review your business if it “went above and beyond to ensure [the customer] had an exceptional experience.” In that scenario, 44% of consumers say they’d be “highly likely” to leave a review. The scenario where customers are second most likely to review your business is that they “initially had a negative experience that was turned into a very positive experience” (36%).
Stat #7: Most customers prefer to be asked for reviews via email compared to other methods. 34% of consumers said that being asked via email would “make [them] more likely to leave an online review.” However, almost as many consumers said they would be more likely to to leave a review if the request was made in person or during the sale (33%), on a receipt or invoice (32%), or via social media (31%).
Stat #8: 54% of consumers would “feel positive about using a business” that responded to its reviews. In fact, having a response from the business was the third most important factor behind positive sentiment, eclipsed only by “the written review describ[ing] a positive experience” (69%) or having “a high star rating” (58%).
Stat #9: 34% of consumers said they were “highly likely” to use a business that responds to both positive and negative reviews. That number dropped to 10% for businesses that only respond to negative reviews, 15% for businesses that only respond to positive reviews, and 8% for businesses that don’t respond to any reviews.
These statistics are more than just food for thought — they’re a roadmap to a more successful review reply strategy, and in turn, a more successful business. Shout About Us can help get the ball rolling for your agency, franchise, or brand.
If you aren’t monitoring and managing your online reviews, you’re missing opportunities to be learning from your customers; improving your product or service; turning happy customers into brand evangelists; preventing unhappy customers from leaving for competitors; gaining the trust of shoppers who are unfamiliar with your brand; and ultimately, driving more people to your website, app, or brick-and-mortar location. Shout About Us makes it simple and cost-efficient to amplify your review management strategy so that you can reap these benefits and drive more growth for your business.
We provide the tools your organization needs to leverage your reviews with ease and get more mileage out of customer feedback. From our centralized all-in-one platform that makes it easy to generate and manage reviews across 75+ platforms, to our custom response scribe service that ensures your customers receive personalized replies within 24 hours, we offer a comprehensive suite of review management and review reply solutions, including review removal and generation.
Learn more about our cloud-based solutions, contact our team for support, or schedule a demo today to get started.
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