4 Reasons Reviews Are Crucial for Your Local Business

Throughout history, business owners have always recognized the relationship between reviews and purchases. But it’s important to understand just how powerful online reviews really are these days.  The simple word-of-mouth testimonials of old are now digital rating systems that are available for the masses to see.   

Online reviews carry an incredible amount of weight when it comes to driving consumer behavior.  About 90% of consumers regularly check reviews before visiting a business or making a purchase.  And 72% of consumers said they won’t make a purchase at all until they’ve read reviews. That’s a massive chunk of your customer base. 



It’s an indisputable fact that consumers in the digital age are looking at online reviews and making purchases based on those reviews. Local businesses are not immune from this consumer mindset.  93% of consumers say they’ve searched online for a local business and 34% said they search for local business online every day.  You can bet those consumers searching for local businesses are also reading reviews. 

With all these consumers searching for local businesses online, what do you think happens when they encounter a business with no reviews? You guessed it—they keep scrolling. 



Reviews give credence to your business.  Reviews assure consumers the business is a real, legitimate company and not some empty storefront. And assuming your reviews are largely positive, your potential customers can feel confident that you really provide the services you advertise. 

Collecting lots of positive reviews is great. But what happens when a bad rating or complaint comes through? It happens to every business from time to time, but smart business owners know how to use those reviews to their advantage. 



Responding to a negative review gives your business the opportunity to not only make things right with the individual customer, it allows the rest of the viewing public to see how you interact with your clientele. Even if you can’t make the customer 100% happy with their experience, your attention and attempts to rectify the situation demonstrate your dedication to customer service. And that goes a long way to build trust with your customer base. 

Google’s complicated ranking algorithms aren’t easy to crack. But we know two things for sure: Google favors companies with higher customer ratings and companies with fresh online content.

Google places companies with positive reviews higher in search results than those with low reviews or no reviews at all. Likewise, Google likes companies with new, unique content. A steady flow of customer reviews gives you just that—a constant stream of new content associated with your business. 



If you’re having trouble climbing the search engine rankings, take a look at your review strategy. Grow your number of customer reviews and you’ll likely see an increase in your ranking. 

Feedback in the form of customer reviews is invaluable when it comes to addressing issues and making your business better.  Reviews—good and bad—contain nuggets of information that you wouldn’t have otherwise. 



Getting stellar reviews on a particular product or service? That gives you an opportunity to increase your marketing efforts toward that area of your business. Multiple bad reviews about a certain type of project? Use that feedback to fix the problems and make the experience better for the next customer. 

There are many ways consumers can see your online reviews. Google My Business, Yelp, Facebook, and industry-specific sites are just a few.  Displaying reviews directly on your own website is also a great way to channel their power. 

Presenting reviews on your company’s site allows consumers to see real customer feedback without leaving your site to search for reviews elsewhere. Keeping the potential customer on your website increases the chances they’ll make contact with you. 

There are a variety of tools available to help you display reviews, like Locallogy’s Review Builder application. Review Builder invites customers to leave feedback, then collects those reviews from various 3rd party sites. The reviews and star ratings are presented on your website in a seamless module that matches your site’s existing design. 



Online reviews are a key piece of the customer experience. Encourage your customers to leave reviews, put the information you gather to good use, and watch your business grow.