Your business and reviews - your New years' resolutions for 2019

Here are our suggested resolutions for 2019 - and we make a firm guarantee for businesses that adopt them: you will do more business in the year ahead.


Resolution 1

Get a hundred reviews to your website. You will then stand a chance of looking like this in search...

...and the way consumers react will change; the cynicism will fall away, no longer will you hear comments such as 'I bet they're all written by friends and family' - your reviews will be believed. 


Resolution 2

Get fifty reviews to Google - and, just the same as with your own reviews, improve your chances of looking like this...

...some will look at this Google 3-pack and say 'but the others look OK' and so they do, at first glance, but they need to ask a supplementary question: 'are they complying with the CMA regulations? Do they invite all their clients to post reviews, or are they cherry-picking?'

...top of search, top of the three-pack, most reviewed amongst your competitors. Then check your Google My Business monthly report to see just how many more clicks and calls you are getting. With a fair wind it will look like this...

Resolution 3

Respond to your reviews - wherever they may be...

...for two reasons: first, you will look as if you care, and this impresses prospective customers; second, you will be sending out a signal to anyone out there that might be tempted to post any unfairly critical comments. That message? 'We will respond'. Oh - and just like the example above, use your name and position when you post your response - it looks so much better than customerservices@abc.com.

Resolution 4

If you are currently using a reviews site - change up to professional review management. Reviews sites now have so many disadvantages compared to Google reviews we're not going to bother listing them here - for those of you that missed the articles here's the latest - but we would just ask you to compare any HelpHound client with a business employing one of the reviews sites. Look at this search...

...see a reviews site*? Reviews in the organic search? The business's own, moderated by HelpHound. Reviews for the Web? Same again. But 171 reviews on their own site and 115 on Google, scoring 4.7 and 4.8 respectively? Put yourself in the potential customer's shoes - you're going to consider them, aren't you? Another angle - put yourself in their competitors' shoes - uncomfortable now isn't it?

So - adopt these four New Year's Resolutions and see your business thrive in 2019. A Happy New Year to one and all.


*Interestingly Rightmove conducted a survey of its users a while ago, asking them if they recognised two reviews sites: Trustpilot and Feefo. The results? Just over one in ten recognised Trustpilot, one in fifty recognised Feefo.