Online Reputation for Retail | Vicinus.ai

With more and more businesses growing their online presence, one thing still stands: reputation is crucial to growth. Although some businesses may underestimate the power of reviews when it comes to customer conversions, the article below explains why the future of retail lies in online reputation.

Is Online Reputation Important for Retail?

My Total Retail suggests that:

‘a whopping 90 percent of online shoppers have chosen not to purchase from a company because of its bad reputation. The results are astoundingly favorable toward keeping a good online reputation.’

This means that customers read online reviews and base their trust in your business off of what they say as well as the overall star rating. 

As a result, there are a few key things which you must keep in mind:

• Reviews build trust for your potential customers
• A massive percentage of customers base their purchase decisions on reviews
• Deleting negative reviews loses customer trust (responding to them is a much better way to handle this)

When a brand has an active and positive presence online, customers are more likely to trust the brand and have a willingness to turn from passive customers to purchasing customers. 

Below are the top factors which help brands build trust showing how important reputation management is in building trust for potential customers:

Even Google suggests that:

‘42 percent of in-store customers conduct research online while in-store.’

This shows how important online reputation is, even for physical stores. 

Why Is Online Reputation Important for Physical Stores?

In today’s digital world, the digital and physical spheres overlap. This means that a bad reputation online can often bleed over to physical stores.

‘42 percent of customers are not at all likely to purchase products from a business that has negative reviews on the first page of its online search results.’

How do I Improve my Online Reputation?

There are a few ways you can improve your online reputation:

1. Be transparent. Being honest with your customers can help build your businesses core values as well as help you get trusted by the public too. Try not to hide information from your customers too often as this can lead to mistrust.
2. Ask for reviews. Reviews are more than a tool to gain trust, they can also help you improve your business too. If you notice the same complaint cropping up time and time again, its time to act on it. Reviews can help highlight which parts of your business are weaker than others and which parts you need to focus on improving.
3. Respond to both negative and positive reviews. Vicinus’s Auto-responder responds to customer reviews left on your business listings according to the sentiment data gathered via machine learning and the given star rating. This helps to build trust and a great reputation by showing customers your business cares and values them by responding to their reviews.

For more information about how Vicinus can help build your brand’s reputation, get in contact with us below!