Reviews - your new years' resolutions

Given that it is now universally accepted that reviews - great reviews and a great overall score - not only drive business by themselves but reinforce all your other marketing, whether that be by personal recommendation, your own advertising and PR, social media or the myriad of other avenues that businesses use to attract custom in 2023, it is essential to do the best your business possibly can. Using this article as a checklist, you can score your business. Anything less than 9 out of 10 and maybe you should be speaking to us?

1. Does your business have more than 200 Google reviews (per location if you have more than one)?

2. Is your business scoring 4.8 or more (again, in each location)?

3. Does your business have stars in Google local search(es)?

4. Is your business shown in the Google 3-pack (in all locations)?

5. Does your business rank in the top 3 in any relevant Google search?

6. Is your business fully compliant with UK law when it comes to reviews?

7. Are you using your reviews to maximum effect in your other marketing?

8. Are you getting at least half of those who do business with you to post a review on your own website? And are you getting at least half of them to copy their review to Google?

9. Are you expending time, money and effort on the wrong review mechanism?

10. Do you have a safety net in place in the event of a customer posting an inaccurate or potentially misleading review?

 

How did your business do? 10 out of 10? You're almost certainly a HelpHound client. Any less - even 9 - and we would encourage you to read on.

Each point in more detail...

1. Does your business have more than 200 Google reviews (per location if you have more than one)?

Some will view this number - 200 - as a lot of reviews. It is a lot if you don't have a review management strategy in place. But it is a key number. Why? It's a case of simple maths: if you have 10 five-star Google reviews and only two people post a one-star review your score will drop to 4.5. That alone may take you under some of your competitors. If you have 200 reviews you become pretty well immune to the odd negative, at last in terms of your overall score - but even if this is the case please read on, because any one-star review will damage inbound calls and clicks through Google search.

2. Is your business scoring 4.8 or more (again, in each location)?

Back in the day 4 out of 5 used to be a pretty decent score, then businesses became more review savvy and 4.5 would be needed to look good against the competition. These days, when many businesses are doing all they possibly can, some not so legally - to come out on top - or at least as near as possible to the top, a business needs to aim to get as close to the 'perfect 5' as possible.

3. Does your business have stars in Google local search(es)?

Look at the screenshot above. You will be familiar with it - it's a Google local search of the kind performed by almost everyone looking for a business these days, even if they've been personally recommended that business or found it through any other avenue (Marketing/advertising/PR etc). Why does only one of the three businesses have a Rating and stars? You might be surprised by just how many people think - erroneously - that those are from the business's Google reviews; they're not, they're taken straight from the business's own reviews on the business's own website...

Of course, you could achieve a similar first impression by simply importing Google reviews into your website via a widget, but this would be to ignore the value of owning your own customer reviews and would be missing the vital opportunity to have your reviews moderated pre-publication (see point 10, below).

4. Is your business shown in the Google 3-pack (in all locations)?

Google guard the reasons businesses qualify for the 3-pack (as well as ranking in organic search) very closely, but over ten years of experience and many years of following client experiences shows us that hosting your own reviews has a fundamental bearing on this. Again, many consumers see this as Google somehow qualifying the business; what we know is that businesses hugely value appearing here.

5. Does your business rank in the top 3 in all relevant Google searches?

Reviews - the business's own reviews, not Google's reviews of the business, besides being shown alongside the star rating and score, are taken into account by Google for local (organic/natural) search rankings. Clients who appear high up in local search report increased calls and clicks. Just ask yourself 'What value would we place upon coming first (or even high up) for any given search?

6. Is your business fully compliant with UK law when it comes to reviews?

This is important, not just because breaking the law runs a risk of a fine and other sanctions by the CMA, but because any law-breaking will be so obvious to any competitors and they will find it hard to resist mentioning to prospective customers when in competition. It is illegal, in the UK, to...

• select customers to invite to post reviews (commonly known as cherry-picking)
• pre-qualify customers before inviting them to write a review (by using another review site or by asking them to complete a questionnaire, for instance)

So: if you invite any customers to write a review, anywhere, you must enable all of your customers to do so. That doesn't mean you have to email all your customers asking them to write a review, but any mechanism you use must allow any stakeholders to do so. It is not sufficient, for instance, to simply include a link to your reviews in an email signature block.

This little button makes all of our clients compliant...

7. AIs your business using its reviews to maximum effect in its other marketing?

Many businesses get reviews to Google and that's it. Getting your own reviews to your own website means you are able to broadcast them across many different media. Here's just one example...

