Hearing positive feedback about your company, your products or services is something that every business owner should thrive on, but not only can it inflate your own feeling of greatness, positive reviews can also lead to repeat custom, increased business growth and of course, more income and profit for the company.

According to this excellent infographic by the team at Website Builder, the importance of online reviews for your business has never been so important, and whilst some businesses really focus on going out and actively gathering them, many just overlook the importance and continue as normal, all the time missing out on comments from happy clients that could lead to far more happy clients in the future. For the sake of a few minutes and asking a customer to give you some feedback, by not doing it, you could be really holding back your business and potential business growth.

So, Just Why Are They Important?

With review sites like Feefo and Trust Pilot being heavily featured on many large companies advertising campaigns, consumers are now more likely to trust reviews online, whereas going back a few years, there did seem to be a general distrust that anyone could leave a fake review and therefore, many people avoided them. But, with the adoption of major firms now featuring the big review site names, consumers have slowly learnt to trust in reviews, as they realise that in fact, most reviews are truthful, independent and worth taking into consideration when making your final choice.

According to the infographic we mention about, a review from a customer is 12 times more trusted than any product or service description, which means you can spend all day or thousands of pounds tweaking your description until it is perfect, or you can invest in getting customers to leave reviews about how good it is. It is far more likely for a potential customer to spend a few minutes scanning reviews, than reading endless paragraphs about just how good your products or services are, written by you!

And, the more positive reviews you have, the better, with businesses that have over 50 reviews seeing, on average, a 4.6% increase in sales, which backs up the point that potential customers will trust existing customers far more than anything else. If you think about how recommendations from friends and family count for a lot in the offline world, then in the online world finding out what other customers think of the products or services is just as important, and as more and more people start to leave reviews and feedback, this is only likely increase.

72% of consumers say that positive reviews help them to trust a local business more, which means if your business is competing against 3 others doing or offering the same thing, but you have invested the time in getting customers to leave reviews, you stand a massively higher chance of winning the new business over your rivals.

How Do You Get Reviews?

Getting customers to leave you reviews and feedback is not as hard as most people think.

You can pay to use one of the sites like we mention previously, Feefo or Trust Pilot, or one of the many other independent online review sites, or you can make use of social media platforms like Facebook and Google+, or, get the best of all worlds and do a mixture. Facebook is powerful for reviews, as they are real and human, and every review has a face associated with it, and likewise, Google+, as you need an account to leave a review and it of course helps with your Google My Business / Maps ranking, massively important for any local business.

The main thing is never, ever, be afraid to ask someone to leave you a review, as the worst they can say is no, the best they can say is yes, so even if 20% of your customers left you a review, the impact could be huge, and as more and more businesses start to really understand the importance of reviews, do not let your company get left behind, start getting reviews today!