You know your business needs more online reviews, but what are they actually for outside of an SEO perspective? What do customers look for in reviews?
Review criteria includes a review’s rating, when it was posted and the overall sentiment in the review.
In this post, I explain what customers look for when they search for reviews.
What Do Customers Look for in Reviews?
Customers look for the following criteria when they research businesses online:
- Positive review sentiment
- Star rating of individual reviews as well as the business’ overall review rating
- When a review was posted. The more recent, the better
- The number of reviews a business has
- How many review websites the business appears on
- If the business owner responds to reviews (not just a customer service representative)
- Whether or not a review was posted by a real person. Anonymous reviews aren’t trusted as much
- Misspellings or grammatical errors
- How other reviewers engage with reviews
- How detailed a review is
And in case you’re skeptical of how important reviews are for businesses, just take a look at some of the statistics we included in our stats posts for online reviews and Google Business Profile:
- 71% of consumers read online reviews regularly while researching local businesses (BrightLocal)
- 42% of consumers trust online reviews as much as they trust personal recommendations from friends and family (BrightLocal)
- Businesses that rank in the local pack have around 240 Google reviews on average (Localo)
Let’s talk more about each review criteria.
1. Positive Review Sentiment
According to a statistic from BrightLocal, the number one criteria customers look for in reviews is positive review sentiment. Consumers want to see reviews that praise businesses for their goods and services.
To be more specific, 53% of the consumers BrightLocal surveyed said that the most important review factor for them is a “review that describes a positive experience.”
TAKEAWAY
Get more positive reviews.
Do this by improving your goods, services and customer experiences and by asking customers to leave reviews more often.
If you improve the goods and services you offer and make the customer experience more memorable, you’ll receive positive reviews more often naturally without having to ask.
To ask customers for reviews, create a review funnel that asks customers for feedback.
2. Star Rating
Star rating is the second most important review factor for customers, according to BrightLocal’s survey.
51% of consumers describe a high star rating as being an important review factor when they search for local businesses online.
Furthermore, 38% say a business needs to have 4 stars or higher in order for consumers to even consider shopping with them.
TAKEAWAY
My advice here is probably obvious but worth stating anyway.
You need more positive ratings, and you most definitely need to keep an eye on your overall review rating.
When you receive a bad review, don’t be quick to defend your business. Have a little humility, and use whatever criticisms customers express to learn how to improve.
Related: How to Turn Negative Reviews into Positive Marketing
3. Recency
Another thing customers look for in your reviews is how recent they are.
According to BrightLocal’s survey, 47% of consumers prefer when reviews were posted within the last month.
While a business may have been thriving earlier in the year, their circumstances may change, leading to a potential drop in quality.
Recent reviews let customers know a business is still worth checking out.
TAKEAWAY
Develop a review marketing strategy that’s designed to increase the number of reviews your business receives on a regular basis.
It should include a process for asking for reviews and another for improving your business based on customer feedback so that more customers will want to leave reviews on their own.
4. Number of Reviews
Customers also care about the number of reviews your business has received. It helps with earning credibility.
Take a look at these two fictional review scores: one is 4.9 stars generated from three reviews while the other is 4.7 stars from over 500 reviews.
At first glance, the 4.9-star rating looks better because it’s a higher review score. However, this score was only generated from three individual customer experiences.
Because the second business has been able to maintain a 4.7-star rating from hundreds of reviews, it’s shone in a much better light, even if its total rating is lower.
Plus, having more reviews means the business is much more popular, which demonstrates social proof.
TAKEAWAY
Keep up with your review marketing strategy. Don’t lose this drive after your business takes off and your rankings increase.
According to BrightLocal’s survey, 33% of consumers expect businesses to have between 20 and 49 reviews while 22% expect them to have between 50 and 99.
5. Presence On Multiple Review Sites
Customers want to see your score on multiple review sites, a claim I can back with data.
Although 27% of consumers only use one review platform (according to BrightLocal), 40% use at least two and 22% use three.
Looking businesses up on multiple review sites allows customers to confirm your review score as well as the validity of your business.
Plus, some consumers trust some platforms more than others. By increasing the number of platforms you’re a part of, you increase the number of consumer groups you cater to.
TAKEAWAY
Try to establish a presence on multiple review sites.
If you’re too busy, focus on getting more Google reviews. BrightLocal’s survey shows that 83% of consumers use Google for checking reviews, which is a whopping majority.
Plus, getting more Google reviews will improve your rankings on the platform.
44% of consumers check for reviews on Yelp while 40% check Facebook, so I highly recommend optimizing for those platforms as well.
6. Responses from Business Owner
Responding to reviews is important, but what consumers really want to see is more business owners responding to reviews, not just customer service employees.
According to BrightLocal, 46% of consumers consider business owners responding to reviews to be an important ranking factor.
TAKEAWAY
You can still have other team members respond to reviews to keep up with responses, but try to have the business owner themselves reach out to customers from time to time.
If the business owner wants to have customer service employees respond as them, have them teach employees how to respond in their voice.
Check out our tips on responding to positive reviews and negative reviews for more help.
7. Authenticity
Customers want to know that your review score was generated by ratings from real people.
Bots, fake reviews, paid reviews and AI are running rampant on review platforms. Consumers want to read reviews from their peers, not fake reviews generated by businesses themselves.
BrightLocal’s survey shows that 23% of consumers think it’s important that reviewers post reviews for other businesses.
41% consider reviews not being posted anonymously to be an important review factor.
TAKEAWAY
Don’t try to get ahead by posting fake reviews.
While the rules about incentivizing reviews are a little confusing, make sure every review written for your business is authentic and contains real opinions.
Also, be aware of bad actors. Some businesses try to get ahead by tarnishing others, such as by flooding competitors’ review profiles with fake reviews.
Related
- How to Spot Fake Reviews
- Crushing Fake Reviews by Earning Genuine Credibility
- How to Remove a Fake Google Review
8. Grammar
35% of consumers say it’s important for reviews to have no misspellings or grammatical errors, according to BrightLocal.
The survey doesn’t go into why consumers feel this way, but we can speculate.
Grammar issues can make a review difficult to read. It’s also hard to take a reviewer seriously when they don’t bother to check whether or not their post contains misspellings or autocorrections.
Finally, grammar issues can be a sign of a fake review. With AI being capable of writing perfect sentences these days, spammers might try to create AI-generated reviews with bad grammar to make reviews appear more human.
TAKEAWAY
You can’t control the way users write their posts, but you can take the time to ensure your replies are grammatically correct.
You can also investigate reviews that do contain grammatical errors in case they turn out to be fake.
9. Engagement with Reviews
31% of consumers describe other users engaging with a review to be an important review factor.
This includes interacting with like, dislike, helpful and unhelpful buttons as well as replying to reviews.
It differs between review platforms, but no matter what, consumers are eager to see how other users feel about reviews.
TAKEAWAY
This is another thing you have no control over.
However, if you don’t have much time to respond to reviews, try to focus on reviews other users have interacted with to draw more attention to them.
10. Review Content
BrightLocal’s survey shows that 28% of consumers consider reviews that are “long and detailed” as being important review factors.
They want to know exactly what to look forward to or why an unsatisfied customer won’t be returning.
TAKEAWAY
This is yet another review factor you have no control over. Customers can be as swift or as thorough as they’d like to be in their reviews.
However, if you work on improving your goods and services, you can inspire customers to want to share their opinions about your business.
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