Online Reviews: Statistics That Will Blow Your Mind [2024]

Aino ValtonenAino Valtonen
Last edited: March 12th, 2024

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Here it is: the ultimate listing of online review statistics!

Learn what kind of difference online reviews truly have on your business, and why you should start caring more about review marketing.

All You Need to Know About Online Reviews

I’m sure you already know what reviews are, and you probably have written some yourself.

I won’t waste your time by rambling about the definition, but if you want to refresh your memory, take a look at some customer review examples.

Now, let’s dive into the wonderful world of online reviews statistics.

Do people really read reviews?

First of all, do people really read and care about reviews?

Oh boy, do they! 

As the statistics below show, online reviews are extremely effective and important for your business.

  • 93% of consumers read online reviews before making a purchase.
  • 58% of consumers would be ready to pay more or travel further to visit companies with good reviews.

It’s not just written reviews that affect us. In fact, images and videos have an even greater impact on shoppers.

  • 62% of consumers are more likely to purchase if they see photos and videos of other customers.
  • 2 out of 3 consumers say they’re more likely to make a purchase after watching a testimonial video.
  • When you replace your landing page reviews with video testimonials, your conversion rate can increase by 80%.
online reviews statistics

What about negative reviews?

Unfortunately, every business will most likely get negative reviews at some point. 

It does have an effect on your sales:

  • Only 9% of customers would be willing to engage with a business that has an average star rating of 1 or 2 stars.
  • 94% of consumers have avoided a company because of its negative reviews.

If you do get negative reviews, do not fall into desperation. You can still fix the situation by answering to the negative reviews. Here’s some tips on how to do that.

Is it that bad, though?

On the other hand, it seems that a mixture of negative and positive reviews is what appears most trustworthy to the customers.

That is understandable, as exclusively positive reviews can come across as fake, which would be totally suspicious and not at all trustworthy. đź‘€

In fact, we have already known for years that an average rating between 4.2 and 4.5 is the best range to be in!

In what channels do people read online reviews?

Here’s some facts on where people read online reviews:

  • 80% of customers read online reviews on mobile phones.
  • According to Reviewtrackers, 63% read reviews on Google, 45% on Yelp, and around one fourth of consumers refer to Tripadvisor or Facebook reviews.
  • Additionally, 88% of all reviews come from those four online review sites.

Why do people leave reviews?

Most common reasons for leaving reviews are

  • The product was excellent (56%)
  • The product did not fulfill expectations (41%)
  • Reviewer wants to help other understand the product (38%)
  • The product arrived broken (29%)
  • The reviewer was offered an incentive (29%)
  • The product was too expensive compared to the quality (22%)
  • The reviewer has ideas for improving the product (20%)

As you can see, there are plenty of reasons for people to leave reviews, some of them positive and some negative. 

In fact, most people are willing to leave reviews. 71% will submit a review after being satisfied and if the company makes it easy for them to do so.

How many reviews should a business have?

Even just one review is great, but the more the merrier.

  • Businesses who have 200 or more reviews have twice as much revenue compared to others.
  • Average local business has 39 Google reviews.
  • Hotels have an average of 309 reviews.
  • Additionally, the reviews must be recent to be trustworthy, say 83% of customers. 
  • 73% of consumers don’t even consider reviews if they were not written during the past month.
online reviews statistics

It’s important to answer to customer feedback

Like stated before, negative reviews are not the end of the world if you respond to them.

But negative reviews are not the only reviews you should respond to, and sometimes your responses can affect the customer’s opinion about you.

  • Customer churn can increase by 15% if you do not respond to feedback.
  • 56% have changed their opinion about a business because of a response that the business gave for a review.
  • 54% of local businesses respond to all or at least most reviews, even though it seems that companies will rather respond to positive reviews than negative ones (Findstack). 
  • Over half of customers (53%) expect brands to respond to negative reviews within 7 days, while one third expects a response in 3 days.
  • Industry leaders (the top 10% of brands) answer significantly faster than businesses on average (Review Trackers).

How have reviews changed lately?

Reviewtrackers’ 2022 report shows a few changes in reviews compared to the pre-pandemic times.

  • Review interaction has increased by 50%! That tells a lot about consumers’ attitudes towards businesses and products. We want to know the true colors of the businesses that we engage with.
  • Online reviews are much shorter. It’s not surprising, since we all know how short our attention spans are getting.

Something surprising?

You might not know this, but reviews also improve your SEO efforts and increase your conversions!

  • Reviews affect your SEO rankings by over 15%. The flipside is that negative sentiment can harm the SEO rankings.
  • Even a 0.1% increase in your business’ star rating accounts for a 25% increase in conversions.
online reviews statistics
online reviews statistics

Google’s Take on Reviews

In November 2023, Google released yet another reviews update to their search algorithm.