First, the review on the business's own site...

Then on Google...

And then contributing towards an industry award...

And no reason to stop there - onwards to social media (Twitter/Instagram/TikTok) and conventional media (PR/advertising/marketing).

8. Is your business getting at least half of those who do business with it to post a review on its own website and then at least half of those who do so to copy their review to Google?

That should be the aim. 

9. Is your business expending time, money and effort on the wrong review mechanism?

Sites like Trustpilot, Yelp and Feefo were fine before Google reviews became omnipresent but those days are behind us now. Your business's reviews solution needs to be Google-focussed. No matter what review sites' salespeople may say, nothing beats the power, influence and sheer visibility of Google reviews. 

10. Does your business have a safety net in place in the event of a customer posting an inaccurate or potentially misleading review?

Last, but very firmly not least, comes the insurance so vital for any professional or service business: moderation. A well-written but inaccurate or misleading one-star review won't hurt a branch of Mcdonald's or an online retailer but it can snuff out calls and clicks for the likes of legal, financial or medical businesses overnight. Businesses like this - accountancy, recruitment, estate agency and so on - rely very heavily on their online reputations for new business and so need to take every possible precaution. 

Here's a very low-level example of an instance where moderation would have saved the reviewer's blushes and the business from their only below-par review: the reviewer criticises a book by the founder of the business that is still in print today, what the reviewer almost certainly did not realise is that the book in question was published in 1936 and the author (and founder) died in 1955. Our moderator would have alerted her to those facts - in private - and allowed her to modify her review pre-publication.

Moderation - the act of having every review independently checked before publication - is an essential service for such businesses. It won't prevent a fair and reasonable criticism from being published but it stands a ninety-percent-plus chance of diverting an unfair, inaccurate or potentially misleading review.

Google reviews don't post themselves!

Well, that's not strictly true: if you annoy/upset someone they will very likely post a Google review without being asked. But let's look at what happens the rest of the time.

Follow the simple steps below and this is what your business should look like - on its own website and on Google...

You interact with your customer, then the interaction comes to a natural end or break (they've finished their treatment, you've won their court case, you've sold/let their property, they've got their tax refund). So you usually invite them - by email - to write a review of your service. 

Here we bump right into Rule Number One of successful review management...

Don't stop there!

But so many businesses do. And, you know what? They will be lucky if 5 in a hundred of those email invitations - no matter how they are worded - result in a review.

So - Rule Number Two...

Pick up the phone!

Time and again it has been proven - by simply following the email with a courteous phone call explaining just how important - not just for the business itself but also for people finding themselves in a similar position to the reviewer in the future - that a review is written. Take the time to talk them through the process* even (no one - ever - has complained about this).

*talk them through the process: we are consistently surprised just how many people who desperately want their customers to write reviews haven't bothered to check out the process themselves. Write a review (of any business but yours!) - and get all your staff to do the same.

Rule Three...

Many consumers assume - erroneously - that the stars and score shown above in a Google search are awarded by Google. They're not - they are drawn straight from the businesses's own reviews (not its Google reviews) on the business's own website.

Remember that your enquiries come from two online sources - Google and your own website - you want reviews in both places. Moderation won't operate if you just invite reviews to Google and nor will you get the SEO kicker - or stars in search - that businesses need so badly these days by having one without the other. And, of course, selectively inviting customers to write reviews is illegal.

Get both reviews!

So, to recap: send the email (with direct opening links to both your own website and Google - if you are unsure about the right Google link, just contact us), follow up by phone and do your level best to get both reviews. Do so and you will soon look like our client at the top of this article.

The results? We advise clients to aim for 50% of customers to write a review on the business's own website and then 50% of those to go on to copy that review to Google. 100 customer touch points = 50 reviews to the business's website = 25 reviews to Google. 

Be aware of this little Google person

 

This innocuous little badge - showing someone wearing a Google Local T-shirt and carrying a smartphone and a camera, is 'awarded' to Google Local Guides.

So what is a Google Local Guide? (If you are a Local Guide, or you are familiar with the concept, you can skip to the next paragraph.) They are simply a more committed Google reviewer; the sort of person that actively reviews just about every business they come into contact with. They have absolutely no qualifications - anyone can volunteer to be one. There's more on them here.

Why mention them at all?

For two reasons...

