We trust real people more than ever. And consumers trust companies and organizations less.
The pandemic has brought great uncertainty, and online reviews are often the deciding factor when consumers choose whether to go to a local business, make a purchase online, or select a competitor.
Customers won’t even consider you without online reviews from customers saying they’ve had positive experiences shopping and interacting with your business. Having these reviews increases the chances that they will choose you over a competitor and spend more with your company.
The message is clear: if you’re selling to consumers, you need to encourage and manage your customer reviews.
Podium’s fascinating report on online reviews confirms consumers are analyzing and reading online reviews more than EVER before.
22 Online Review Statistics That Show Their Importance
Consider the following statistics to help you better understand the importance of reviews and how to use them to your advantage.
1. 90% of consumers read online reviews before visiting a business.
One report in 2021 took this further, reporting that 99.9% of customers read reviews while online shopping. Other reports say that 95% of consumers read reviews online and 97% read reviews for local businesses.
Of those people who read online reviews, 96% specifically look for negative reviews. That highlights the importance of not just focusing on positive reviews. You also need to promptly and politely respond to negative ones. 53% of consumers want you to respond within a week and one-third of consumers prefer a response within three days.
Of the various types of reviews, 81% of consumers check Google Reviews first. On average, consumers read about 10 reviews before they decide to trust a given business. The figure is higher for younger shoppers.
2. 74% of consumers report reviews increase their trust in a brand.
This makes reviews a highly effective way of building trust. Remember that when consumers have more trust in your brand, you will have a higher conversion rate. This is thanks to your increased ability to influence purchase decisions.
3. 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations
This figure is even higher when you just look at 18 to 34-year-olds. For that group, 91% of people trust online reviews as much as they trust personal recommendations.
Reviews are twice as likely to be significant in choosing a local business than loyalty, and 7.4 times more likely to be an important factor than traditional marketing. Additionally, 84% of surveyed millennials say they don’t trust traditional advertising.
So if you haven’t shifted the budget from traditional advertising to review management and word of mouth, consider doing it in 2023 and beyond.
4. 86% of people hesitate to purchase from a business with negative online reviews.
Importantly, this figure depends on the content of the negative reviews. As we’ll get to in a later statistic, having some negative reviews can be a positive thing, as it makes your reviews seem more legitimate.
When customers look at negative reviews, they want to see what challenges or problems customers face. If all of the negative reviews only show minor inconveniences, this will work in your favor. They’ll be even more helpful if you respond to these reviews with solutions.
5. 72% of consumers will take action only after reading a positive review.
28% of consumers say they have looked up a business’ reviews while standing or being parked right outside to decide if they should go in or not.
8/10 shoppers look at product reviews while they are shopping within a store. In other words, if you don’t have reviews or have bad reviews, you can get the customer to the shelf, with the product in their hand, and they may still leave empty-handed.
6. Businesses that have positive reviews earn 22% more revenue than those without.
Part of this is because positive reviews can increase spending by customers by 31%. By contrast, negative reviews can cause 40% of potential shoppers to choose a competitor.
Another aspect of this figure is that 58% of shoppers will pay more for a product that has good reviews. This is yet another reason to strive to collect positive reviews from your loyal customers.
7. 40% of consumers form an opinion after reading just one to three reviews.
31% of consumers say they are more likely to look at a local business’s Google listing before visiting it than they were before the recent COVID-19 pandemic.
Encouraging and replying to reviews is an incredible opportunity to grow your business now.
8. 95% of customers share their bad experiences with their peers.
Dissatisfied customers usually tell between 9 and 15 people about their bad experiences. Sharing a negative experience online can be even more damaging for your business.
Only 24% of businesses respond to negative reviews all the time. Providing the right response to a negative review can turn a disgruntled customer into a happy one.
The premise of my book, Hug Your Haters, is that responding to your most vocal, negative customers can turn them into your most vocal, happy customers. I’d wager to say responding to negative reviews is more important than responding to positive reviews. Make THAT your priority.