This is the third reviews update this year and Google has said that they will continue to update their review system with regular intervals. The review system aims to emphasize real reviews from real users of products or services and weed out all AI writer generated summaries.

Or other reviews that don’t indicate that the reviewer is an actual expert in what they’re reviewing.

TLDR; If your site doesn’t have high-quality reviews from real customers already, you can expect your search engine rankings to take a dive.

Have you already added review schema to your website?

Here’s what we have learned

That’s a lot to take in already, but let us add our personal viewpoint to the matter.

Trustmary has helped hundreds of companies to increase their conversions by showcasing customer reviews and testimonials on their website.

Benefits from Having Customer Reviews

Are you looking to get more reviews? Here’s a quick and easy way to get more Google reviews with a FREE review campaign.

Start by typing your Google My Business location below ⬇️

Key Findings from Our Tests on Customer Reviews:

  • When website visitors were shown customer reviews on the website, eCommerce conversion rate increased by 67% compared to customers who did not see reviews.
  • Similarly, the service booking conversion rate increased by 29%, and
  • Contact requests increased by 22%.

Additionally, real clients of ours have reached amazing benefits when using our review software.

Our client Pesurivuokraus.fi was able to collect 308 reviews in 5 months by implementing our review software. That’s a huge number compared to the cleaning industry average of 13 Google reviews!

Satokausikalenteri learned that people who see customer video testimonials in the online store are more likely to purchase than those who did not see a video.

When implementing customer reviews in Facebook and Instagram marketing, our client Mutjutin was able to reduce the marketing budget by almost 22% and increase sales by 140%!

They also found that showcasing review notifications on their product page increased the conversion rate by over 22%.

38.52% Boost in Conversions with Business Reviews (Online store POV)

Eurokangas has 80.000 products on its website, and it knows consumers trust online reviews.

Due to the sheer volume of products and the velocity they change, its Head of E-commerce Antti Voutilainen decided to focus on collecting and using business reviews to boost conversions.

After he had enough online reviews, he started to optimize the purchase path with strategically placed review widgets.

As a result, they experienced a significant 38.52% improvement to the start of its purchase journey.

The most surprising fact about business reviews isn’t the impact they have on sales, but rather a softer value.

If I’m having a bad day, I can always cheer myself up by reading the great customer feedback and reviews we get.

Antti Voutilainen, Head of E-commerce @Eurokangas

What is a Great Response Rate for a Review Request?

The average survey response rates vary between industries and whether one tries to get consumer reviews or online reviews from other businesses.

When Glass Factory decided to start collecting online reviews, it was in for a positive surprise.

With one survey that was sent to 1.800 people, it was able to:

  • 20% response rate
  • 350 customer feedback
  • NPS 80
  • 50 testimonials
  • 20 Google reviews

The only negative feedback it got were about a product broken by the delivery company and some wondered why they were asked for feedback such a long time after the purchase.

It seems that most consumers want review requests to be sent promptly after receiving the product.

Lasitehdas results from starting to get reviews

Online shopping drives online retailers to gather reviews, and consumers to trust peer reviews.

Btw, when was the last time you checked your star ratings on third-party review sites?

Conclusion

As you can surely see, online reviews affect many areas of your business.

  1. They create trust for your brand and products
  2. They help in search engine optimization
  3. They build your online reputation and online visibility
  4. They increase conversions on your website

But what is the easiest way to leverage online reviews?

When you implement Trustmary review software, you can quickly and easily import all your existing online reviews from the most popular review sites to your own website.

Additionally, you can display them with stylish widgets that certainly catch the attention of your website visitors. Try e.g. our free Google review widget or Facebook review widget.

And that’s not all: with an advanced subscription, you can collect reviews, testimonials and video testimonials from your customers with surveys that you can formulate in our easy-to-use survey tool.

Sign up and see how easy it is!

FAQ

How important are online reviews?

Online customer reviews are very important in terms of building trust and credibility for your brand. For example, 93% of consumers read reviews before purchasing, and 58% would be ready to pay more for a product that has great reviews.

Why have customer reviews on website?

We have learned that customer reviews on your website can increase conversions and sales. Our clients have noticed that reviews truly affect customer’s purchase decisions. Those customers who see reviews on the product page are more likely to buy than those who do not see reviews.

What percentage of customers write reviews?

Studies have shown that up to 72% of customers will write a review if they are asked to do so.

How many online reviews should a business have?

There is no set number of reviews that you should have, and average review number also depends on the industry. However, it is important to have many recent reviews. Consumers don’t trust old reviews. It’s also best to have reviews from different sources. There are dozens of different review websites.

What to do with negative reviews?

It is important to respond to negative reviews and try to fix the problem that the customer had. But never censor negative reviews, because that decreases your credibility.


Aino Valtonen
Aino Valtonen
Aino Valtonen is a Growth Marketer at Trustmary. With a background in Linguistics, she is an expert in language and communication, as well as local SEO and review marketing.


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