Why Reviews Are Important For Small Business

5 Ways To Get Online Reviews for Your Small Business

Find out “Why Reviews Are Important For Small Business” to learn about the power of positive customer feedback. Our guide dives into effective strategies for getting valuable online reviews to help build and boost your small business’s digital footprint.

Key Takeaways

• Trust Through Testimonials: Online reviews serve as social proof, building trust among potential and existing customers.
• Visibility = Validation: Listing your business on review platforms like Google Reviews can improve your online visibility massively.
• Engagement with Email and Social Media: Actively encouraging reviews through email and social media can lead to a richer collection of customer feedback.
• Tech-Savvy Testimonial Collection: An AI Website Builder like Hocoos can streamline the process of collecting reviews, providing a user-friendly experience that makes leaving feedback a breeze for customers.

So, why are reviews important for small Business? Well, a person’s word and good reputation is essential since the early days of civilization, when people would barter for mutual benefit. A millennium or three later, little has changed.

An online reputation is everything for a small business looking to get feedback and social proof through positive and insightful customer reviews.

A product or brand that fails to get a good reception will not do as well as one that has worked on its online reputation; in fact, it may fail outright. People are often much brighter than we give them credit for, and they will not jump at something simply because it has a shiny label and big promises.

If a small business has an online reputation that has been built upon genuine quality, feedback-driven improvement, and a good relationship with consumers, success is inevitable. The following article will discuss how to improve the reputation of your small business with online reviews, specifically utilizing digital tools like Google Review, AI Website Builders, and more.

The Importance of Feedback and Social Proof

While it may not seem immediately important to the average person that customers positively review a small business, it is a massive indicator of future success. A satisfied customer will return to your website or store and recommend it to friends, family, and colleagues.

This word of mouth can ensure future purchases and help build brand legitimacy.

You could hire an entire marketing team, and they would struggle to match the effectiveness of good online reviews, gushing customers, and a proven product.

How to use Feedback

If you are a bit snippy and dismissive when someone is rude or if you deliver a damaged box with subpar packaging, it will be a fast-acting poison to your online reputation. Ask anyone who has worked with the public; people can and will take their day out on you sometimes. This unfortunate reality does not mean you can return the favor as a small business owner.

However, you can use their dissatisfaction as an opportunity to improve your product. This trick is why customer online reviews, even very negative ones, are incredibly beneficial. As an entrepreneur, you are under a lot of pressure, and your mind is regularly in several locations. Customer reviews can help identify weak points in your approach that have gone unnoticed.

These kinks in your developing brand are essential to work out, as a digital business does not have the benefit of human interaction. People are easier to get along with in the flesh; you can talk things out, shake hands, and move forward. Online, folks are stuck reading a few common marketing sentences like “quality is our concern” and “the customer is always right!”

Can we really blame customers for being apathetic to online small businesses?

Customers come in many shapes and sizes, but they are rarely that naive. To build an excellent online reputation, you must show them that you care about their opinion and want them to express their desires and concerns.

The best ways to benefit from feedback are:

How to Use Social Proof

Social proof verifies that a small business has a valuable product that has helped another person. For instance, if you sold me a chair with lumbar support and I wrote about my comfortable new seat on my Facebook, I would have given you social proof. On a large enough scale, social proof can make you the preeminent choice in ergonomic chairs.

Similarly, it can be the deciding factor between two products. Because of this, your company must remain in good standing with its consumer base as they directly decide how successful the product will be. Customer reviews are not just a way to verify a product; they are a form of advertising.

If your chair business starts to get off the ground and is regularly well-received, you are getting the positive press of satisfied customers and building trust with your consumers. In the digital world, trust is incredibly important. There is no cashier or register online – there is just a website asking you to provide your credit card information and address.

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It pays dividends to ensure your customer feels safe using your website or product; otherwise, your small business may struggle.

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An excellent way to show social proof if you do not have many customer reviews is to speak on the number of people who have purchased something. A statement like, “We’ve seated over 10,000 people!” is a great way to provide social proof to an office chair business that doesn’t have much public consumer feedback yet.

Similarly, getting a positive comment from a trusted desk chair authority (I’m sure they have those) can be exceptionally beneficial. If you can’t get a hundred different folks to give online review your product quickly, try reaching out to a name with some pull.

How to Get Customer Reviews

There is no shortage of methods to gently recommend that people give your product or service a quick look. While it may be an afterthought to most consumers, several will give positive reviews without leaving a comment. In contrast, some folks who enjoy the product may even provide complimentary and useful summaries worthy of a testimonial space.

