With everyone buying goods and services online, its paramount that you have reviews on your products or services. You can use an online review management service or do it by yourself. There are plenty of benefits that come with having online reviews. These benefits include:

You boost your ranking on the search engine results

Studies done by Moz show that reviews and ratings help businesses rank higher on search engines. The studies show that the reviews help websites rank higher in the Google local 3-pack and in the organic local search results.

The studies showed that the number of reviews wasn’t as important as where they were coming from. The more the reviews from real people, the better the ranking.

Reviews improve the click-through rate

You must be a witness here. When you are shopping for a product, the first thing you look for is the product’s rating. A study done by bright local showed that up to 65% of people click on a product or service simply because it has reviews.

As you might expect, the higher the star rating, the more the clicks. Negative ratings reduce the clicks; therefore, you should always strive to get as many positive reviews as possible.

They help you understand your customers better

In addition to leaving their star ratings, customers also leave comments of their experience with the product or business. From reading the comments, you can tell the pain points of the customers. This will help you to modify your product, service, or business so that you can give your customers the best that you can.

You create a community

Online review systems have been shown to create customer engagement. The engagement isn’t only with the customer-to-business, but also between customers. For example, a given customer can thank another customer for their comments.

The customers can even ask questions in the review section and get answers from other customers that have used the product or service in the past.

You stand out from your competitors

If you have many positive reviews, you will definitely stand out from your competitors. As you might guess, this will draw people to your business which sees more sales, which translates to the success of the business.

Since the reviews have been shown to be a strong SEO indicator, you will be ahead of your competitors in the search rankings. Obviously, this gives you a dominant edge in your business.

You easily create a brand

People like to associate with successful businesses, products, and services. The more the positive reviews and the people you draw to your products and services, the more the people will tell others about your business. This gives you an easy time building your brand.

You create a customer’s voice

When people take time out of their day to post a review of your company, they are more likely to become loyal customers. Since you are giving the customers the chance to talk about their experience about a product or service, you make them feel that they have a voice in the business, which creates a relationship with the business.

Reviews are a great marketing opportunity

Even a handful of glowing reviews are of great value to your business. They can provide great benefits that you can’t achieve in a marketing campaign. Since reviews don’t go away once they are posted, if they are positive they continue giving your business a great look.

Parting shot

For you to increase the number of people that leave reviews on your site, you should encourage the customers to do so every time they make a purchase. You can also make use of review management software.