Consumer reviews offer more of a call to action for purchasing the most marketing material combined. This partly on account of their ability to demonstrate a transparent opinion and use of a business, service, or product. When searching through reviews, consumers will often take in the good with the bad. This helps them to gather a more encompassing view of the goods before they make their buying decisions. Moreover, these reviews help consumers find businesses or products that they may not have known about before. Meaning that not only do reviews help consumers find what they’re looking for, they also make the case for why a consumer should spend their wages on it.
It’s almost impossible to overstate the key role that reviews play on consumer purchasing decisions, particularly when it comes to bringing new customers to a local business, detailing services, or risky purchases, such as online shopping.
Reviews Help Consumers Gain Trust
In most cases, a review will gain consumer trust. This kind of trust encourages consumers to not only purchase goods but to also engage and interact with the company itself. Consumers are more likely to spend more money on products or establishments that receive excellent reviews, despite higher cost factors, such as shipping or convenience costs. For example, two out of every three consumers are more likely to pay up to fifteen percent more for a product or service at establishments where they feel sure that they will have a better experience. This may be good news for many local businesses that find their price-points undercut by online shopping. There are many cases when local stores can offer a more personalized and trustworthy service than online retailers.
The key to making this trust work in a business’s favor is to make sure that the business has positive reviews in places, including the main search engines and web sites where consumers will look.
Reviews Influence Consumers to Make Purchases
Positive reviews drive action. Many consumers won’t purchase something online that hasn’t been reviewed since it could be perceived as a risk. These same consumers will only typically purchase something after reading a review. At least ninety percent of consumers consistently admit to paying attention to online reviews when planning a purchase. For some groups of people, these reviews even hold more weight than recommendations from friends and family. For example, when it comes to larger purchases, many people will take a personal recommendation under advisement while also researching additional reviews online before making a purchase.
For many, these reviews along with product specifications have become more important than brand-provided marketing information. This is because consumer reviews offer a sense of implied transparency. These reviews attempt to highlight the good and bad of an individual’s experience of a product. This allows the consumer to make an educated guess as to how they will experience the product.
While reviews with just star values, usually on a scale of one to five stars, can help to ensure a purchase, verbal reviews are what tip the scales. This can be true even when the words are simple affirmation and one-sentence comments. When it comes to longer reviews, it’s important to count on consumers reading deeply into reviews and drawing their own conclusions.
Reviews Also Warn Consumers Away from Risky Purchases
Reviews aren’t always positive, but this can be a good thing. Over half of consumers intentionally look at negative reviews before making a purchase. This means that reviews allow them to consider what can go wrong with a purchase, rather than being swayed by what a product says on its box. This reflects a trend of cynicism toward positive selling techniques and helps warn other consumers away from purchases that aren’t considered worth it.
While negative reviews may reduce how well or quickly a product sells, they also help to provide feedback for improving products. Additionally, reduced sales of negatively reviewed products could mean fewer unhappy consumers who associate a bad product with the business where they purchased it.
Reviews Have also Become a Vital Part of Traditional Brick-and-Mortar Shopping
There are numerous ways that consumer reviews influence local and brick-and-mortar retail sales, as well as services and online sales. Some of the most important reviews drive traffic to local brick-and-mortar businesses, through reviewing the establishment, staff, and service, location, and overall experience. Over seventy percent of consumers report that positive reviews of business make them more likely to visit that business. Additionally, ninety percent of consumers say that they will use a local business if it has at least a four-star rating. Scores that drop lower than four stars, however, will likely suffer a decrease in foot-traffic. Individual product reviews also tend to play a large part in traditional brick-and-mortar shopping for many consumers. About one-third of consumers admit to reading reviews before or after seeing something in a brick-and-mortar store.
This means that consumers will either go into a store knowing what they want, or they will digitally check reviews right in the store. In some cases, consumers may take down a product’s information to check out its reviews at a later time. This last behavior can be the most frustrating for local stores since it often means that consumers will make the final purchase online.
Reviews Build Exposure, Community, and Trends
Review sites, curated reviews, and influencers are another source of influence over consumer purchasing habits. The majority of these reviews help consumers weed out the pros and cons of purchasing items from various brands. Similarly, influencer reviews rely on leveraging a stamp of approval from a particular individual or brand. In many cases, these consumer reviews take video form, allowing consumers to see the product in use for themselves.
In many cases, these kinds of ranking sites can help validate a consumer’s purchase or even influence how they narrow down their options and to what brands. Additionally helps to connect customers to a community of individuals who enjoy the same things. These communities develop consumer trends and increased demand.
Consumer reviews have become a widespread phenomenon changing the way that individuals make purchases. To get more reviews for your business try review management tools like Bizooy. Which help you learn about your customer experiences and earn reviews to grow your local SEO rankings.