Small Business Reading Room


Tuesday, October 03, 2006

What Might Online Reviews Mean to Your Business?

I wrote a recent post about how you can get your business listed in Google local even if you don't have a web site.

Of course, that may not be something that you want to do if you've created a company to handle business matters for your band, or your trucking long haul service, or another business that really doesn't have a physical storefront, such as an online business with a regional or national or global scope of business.

But for people with restaurants, or shops, or offices that they invite folks to visit in person, that type of listing can be helpful. If you do have a location that you invite people to visit, it's also possible that people may write reviews about your business. Google makes it easy for people to find these reviews through their local search.

The question I've had is how much do customers trust reviews that they find online? Especially when you can't be sure who the people are who wrote the reviews. A review could be written by someone who has ties to the business, or it could be written by a competitor. The motivation for writing a review isn't always transparent.

I found a post at Bazaarblog interesting - Can Customers Trust Online Reviews? It reports upon a study conducted at MIT and the University of Michigan. Now the study (pdf) looks at online reviews of movies, and tries to draw a correlation between the reviews and revenues for the movies. Does this translate well into providing information about the power of reviews and whether or not they might cause someone to visit or avoid a restaurant, or not use a service provider?

Good question. I'm not sure. If you have a business, you might want to check to see if there are any reviews about it online.
0 comments





link to Atom Feed
links

magazines

blogs

Archives

Delaware Intercorp, Inc.
113 Barksdale Professional center
Newark, DE 19711-3258

"For all the best reasons to incorporate,the best place
is Delaware and the best incorporator is
Delaware Intercorp!"

Call Monday - Friday 09:00 (am) - 17:00 (pm) Eastern Time (GMT-05:00)

Toll Free - USA only - 888.324.1817
International: (1) 302.266.9367
FAX: 302.266.9940
Email: info@delawareintercorp.com