9. Customers are willing to spend 31% more on a business with excellent reviews.
Approximately half of consumers are willing to travel farther and pay more to patronize a business with higher reviews.
Consumers are willing to pay more if a business has positive reviews. Incredible. Customer reviews can make prices irrelevant. This is all along with the principles of trust. Positive reviews reveal trust in a business.
10. 63% of consumers are more likely to purchase from a website with user reviews.
But it goes beyond just having reviews. The more reviews you have, the better. BrightLocal reports that 60% of consumers care about how many reviews a business has. That being said, this figure was higher in 2020, but it is still much higher than it was in the years before that.
Additionally, well over half of consumers are still a significant number, indicating you should do your best to increase the number of reviews you have. 43% of consumers prefer you to have at least 100 reviews for each item.
11. 72% of consumers will take action only after reading a positive online review.
Given that buying decisions are so strongly influenced by positive reviews, you need to ensure potential consumers will see these positive reviews. Work to make sure they appear on local search with local SEO efforts and monitor review sites.
From Yelp to Amazon to TripAdvisor, encourage and monitor reviews so you make a positive impression when you appear on a search engine.
12. 73% of consumers value the written review over the overall rating.
Written reviews can provide more valuable information, as they let customers know what is so great about your product or service.
At the same time, a written review increases the legitimacy of the rating. After all, it is much easier to fake a 5-star rating without any content than to fake a written review. That being said, the content of the written review also matters. 31% of consumers see a star rating without a written review as suspicious.
If the review goes overboard in its praise, 45% of people will feel suspicious. 36% of people feel the same way about overly negative reviews. 40% of people are suspicious of reviews with similar content to others. 38% of people feel suspicious of reviews from anonymous people or those using a common pseudonym.
13. 68% of consumers trust reviews more when they see both positive and negative scores.
If your rating is near-perfect, customers will assume that your reviews are fake. Having a combination of positive and negative reviews gives your product more legitimacy.
Just remember that the best negative reviews will have only minor grievances. Ideally, you will also respond to negative reviews, as this shows a willingness to listen to customers and improve their experience.
You also want to keep the number of negative reviews low. 32% of consumers say they are suspicious of a single positive review among many negative ones. For reference, you need about 40 positive reviews to outweigh a single negative review.
14. 85% of consumers think that reviews older than three months are no longer relevant.
You don’t have to go back three months to see the confidence in reviews drop. 40% of consumers in one survey said they don’t care about reviews that are more than two weeks old.
This highlights the importance of continuously asking customers for reviews. Continuous reviews will ensure that there are always recent e-commerce reviews ready to influence shoppers and encourage them to buy from you.
15. Products with an average rating of 4.5 or higher are purchased 4 times more than those with ratings below 4.5. (McKinsey)
Local businesses are 1.4 times more likely to have an average star rating of 4.5 or higher if they are proactive about their online reputation vs. if they are passive about it.
If your overall rating is below 3.3 stars, then you will notice the negative effects. Businesses with a rating below this point tend to lose out to the competition. At 2 stars or less, only 13% of people will still consider using your services or buying your products.
16. 49% of consumers need at least a four-star rating before they choose to use a business.
Given that 7 of 10 consumers use rating filters, they will never even see your brand if you don’t have a high enough rating. This doesn’t even give you a chance to get their attention and make up for your poor reviews or ratings.
But you don’t want to take this to the extreme and aim for a 5-star review – at least not without a lot of reviews. 68% of consumers are skeptical of a 5-star rating unless there are a lot of reviews. A 5-star rating with just a few ratings makes consumers think they may be fake reviews.
That being said, even just one or two negative reviews will make your 5-star rating more believable. You simply need to counter them with enough positive reviews to balance out.
17. 91% of consumers aged 18-34 trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations.
This is crucial, as word-of-mouth has been one of the most effective marketing methods for years. If reviews are as effective as personal recommendations, they are essentially the modern version of word-of-mouth marketing. But this modern version is even more effective, as an online review can reach several times as many people as a personal recommendation.
To take those personal recommendations to the next level, many people share reviews on social media platforms. These reviews on social media are shown to boost social commerce.
