No, it is not a good idea to list your business in an online business directory that does not provide reviews. Reviews have the power to influence consumer’s decisions. Reviews also strengthen a company’s credibility. Reviews gain customer trust and encourage people to interact with the company. Customer interaction ultimately leads to improved profits for businesses.
5 Reasons Online Reviews are Essential
1.Social proofs drive purchases
Psychologically people purchase a product or service if others around them, even stranger agrees that purchasing a service or product is a good idea. Online reviews help the seller to get this benefit. Reviews from social media and other directory listings give trust to the customer.
You can drive 55% higher average order value from your other selling channel where your product or service has a good amount of high rated reviews. Customer feedback creates “Social Proof” trust that encourages visitors to buy your product.
2. Reviews make you more visible
Most people check reviews on different locations like Google Business, Facebook, and many other places where you exist before buying the product. Each website and online directory has its own unique way of indexing the content. But in most of the cases, they value the reviews of the customer, fresh and detailed content. Online customer reviews give you a steady pipeline of positive content that search engines value highly when choosing which results to return. When you’re ranked higher, algorithms and people alike tend to see your website as an authority in your industry, which also leads to more exposure.
3. Expand the conversation about you
Encouraging consumers to review your company is an easy way to expand your brand’s reach. Customers can review on different platforms like Google my Business, Yelp, and many other online platforms where you present. These reviews are vital to your online presence, as search engines like Google collect data from these sites when indexing. Once you get 100 positive reviews, it not only lifts organic search traffic but also gets more reviews on a different platform. This will help business growth overall.
4. Reviews create a direct impact on sales
Many times case studies and theories may not be right. But, a statistical study shows that if you have good reviews on online platforms, your sales grow exponentially.
According to the study if you improve your star rating by 1 star then your sales revenue improved by 8-10%. If a business has 5-star ratings on the different online platforms your sales improvement is about 20-50% depending on the nature and competition of the business.
5. Reviews make you trustworthy
You can easily get trust and creditability from positive reviews. Most service or product seekers filter out the businesses by their rating. They select 4+ star ratings at the time of searching on directory listing websites.
| Average Star Rating | % times in search results |
| 5 | 90-100% |
| 4 | 70-80% |
| 3 | 30-50% |
| 2 | 15-18% |
| 1 | 6-10% |