1. They are far more likely to write a review - whether asked to do so or on their own initiative
2. Their reviews carry a disproportionate influence with consumers - for no rational reason

Look at these two reviews...

Which do you think is the most credible? Their content is similar and their score for the business is identical. The only thing that separates the two reviewers is that one is a Local Guide and the other is not. With what you know now you may justifiably be cynical about the Local Guide's review, but we can assure you that Joe Public gives their reviews more credence.

So: if someone mentions that they are a Google Local Guide you can be pretty sure they will review your business. That's all. We don't recommend you quiz your customers to establish if they are a Local Guide or not, but just be aware that such people - millions of them - do exist.

Is your business running the risk of suffering from review 'Dry Rot'?

This was an analogy used by a client recently: that a business's review policy could suffer from 'wet rot' - meaning it had obvious flaws: a low score, a preponderance of damaging one-star reviews, not enough reviews and suchlike.

But 'dry rot'? It's an insidious, slow-burning but ultimately very time-consuming and costly to repair 'disease' not immediately visible to the untrained eye.

Just as dry rot is every homeowner's ultimate nightmare, so should its equivalent in review management be every business's. Look at this example...

Scoring 4.3. Not so very bad? Not, that is, until a prospective fee payer does what almost all consumers of high-value services do in 2022: compare the business with local alternatives and mine down into the negative reviews. The local comparison first:

Nowhere to be seen in this local search. The searcher has, as is more and more common these days, used the Google filter - see top right - to shed any business scoring less than 4.5.

Suppose they do persevere, or have come across the business in other ways (personal recommendation or the business's own marketing, for instance)? They will still search for the business and be presented with Google reviews. And when they look at those reviews? They will invariable filter by...

This then exposes the potential customer to no less than 39 one-star reviews, one after the other. Here is the most recent, just to give you a flavour...

This constitutes a case of the above mentioned 'dry rot'. Why? Because many potential fee-earners will be deflected from making contact with the business. One or two 1* reviews may be ignored or glossed over, half a dozen will begin to erode confidence, more than that will begin to counteract the business's marketing big-time (and will also be referenced by competitors when pitching).

What should the business have done?

It should have adopted a moderated review management system. This would have ensured that most of those reviews which were based on misconceptions or errors of fact would never have seen the light of day, at least not in the form in which they were first written.

What should the business do now?

The same. The first action would be to go through each and every negative review to see if their are any grounds for appeal to Google. There are bound to be some. This is not to say that Google will remove many but it is certainly worth the time and effort. 

Next: begin actively inviting reviews to the business's website and to Google. But via an independent moderator such as HelpHound. It will be a long process with a business with so many negative reviews but time and effort (and moderation) should at least see the business's score clamber its way above 4.5. And the proportion of 1* reviews will drop over time.

The alternative - doing nothing but piling good reviews on top of bad - is no solution.

A note on moderation

Moderation does not exist to neutralise negative consumer comment. It exists to ensure that, as far as is possible under UK law, reviews are written with access to the full facts of the case to hand, and are therefore fair to both business and reviewer and, importantly, provide a reliable guide to the business under review for future consumers. This sometimes means initiating a mediated dialogue between the reviewer and the business under review. It benefits everyone...

• the reviewer: because their review will be accurate
• the reader of the review: for the same reason
• the business: which will see its activities fairly reflected in its Google reviews 

Further reading...

• Scoring 4.6 on Google is not enough: explains why a decent Google score can mask underlying trouble

Forget the cost - you owe it to your customers and your business

Times are not getting easier for consumers - and of course this feeds straight through to businesses. No matter what business you are in, life becomes more competitive. 

And this is where reviews - especially Google reviews - come in. Just about everyone reads Google reviews these days - surveys indicate 92% of consumers or more - but that figure is sure to rise where businesses providing high-value services - legal, financial, medical etc. - are concerned.

So businesses now have two options*:

• Invite Google reviews from customers directly to Google and import the Google reviews through a widget into their own website

• Or use a moderated review management system to invite reviews to their own website and then Google

*anyone considering, or already using sits such as Trustpilot, Feefo or Riviews.co.uk should read this article. In short? They have been made redundant by Google.

So what kind of business should be using each solution? First, let's look at their pros and cons:

Direct to Google and a Google review widget on your website?

