I’ve got a few good reviews. Do I need to ask for more? Won’t I just risk getting a low review which could harm me?
Well that’s a good question. First let’s look at why you won’t want to have just a couple of good reviews.
First off, after some time, people begin to not count old reviews. This starts with reviews that are only older than a month. So if you have 5 reviews from last year, then many users will wonder why don’t you have any newer reviews? They may wonder if management, suppliers, or something else has changed. 77% of people will consider reviews older than three months, to be irrelevant.
Second, people are wanting to see more reviews. In a 2016 study, 73% of consumers form an opinion by reading up to six reviews. So if you have only 2 or 3 reviews, they may not trust those even if they are all 5 star reviews. (https://www.vendasta.com/blog/50-stats-you-need-to-know-about-online-reviews)
Finally, can your reviews weather a bad review. Let’s say something happened, maybe it was beyond your control, or the customer had an unreasonable expectation, or even worse, they selected the wrong company when they went to leave a review.
Well let’s look at two scenarios. In both cases, they are going to get a bad, 1 star review.
In the first example “Company A” only has 4 reviews before their bad review comes in. Three 5 star reviews, and a 4 star. This gives “Company A” a 4.75 rating. However, when they get the negative review, it hurts them, dropping them to a 4.0, losing most of a star rating, and putting them in the territory of where people start to not trust the company. That’s right, most people want to see 4 or more stars. Being an average, with a 3 star company, isn’t what someone wants to see.
Let’s compare that with “Company B”. They have 40 reviews. Ten are 4 star reviews, while 30 are 5 star reviews. This gives Company B the same 4.75 average of Company A. But, when their negative review comes in, we see a big difference. When we average out these scores, their total average becomes only 4.65. They barely drop at all!
Because they have more reviews, they can absorb those occasional bad reviews without eroding their perceived value from a potential customer.
But more than that, a potential customer is going to look at both of these companies. Having one bad review out of 40 good ones, says that this is an anomaly. Having a bad review out of only a handful makes them wonder what type of service they are going to receive.
So more reviews is always going to be better than fewer reviews! Just beware of buying reviews. That’s never a good thing.
Of course, simply asking for reviews, does increase the chance of a bad review slipping by, unless, you have a way to find out about people who had an issue, and work to correct the problem before they leave a review.
If you want to know how to do this, use the form below to schedule an appointment to learn how we can help you get 5 star reviews for your company.