Encourage Customers with Discounts or Deals

If you are okay with slightly cutting immediate profit for long-term growth, giving incentives to people who will provide online reviews is a great way to start building credibility and authority for your online reputation. That said, make sure you only use feedback from real customers, as padding your small business reviews with fraudulent testimonials is an excellent way to destroy integrity.

So, while asking for online reviews is a good idea, make sure you are not asking for exclusively kind comments. This may seem counter-productive; however, most consumers are pleased to get a deal and will typically review more positively.

Use Email to Gather Feedback

If you have regular customers or people interested in your brand or promotions, getting their e-mail is critical to building rapport with that individual. E-mail is an afterthought to most, though it is the cornerstone of several ad campaigns in the digital world and a valuable way to keep consumers interested in your company.

If someone is purchasing a product, this is a very simple process as they will often give an e-mail during the purchasing process. Automate a message a few days after the product arrives asking for a quick opinion. Try to make the process as simple as possible, as the consumer is already going out of their way for you.

An AI Website builder can handle most of the legwork on this for you, for those (like myself) who are not adept at coding or web development.

Recommend Reviews on Social Media

If there is any place where folks will freely share their opinion, it is social media. If you have a considerable following on social media, use it to your advantage. If you don’t have a social media presence, you should genuinely consider building one. The amount of free and effective advertising and social proof it can bring is worthy of any small business, especially yours.

Asking people who follow your Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram business page to review your products can massively benefit your online reputation. These online reviews can even be done through social media apps, depending on the platform.

Register Your Small Business With Google Reviews, Trust Pilot, Etc.

If you cannot build your own website, consider using preexisting review websites (or an AI website builder) to help make your business more easily accessed. Google Reviews should be non-negotiable, as 87% of consumers use it to decide on a business. Even more impressive, 73% of all online reviews are done through Google.

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Similarly, Trustpilot is home to over 111 million reviews and may give your small business the push it needs to establish itself in the digital marketplace better.

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The process is painless, and once it is up, it will passively build trust in your brand and create a subtle form of word-of-mouth. They will benefit your online reputation and potentially increase your rankings in future Google results. There is no downside to either review site when it comes to getting your name out there.

Simplifying Customer Reviews With An AI Website Builder

Trying to build a functional website is complex, and making an intuitive review page is a process that often requires a freelance developer or an expensive content management system. For those already feeling the weight of well-worked hours, Hocoos is a wonderfully easy solution that won’t come close to breaking the bank.

Hocoos is the only AI website builder that offers a seamless online review and testimonial option. How the AI website builder works is very simple: you feed in information about the business, blog, or store you are creating, and within minutes, a professional, personalized site is sitting at your fingertips.

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Constructing the site’s review portion is equally effortless, and Hocoos is intelligent enough to do almost all the legwork for you. The future is bright and full of time-saving features!

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1. On the main website dashboard, you will see a list of options underneath Hocoos Apps that offer different features.

2. Navigate to Testimonials, the second option in the Hocoos Apps section of the dashboard.

3. Select the Activate button found on the Testimonial box. You will come to the online review dashboard, which has a few helpful videos explaining the new section. If or when you finish watching the videos, select the Form Creation tab.

4. The Form Creation tab is great for personalizing a form to make it feel more personal and less stuffy. For instance, I have built a website for your imaginary chair business with a unique logo (made by the AI website builder), a personalized feedback message, and a custom review rating.

All of this took three minutes.

Jump back out to the testimonial dashboard and take a look at the Requests tab.

5. This page stores all customer reviews by the AI website builder and allows for the personal preferences of the business owner. Do you want to approve all reviews before publishing? It takes a click. Want to hide some reviews from a person with an axe to grind? It can be easily done.

Using an AI Website Builder, Hocoos will give you the most business-friendly features for $15/month.

Compared to the absurd price of some content management systems and their accompanying add-ons, it is hard to argue against using the innovative technology that a premier AI website builder offers.

Last Word on Why Reviews Are Important For Small Business

By utilizing customer reviews, you can use feedback to help identify issues in your business model or website. Given enough time, this will create social proof that will improve your brand’s online reputation and may even help get your small business a bigger spotlight in search and social media.

For those who do not have the time or money to learn coding or hire a freelancer, taking advantage of an AI website builder is a great idea. Not only can an AI website builder like Hocoos create a unique look, logo, and user interface. You can have a well-designed review page in seconds that is simple to make and easy to use.

If you are curious about the benefits of Hocoos, try out the free version and learn how simple running an online store can be with a little help from AI!

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

How To Guide – Get Online Reviews for Your Small Business