Pros

1. Free - Google doesn't charge for hosting reviews 
2. Credible - the Google brand has more credibility than any other where reviews are concerned
3. Simple - reviews can be invited by the business or the consumer can post to Google via the business's website

Cons

1. No moderation: reviews will be posted unchecked - for errors of fact or statements likely to mislead future customers (or even just plain 'unfair' reviews)

Or: reviews to your website and then on to Google

Pros

1. The business owns the reviews - a valuable business asset in these data-driven days
2. The business has a high degree of control over factually incorrect, potentially misleading or just plain unfair reviews

This simple analysis gives us our answer: if your businesses sells products, from socks and shirts to auto-spares or toasters, use the 'direct to Google' route. Because it won't get hurt  if it receives the occasional one star negative review.

On the other hand, if you business sells a service - if you call your customers 'clients' or 'patients' - then you need a moderated system. Your customers take the content of each and every negative review on board and you need to keep these to a minimum (if you have any doubt as to this, may we suggest reading the review cited in this article?).

The only other conceivable solution is to fly in the face of the law and hand-pick those you invite to post a review. This will not only put you at risk of having your collar felt by the CMA but such activity will also become apparent to your competitors who will then use it against you.

The concrete results of using a moderated system

It will give you all the benefits of going direct to Google:

• Reviews on Google 
• Reviews on your own website
• The SEO kicker that hosting your own reviews gives your business in local search

Plus:

• The assurance that factually inaccurate, potentially misleading or just plain unfair reviews will almost always be addressed during the moderation process, before they are published anywhere (if at all).

We estimate that adopting a moderate review management system will, over time, add between 0.2 and 0.6 to a business's Google score. And that in turn will generate between 15 and 25 percent more inquiries through search.

So: HelpHound will pay for itself. That's a promise.

Further reading...

• More about moderation
• More about the results you can expect as soon as you join

Next buys Made.com - but why?

This is not yet another article about how many £££s in fees the sponsoring banks and lawyers have made out of Made.com. It's about why Next might spend over £3m buying a website and a few domain names out of the liquidation.

We'll keep this simple: Made.com gets over 20 million visits a year for which it pays nothing - by ranking very high for loads of keywords in organic search. Next, on the other hand, is paying about 40p for every click. Buying Made.com will save Next over £4 million in the first year alone.

And all because Google search ranks Made.com so highly.

So what relevance does this have for reviews and review management? It's simple really. In these increasingly tough times businesses need to do all they can to maximise clicks and calls through search. And one thing that can make your business stand out to Google? Hosting reviews. Most tech professionals estimate that hosting reviews on a business's website contributes around 15 percent to its overall SEO score. And great SEO = more clicks and calls, right?

Add on moderation, to drive the business's Google score up by from 0.2 to 0.6 and you have a winning formula.

Scoring 4.6 on Google is not enough - Part 2

Some people don't have the time to read some of the longer posts on here, and we freely admit that Part 1 is quite extensive. So here's a more concise post.

One Google review can kill - or very seriously maim - your business. 

Correction - will seriously maim. A well-written negative review won't drive calls and clicks so, by definition, it must do the reverse: put people off making that crucial first contact.

Just look at this review of a legal firm (that has a Google score of 4.4 from 44 reviews):

What do you think? Will it be ignored? No? We agree. The point here is not the score - or the number of reviews (they have two other 1* reviews, both pretty innocuous) but the actual content of the review.

• Is it written by a real person?

• Is it well-written?

• Does it ring true?

• Would you want what happened to the reviewer to happen to you?

Quite. Now bear in mind that...

• that review will remain on Google forever

• readers will invariably click on 'Lowest' when reading business's Google reviews

• well over 90% of all consumers - especially consumers of high-value services - consult Google reviews before making first contact

...and we're sure you will understand why we stress to all the businesses we meet the importance of 'taking out insurance' against inaccurate, misleading or just plain unfair reviews by adopting a moderated review management system.

But, we hear you say, the review we have shown above is demonstrably not 'inaccurate, misleading or just plain unfair'. How do you, or we, know that? We don't. But that's the conclusion most fair-minded consumers will come to when they read it. 

If the business had offered their customer the possibility of writing a review - by sending them an email and having a link on their website where they could write their review - maybe they would have taken that route instead? Well, over ten years of experience shows that a large proportion will. 

There's only one legal solution: independent moderation.

To read more here's a link to Part 1.

Further reading

• A Single Review can Strangle a Business

How many more people lost their money thanks to Trustpilot?