18. 57% of customers will only use a business if it has four or more stars.
Only 9% of consumers would consider engaging with a business that had a 1- or 2-star average rating.
This is precisely why review management is so important. If any of your locations have a 1- or 2-star average rating, there is no question you’re losing business. There are several review management software that can make responding to negative reviews seamless, especially free ones.
19. 94% of consumers have avoided a business due to negative online reviews.
Remember that you can minimize this effect by increasing the number of positive reviews you have. Aim for at least 40 positive reviews for each negative one. And make it a point to address any negative business reviews. You can even use review trackers, so you never miss a negative (or positive) review.
20. 93% of consumers say that online reviews influence their purchasing decisions.
Combining this statistic with all the previous ones further highlights the importance of reviews for your business.
Most consumers have read a review in the past week. 23% of consumers have read an online review in the last day. Reviews are here to stay, and this number will only continue to increase.
21. Over 60% of consumers are likely to leave a review if the business follows up with a link asking for a review.
Don’t be shy about asking for reviews, whether via email or text. If the customer had a positive experience, you’d increase your rating. And if it was negative, you’ll know, be able to address it, and hopefully salvage the relationship. I’ve also seen studies showing consumers trust reviews more if there are some realistic, negative reviews too. A profile with only positive reviews can be suspicious.
We all know local businesses that have flourished because of positive reviews. I hope yours is next.
If you decide to request reviews via emails, you can increase your odds of a positive response by doing the following in your subject:
- Include your brand name
- Avoid emotional appeals
- Avoid all caps
- Add incentives
- Ask a question
22. 86% of job seekers look at business reviews before applying.
When most business owners think about reviews, they only think about online customer reviews. But you need to consider employee reviews in addition to consumer reviews. That is because having good reviews will affect your ability to attract talent to your company. Employee reviews let potential employees confirm that your company is a good place to work and worth applying to.
Consumer reviews can also play a role in your ability to attract job seekers. For example, if you only have negative reviews or all the reviews mention grumpy employees or long wait times, job seekers may assume the job is stressful.
Don’t underestimate the importance of being able to attract talent. To start, it lowers the time and cost associated with hiring. Additionally, the more applicants you have, the more freedom you have to choose employees that work well for your company. They will have a better cultural fit and better meet your company’s needs. That will improve productivity and their positive moods can even boost the customer experience and therefore your sales.
Get More Positive Online Reviews and Boost Conversions
The state of online review statistics paints a clear picture: reviews are more important than ever.
Make it super easy for customers to leave a review on the websites that matter most. The best way to do this is by texting them with a local messaging platform like Podium. You can start for free with Podium’s 14-day Free Trial.
Don’t forget to reply and engage with those customers too. They’re relying on reviews to make decisions about your business — you should use customer reviews to grow yours.
If you haven’t already, view the full 2021 State of Reviews Report now. It’s the best piece of content on customer reviews you’ll read, and most of the statistics are still highly applicable.
The sooner you start gathering reviews, the better it will be for your business. And with our Free Google Review Link Generator, it is incredibly easy to get started. From there, use Podium to get more reviews and more business for you.
FAQs
Q: What is the effectiveness of online reviews?
A: Online reviews have a significant impact on your company’s bottom line and overall success. Consider that businesses with positive online reviews earn 22% more revenue compared to those without them. Or consider that customers will spend 31% more at a business that has excellent reviews. On the product level, products with a rating of at least 4.5 are bought four times as frequently.
Q: How many people leave reviews online?
A: Some figures say that only 5% to 10% of customers write online reviews. However, 12% of consumers leave reviews when prompted, and 52% of global online users between ages 25 and 34 leave reviews. Try to make these numbers work to your advantage and don’t hesitate to ask your customers for reviews.
Q: How to ask customers to leave reviews?
A: You can ask a customer to leave a review in several ways. Ask them during the checkout process (in-person or online), send a follow-up email or text requesting a review, or include a review QR code on the receipt. Sending a follow-up text with a link to review your product tends to have the highest response rate.
