How Negative Reviews Can Affect Your Business?

By Author: Yogesh Jain
Total Articles: 2
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Reviews are basically customer experiences after using a certain product and it’s quite understandable that no two people think in a similar way and that could lead to forming differences in opinions. What may seem crazy or ridiculous to one might be perfect and rational to the other.

And hence, when consumers want to learn and know more about any product or product provider (business), they turn to the internet to find insights and answers. Discerning buyers from every walk of life specifically turn to websites and search engines as they trust and consider these reviews help to clear their doubts and queries.

How popular are review sites?
A 2021 study has shown that almost nine out of ten consumers turn to a review site before making a purchase and almost eight in ten shoppers consult a review site before using or visiting a local business

With over more than 244 million reviews, Yelp is one of the oldest and most trusted review sites on the web. The number of stars—or a lack thereof—can make or break a business and it’s backed by a strong fact from a report from Harvard Business ...
... School which shared that a one-star increase on a review website can translate to a five to nine per cent increase in revenue.

Today almost, more or less every website has its own feedback section for cultivating the feeling of transparency and credibility among its customers. And so the review sites become an integral part of creating a business’s impression in front of their targeted audience.

The basics of online reviews –

The statistics of online review explains what might be already known to many from personal experience that “reviews are authoritative” – in the global and diverse nature of today’s marketplace consumers make a thorough online search first to save both their time and money.

A compilation of online review statistics shows that –

Every individual comes across at least a review – almost 90% of consumers read online reviews before making a purchase or visiting a business

Reviews are widely considered trustworthy – 88% of consumers believe in online reviews as much as they do in personal recommendations

Good reviews simply indicate better revenue – revenues drastically increase by 31% at businesses which have excellent reviews

Bad reviews simply indicate bad revenue – as obvious as it is, businesses with bad or negative reviews are likely to have lesser revenues. Almost 86% of consumers hesitate to purchase from a business with a negative review

Trust and credibility in reviews equal loyalty in a business – almost 72% of consumers consider that positive reviews make a business more trustworthy.
And these points are crucial to indicate how online reviews can become a major form of customer-retention strategy but is also essential to the growth and survival of a business.

Are consumers always right? –

The impact of negative reviews –
For ages unknown, we have witnessed several times in world history that bad happenings are often emphasised and so is true when it comes to reviews. A major fact is that when people share reviews they are more likely to the bad ones than their good ones. A study once conducted found that the respondents were 50% more likely to share their mishaps, bad interactions and experiences with a company than nothing at all on social media, whereas 52% of them are more likely to share their experiences on a review site.

Widely, negative reviews from genuine customers can be categorised under “disappointment” and merely “negativity”

Let’s dive in deeper –

A lot of customers use words like “disappointed” while sharing their experiences. ‘Yotpo’, a study of fashion purchases from e-commerce marketing platforms found that while going through reviews, a majority of them mentioned or used the word “disappointed” or “disappointment” in their reviews and as a fact, those terms were extensively mentioned over 20,000 times, whereas, the word “bad” was mentioned in just 7,500 of the total negative reviews.