The answer to the question posed in the headline is: we cannot know. But let's look at this dreadful saga and you can be the judge. The business was a member right up until the liquidators were called in, and only subsequent to that action, as far as we can see, did this warning appear on their listing:

Which, somewhat suprisingly, makes no mention of the fact that the business has ceased trading.

A disservice to the consumer

On the face of it, the Trustpilot 'quarantine' mechanism, which allows businesses to challenge reviews - and it's overwhelmingly negative reviews that businesses challenge - is attractive. To businesses. After all, what business wants their sales and enquiries adversely impacted by a low score and critical 1* reviews? 

And it wouldn't - in theory - harm costumers, except for one crucial consequence of the Trustpilot mechanism: it relies on consumers, who have already taken the trouble to write a review, providing 'proof of purchase' to Trustpilot. As you can see from the screenshot below, very few bother to respond to that request - well under 3 in a hundred. 211 mostly heavily critical reviews failed to remain on the Trustpilot site.

...and these figures are just for the last 12 months

Does this benefit the consumer? Do we need to answer that question? 

A disservice to good businesses

This takes more than one form. The first is that when the business is sold the Trustpilot package it distracts the business from concentrating on getting reviews where it really matters (and the reviews really drive clcks and calls): on Google. We see endless examples of businesses with hundreds of Trustpilot reviews - that are next to invisible in search - and a handful on Google. Here's just one example...

It beggars belief just how much better off this business would be if it hadn't focussed on Trustpilot but concentrated on Google reviews (free!) instead

The next is that as a result of businesses (ab)using its quarantine system it could be argued that Trustpilot enables 'not so great' businesses to look better than they really are. We would argue, and we think the CMA in the UK would agree, that denying the consumer the right to have their voice heard on the basis that they hadn't provided proof of purchase was borderline illegal.

We know that good review management practice will improve a business's score - our clients will see uplifts of between 0.2 and 0.5 in their Google score - but this should not involve any mechanism that denies the right of a customer to have their review published. Apart from being, in our opinion, in breach of the CMA regulations, it also has - in the case of review sites like Trustpilot - the effect of leaveing a disgruntled customer no option but to post their opinion staright to Google.

The bottom line

The company has been placed into administration. Reading many of the recent reviews it would appear that dozens, perhaps hundreds, of customers will lose the money they have paid. Just how many of those customers would have been saved from sending their hard-earned cash to Screen with Envy if some of those 211 reviews had been published by Trustpilot?

This is a question that we will never be able to answer, but if you read this review on Google, posted back in June of this year, would you have ordered?

Further reading...

• HelpHound moderation, security for businesses, relaible for consumers - and compliant with UK law and regulation

 

Google reviews: scoring 4.6 is not enough!

How often do we meet a business basking in the glory of what they consider a great Google score? Daily, probably.

To be fair, it's almost certainly taken a considerable effort to achieve that score, and no one wants to be told they need to do more when they reckon they've already done all they can. But that's why HelpHound exists: to enable businesses to successfully build - and improve - on their already great efforts.

To return to our headline: why is a Google score of 4.6 'not enough'? It's all in the numbers. Let's look at two examples.

The business with few Google reviews...

While no business would relish a review such as that written by 'Jack Forest' above, most sensible consumers will discount one or two such negative opinions. The business has, quite correctly, responded, thus neutralising, as far as possible, the impact of the original review. The impact on the business's score, however, bringing it down from a perfect 5.0 to 4.7 remains.

A note for those who, understandably, think the review above is 'unfair' (the business has made clear in its response that they have no record of any dealings with the reviewer): Google's conditions for removing reviews are very tightly drafted indeed. That does not mean the business should not appeal to Google to have the review taken down - we conduct such appeals on behalf of businesses and are sometimes gratified when they succeed when apparently not in contravention of Google's terms of service. If in any doubt whatsover, consult us.

The business with many Google reviews...

Now we have our score of 4.6. Including nine 1* reviews. Some are more damaging than others - read about 'killer' reviews, those that have the power to stop the phones ringing, here - but collectively they are undoubtedly off-putting for potential clients. 

We are sure that we can all agree on one thing: that the business would rather not have any of these reviews, not just because they reduce the business's overall Google score from a perfect 5.0 to 4.6 but chiefly because of the negative impression made when a prospective client reads them. They will result in a drop-off in inquiries, in the same way as scoring close as possible to 5.0 will result in an increase (see here for concrete examples of this).

What should the business do?

Take these three steps...

First: respond to each and every review. 

