Managing your reviews on review websites is not as easy as many people presume; website reviews are vital and require close monitoring. Unfortunately, many businesses fail to manage review sites and make mistakes, bringing in fewer reviews or even negative reviews. How can you manage your business reviews better? And how can you avoid making some errors that most businesses make on business review sites? When dealing with consumer review websites, you must be vigilant, use an appropriate method to dispatch information, and choose the right time to do it. If any of the two aspects are not considered in review websites, then this results in lower clicks hence lower reviews. Through research, we have combined a list of mistakes that you should avoid to get more reviews that are positive. 1. Batch Invites Many businesses make the mistake of sending review invites in batches expecting to receive a lot of feedback. However, this does the complete opposite. Using this method, you do not consider the time availability of your customer, which leads to an imbalance hence fewer reviews at the end of the day or the week. what customers say about the business To score more reviews, try to send out invites to people when they are still on the site. When the customer is going through your site, it means that they might be interested in making a review on the business. Hence take this opportunity to boost your reviews by sending them an invite. 
READ MORE: HOW TO USE ONLINE REVIEWS TO BEAT YOUR COMPETITION

2. Using Emails

In the past, sending review invites via email was pretty efficient and used to attract many reviews. However, the world has evolved, and now the smartphone has become more prevalent. Once people access the internet, they will probably spend time watching clips or reading books online rather than checking their email. The most efficient method to use at this time and age is text messages. Text messages are pretty efficient and convenient for a lot of customers. Plus, one can access it even without using the internet.  Text messages also quite affordable hence the cost should not worry you a lot. Text messages have a ninety-nine per cent open rate compared to the twenty-three per cent for email. Hence if you want your business to receive more reviews, switch from using emails to send out invites and start using text messages.
READ ALSO: WHY ARE REVIEWS IMPORTANT FOR YOUR BUSINESS

3. Avoiding Negative Reviews

We learn through our mistakes, and in businesses, customers are like our marking scheme; they point out the mistakes you make to help you improve on them. However, many organizations have grown the notion of avoiding negative reviews made on their companies' review pages. 
Closeup of a man choosing wooden dice with smiling face
While avoiding negative reviews might be a good solution, it is not the best. Customers require reassurance that you will improve your service or products, and a mere no reply does not help your case. Instead, craft a good reply without letting emotions get in your way, apologize for any errors made during the service or product manufacture, and offer a corrective course of action. Using this strategy, you might even end up making a detractor more of a promoter for your business.

4. Choose a Reliable Review Website 

Another error that many organizations have in common is prioritizing the wrong review websites. Therefore, when preparing to launch an online review, you must research the different sites available. There are some factors to consider, which include:
  • Which sites are your customers already looking into
  • Which sites are vigilant in terms of filtering fake reviews
Such assessment ensures that you choose the best review website for your organization to score better reviews. The site with comprehensive coverage and has been in the industry for a while are great examples of efficient review websites. 

5. Buying Reviews

Buying reviews is not a good idea for your business; the consequences outweigh any short-term review boost you might achieve. Not to mention that the practice is pretty unethical and could dent your companies' reputation for life. 
Customer satisfaction survey
Instead, encourage your customers to leave genuine and positive reviews for your business rather than paying them. Doing so yields reviews that feel more authentic and that do not spike the attention of review sites.  When you politely ask for reviews from your customers, you will be surprised at how many of them will oblige, especially if they had a good experience in your business. Hence if you ever think of buying reviews, do not; it will only do your company more harm than good.

6. Leveraging Reviews on Multiple Marketing Materials

Online reviews are pretty valuable for your business. That is why you have to make the most out of them.  Utilize reviews across all of your marketing efforts to build loyalty and trust between you and your customer. When customers have a place to leave a comment on experiences as per your business, whether positive or negative. They tend to bond with the organization better. Utilizing reviews across different marketing efforts also increases your customer coverage which in turn boosts your review. I mean, the larger the scope, the more the hits. Online reviews are excellent as you can use your online customer testimonials to advertise your business better. For example, customers will post the experiences that excited them and those that did not. Through this information, you can deduce an attractive advert that covers your businesses’ strengths and weaknesses.

7. Filtered Reviews

Another mistake that organizations face is filtered reviews or fake reviews. Getting a group of friends to do false reviews about your businesses is an incredibly terrible idea. Review websites have an algorithm that detects fake website reviews and automatically filters them out.  The worst part about fake reviews is that they affect genuine reviews drastically. The algorithm used to filter out counterfeit reviews is not a hundred per cent efficient. Hence once it realizes that your organization has some fake reviews, it might filter even genuine reviews, which will not be good for your organization. To avoid getting genuine reviews filtered out as fake, here are some red flags that you should watch out for:
  • A drastic spike in the number of reviews in a short period
  • Reviews from people who do not have a record in your company are a definite red flag for fake reviews
  • Multiple reviews from a single person who has never left a review before
  • Review from people who have limited information on their profile
  • Concise reviews
  • Reviews from a location that is far from your organization, or maybe abroad
  • Reviews with excessively positive or negative language
All these aspects spike the fake reviews filtering algorithm, which might lead to the loss of genuine reviews at the end of the day. Hence avoid them at all costs. 

8. Inadequate Review Profile

If your organization does not have a complete review profile, it does not rank as high when a potential customer searches for reviews on local businesses. If your business fails to show up on the prospect searches, it does not matter if you have an excellent star rating and excellent unfiltered review. Hence ensure you fill in any business blanks as far as the organizations' review profile is concerned. Go the extra mile and include multiple images of your business plus happy customers; this motivates potential clients. Fill out all the information, whether it is "required" or "optional." Here are some tips to make your profile more efficient:
  • First, ensure you use identical information on all of your product review sites, including telephone number, website, address, business name, and email address.
  • Use the same information for the details you input; this includes the number format and the address format.
All this is crucial because Google, the search engine that most people use, utilizes these details to identify your different accounts. Hence if you mix up your details across various sites, your business might not show up during a search. 

9. Pre-screening Customers

Having many negative reviews can harm your businesses' reputation drastically; it might even lead to your company losing clients, which might yield constant losses. Therefore to avoid such an occurrence, make sure you pre-screen a customer before sending out a review invitation. Here is an example to help you understand how this concept works; when you visit a restaurant, and the owner asks, " how was the meal?" and your answer is " great," they will most probably tell you to spread the word to your friends.  However, if your answer is like "the service was poor," then the owner will most probably not tell you to spread your word. The same case applies to product reviews; if you realize that a customer has a record of bad-mouthing your product, why would you send them a product review invite. Hence, before you send an invite, always pre-screen the customer and identify their experience. Then ask them about the service provided at that particular time, and if they reply positively, then ask them to share it on your online review website. If they respond negatively, learn from your mistakes and try to make your services better. By pre-screening to encourage a customer to leave positive reviews and continually improve on different errors, you stand to boost your business star rating immensely. Conclusion  Managing website reviews is not easy; however, it is crucial to building a better organization that has its customers' concerns heard. It is also essential for boosting motivation and understanding what points to work on to increase your businesses performance.