20 Most Important Facts About Online Reviews
Online reviews can influence decisions but the impact of reviews on viewers depends on many factors. It can be industry-specific in some cases.
Here’re results of independent studies conducted on online reviews. The results could help websites make strategies on using customer feedbacks for better search rankings and conversions.
1. Negative reviews are more engaging and studies show that viewers spend five times more time on sites reading bad reviews. Also, the readers are 85% more likely to convert after going through negative feedback.
2. Star ratings in SERPs increase CTR by 25% and the boost in CTR have a very positive impact on search ranking. With schema markup, you can easily show star rating search results.
3. Digital Marketing Strategy can play a crucial role in increasing the quality of reviews as a study proved that the number of reviews is directly related to the objective quality of products. A high number of reviews has a strong correlation with product quality.
4. A study on review writing revealed that only 10% of all customers write reviews on everything they buy and experience. It is a small but very useful number and shows how difficult it could be to encourage customers to write reviews.
5. User-generated content and genuine reviews influence decisions even more than search engine rankings.
6. 80% of all consumers rely on reviews just like they rely on words of mouth from known sources.
7. Buyers show more interest for reviews than for discounts. A study on latest buying trends revealed that more than 50% buyers look for reviews than discounts.
8. Time is the most important factor in reviews. Recent reviews have more positive impact than those written a month ago. A study found that 45% of buyers consider reviews written recently that is one or two days ago.
9. While five-star rating gives maximum results, the star rating varies from industry to industry. Some businesses do well even with three star ratings.
10. According to a research on buyers’ behavior, over 50% of buyers that are under 50 years of age check online reviews before buying anything. It can be inferred that you shouldn’t ignore online reviews even if your customers are older.
11. Approximately 40% of buyers won’t do any business with local companies with negative reviews.
12. Online reviews play a crucial role in achieving high rankings in local search engine result pages.
13. Number of reviewers have more positive impact on buyers than average rating of reviews according to a research published in Psychological Science.
14. 36% buyers take decisions on Google reviews, feedback on other websites and rankings of local search engine.
15. 40% of US adults agreed that they discussed products and brandson social media.
16. 78% of buyers believe that brands respond to online reviews by their customers.
17. 30,000 businesses participated in a study on online reviews and it was found that their web traffic increased from 5K to 8K with the help of positive reviews.
18. In 2015, over 90% admitted that they read and also consider online reviews while shopping around for products and services.
19. Star rating of reviews is the biggest factor for buyers.
20. Adding reviews improve conversion rate by 200% and for expensive items, this growth could be up to 400%. Also, negative reviews of 4 to 4.5-star rating also improve conversion rates.
Conclusion
Online reviews could play a crucial role in digital marketing. They have a direct effect in moulding opinions and also they can boost search rankings and resultant traffic. It is user generated content and it holds high value for Google.