At least then the readers - potential customers - will see that the business takes their customers' reviews seriously. Don't argue - thank them for their feedback (albeit sometimes with teeth gritted) and sign off with a name, not 'customer services'. Remember who your core audience is: all those potential customers who will be reading that review.

Second: institute a proper review management programme. 

At first sight a hundred reviews may seem like a lot, but it's only two a month for four years. 

Businesses that build moderated reviews (see 'Third' below) into their CRM, by incorporating them into all their marketing, online and off, and their sales pitches, and then 'warn' their customers that writing a review is the norm, get very high response rates when they ask for the review.

 

Third: - and most important of all going forwards - adopt a moderated review management system. 

Over ten years of experience has led us to conclude that over eighty percent of inaccurate, misleading or just plain unfair reviews will be addressed by a properly moderated review management system. Simply inviting reviews - on your website, in your correspondence and face to face - means that the likelihood is that your unhappy customer/client/patient will post their review to you first, enabling an independent* moderator such as HelpHound to step in and enable such reviews to be corrected before they are published on your website or on Google.

And when a 1* review does find its way to Google, how much more powerful is the response that says 'Thank you for posting this review, here is our response to you....if, in future, you feel that we haven't performed to the best of our ability please don't hesitate to contact me directly or write your review via the button on our website, where you can be assured of a response on the very same day.'

The Golden Key...

Is this link on the business's website (the Write a review button)...

Leading to this box... 

        

Once the review is submitted it is automatically sent straight to a moderator where it is checked for accuracy and then either posted to the business's website or referred back to the reviewer for correction. All reviewers, whether their review has been corrected or not, are then invited to copy their review to Google. Simple, effective - in protecting the business's reputation from unfair and inaccurate comments - and compliant.

Moderation, besides aiding customer retention (a customer with an issue successfully addressed in private is a continuing customer, a customer that posts a one star review direct to Google is very unlikely to generate repeat business, or referrals for that matter) is estimated to add between 0.2 and 0.5 to a business's Google score.

Conclusion

Every business in the service/professional arena must have a moderated review management system; inviting reviews direct to Google or employing a review site are simply not options for high value fee-based or transactional businesses. They may be alright for online retail but they are simply not fit-for-purpose in the highly competitive world of finance, medicine, law or the likes of estate agency or recruitment, where a single client lost or gained is worth thousands to the business.

Further reading

• Moderation - the 'Golden Key' to review management:  a detailed analysis and explanation

• Compliance - many businesses are unaware that selecting customers to invite to write reviews is illegal. Moderation means that such selection - often done to protect the business - becomes redundant

• Results - moderated review management doesn't only protect businesses from unfair and inaccurate reviews, it drives enquiries through Google and the business's own website

* Independent moderation: we are often asked 'If you work for/are paid by the business, how can you be truly independent when moderating their reviews?' A fair question. 

Our answer: if we were ever found to be favouring the business - or even more seriously, attempting to suppress a fairly-held negative opinion - all our credibility would simply vanish. Our name would be terminally tarnished and our moderation process, besides becoming questionable in the eyes of the regulator, would lose all value in the marketplace. 

Here's a link to Part 2

Trustpilot - so many businesses barking up the wrong tree

 One of us received this email marketing today...

As you can see, they proudly boast of their image on Trustpilot, which is, indeed, very positive indeed. Here's the detail...

Nearly a thousand reviews, almost all of them rating their business 5*.

So what has the business done wrong? Well, along with so many others they have chosen - or 'been sold' - the wrong solution.

Before we mine down into the reasons behind that choice, let's conduct a quick Google search on the business...

One Google review and one Google rating.

And it's not just Trustpilot. Review sites of any kind, and the aggregators that feed off them, are no longer viable solutions. Just look at this estate agency - they've tried them all...

And this is the impression everyone searching for them online is given...

Most potential customers won't get as far as their website - the 1* reviews on Google will be enough to deflect them.

So what should the Fine Art Warehouse - and any other business relying on a review website - be doing?

Cancelling Trustpilot and refocusing all its efforts on Google reviews. It's as simple as that. Think of yourself in the position of a customer - which reviews are going to impress you most 700+ Trustpilot reviews or 700+ Google reviews? And this advice goes for any other review site.

Google has more reach and far more credibility amongst consumers, their reviews appear far more often in any given search, and they will still be in business in 5 years' time (Trustpilot's share price has fallen from 450 p to 79 p in the last 14 months). 

Oh - and Google reviews are free!