Review Quality: Restaurant Owner's Guide.
Customers Want To Know You Are Worth Talking About
More Reviews Adds Reliability To Your Good Star Rating
Focus On Google Reviews First
Multiple Good Ratings Are Necessary To Overcome A Single Bad Rating
Why Does The Quality Of Reviews Matter?
If a member of your family or a friend that you trust tells you that a Restaurant is worth checking out, there's a good chance you'll give it a try. Likewise, if someone you trust tells you it's terrible, more than likely, you'll also believe them then, too.
It’s easy to understand listening to those that you have come to trust.
But did you know that 84% of customers trust online reviews from strangers just as much as recommendations from friends or family?
It might be hard to believe. There’s no relationship. There’s not even any context. It’s just some random person telling you that they had an experience.
And without any reason to think otherwise, customers believe them.
This realization could cause you to feel that your business’ reputation is out of your control. However, there are a lot of things you can do to put the odds in your favor.
They’re not reading just one review and making their decision, either. Did you know that 68 percent of potential customers form an opinion only after reading between one and six online reviews?
They tend to read, at least:
the most recent reviews
the highest scored reviews (the best experiences), and
the lowest scored reviews (the worst experiences).
It’s important to realize that quality reviews have mostly high star ratings. But not all have the maximum of five stars. Readers of reviews know that no one is perfect and quickly become suspicious of anyone whose ratings appear too good to be true. An occasional average or even bad review is okay. Such reviews can even be helpful, especially if you’ve publicly replied to the review in a professional and appropriate way. It lets potential customers know that if something goes wrong, you’ll fix it.
So, what makes an ideal score?
It has a lot to do with your competition. If your business has reasonable competition nearby, the difference between you having a 4.5-star average and a competitor having a 4.6 can mean that a new customer chooses your competitor instead of you.
Unfortunately, that missed new customer may even now become loyal to your competition, and stop looking for something new, even if the quality of your service is objectively much better. The reality of the situation doesn’t matter yet to that customer, because they haven’t experienced it. All they know if that the other place has better reviews.
The deciding factor of whether a review-reader becomes your regular customer or your competitor's might just be up to the quality of your reviews.
Once you’ve decided on a good target score (we recommend 4.5 to 4.8, depending on the local competition), you’ll want to start a review funnel to help you reach and maintain your goal. Understanding the number of five-star reviews you’ll need to overcome just one lesser review is important. See the chart below. Note how it takes seven five-star reviews to get to an average of 4.5 stars after a one star review.
A good review funnel makes it possible to tune your reviews. So … you know you need more and better reviews. How do you do that? It’s simpler than you might think.
See these articles for more information:
Product
Don’t have time or the staff to spare? Consider letting us take care of it for you with the More Great Customers Get Chosen PRO package of tools and services, which includes
A Review Funnel System
Review Request Sticker Pack
Reputation Management Pro Dashboard and more!