How important are user reviews to your business?

My garage door is broken. I need to find a company to fix it and don’t have a clue who to ask or where to look. In the real world I’d go to my friendly yellow pages book and look under garage door repair. Well, that’s exactly what I did except I went to yellowpages.com. Once there, I found 46 companies listed for my local area. Whew, so many choices, so many options, which one to pick?

It became extremely easy when I looked at the user review section. Only 3 of the 46 companies had reviews. Company A had 17 reviews, Company B had 12 reviews and Company C had 1 review.  I don’t know anyone that has used any of these companies personally. So I did the next best thing. I used the voices of strangers to help guide my selection. Guess which 2 companies I called?

There were 43 companies that weren’t even considered because they didn’t have any reviews. I’m sure that there are some fine reputable companies in that group. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if they all were. But, in today’s competitive environment every merchant needs to differentiate themselves from their competition. Good old fashioned customer testimonials still work…even in today’s online environment. If I were a Yellow Page sales rep, I’d hammer that home to each of my clients.

 

Mike Morawski

Chief Development Officer

Comments

[Mike McClure]

Good point, Mike. I was doing some shopping on Cyber Monday, here and bought a new chair for my living room after reading 3 pages of user reviews to convince me it was worth buying sight unseen online. Many reviews said it looks just like it did online - overcoming my fear on not being able to see it in person

[Evie Balavich]

I can relate to this, Mike. My Mom uses the computer for new recipes. She wouldn't think of using the recipes unless she reads the reviews. This allows her to benefit from the experimentation of others. Come to think of it, this business of reviewing and rating could have saved me from dating a few duds in my life. But that was long ago.... neverrrr mind.