Online reviews and credibility

While reviews are good , I am personally sceptical of them.... There is 1 dodgy company out there that spends thousands of £££ each year writing false reviews about their so called good product.

But it's only once you have paid your fee that you find out how bad they are and then you don't get your money back ,I personally know of a fair few people that have fallen for this..

But to that side of it I am looking into doing this myself ,despite having my own reviews on my site.

Unfortunately because reviews are such a powerful marketing tool, they have been gamed and abused for years. I think a lot of online consumers are now starting to get more savvy though, and a bit of due diligence can normally spot fake or gamed reviews.

For review sites it's an ongoing challenge as review spam increases. Our automation filters out 100's of spam reviews a day, leaving the rest to be manually moderated, but some will always slip through. Then you have unmoderated review sites such as Facebook which hardly help the issue 

But by spreading your customer reviews across a variety of sites, making sure your site looks professional, then positive reviews in-conjunction with your site builds the all important credibility. In theory, this is what will turn a lead into a conversion. 

From a personal point of view, I take reviews with a pinch of salt. The old Google review set was a complete waste of time, competitors could write bad reviews about, in fact I had a falling out with an SEO company who wrote a review about me, their based in Lancashire and I'm in London yet apparently I trashed their house and was caught urinating in the fishpond and I still never paid them for their rubbish SEO work... Others could write glowing reviews of themselves, with the same misspellings and the same style, so you would know they were self written. One guy I know had about 600 Google place maps and review pages, in fact it was probably more... and people get suckered into it all, I think Google zapped the lot of them after around 5 years.

I've got a few reviews on here, but I don't pester people for them, I'll ask people to write one if they do fine, if not it goes no further. Yet I ordered a time clock online and have had several emails badgering me to do a review. But they haven't done anything extraordinary to justify a review, I paid them money and they sent a clock. So to start writing a glowing review about this seems a bit over the top to me.......

yes I too agree with the pestering for a review ... In honesty I wait 2 weeks before sending out 1 as a final closure and never bother them again with them ... I often buy something and get 5 or 6 of teh stupid things ,but by then I have marked them as spam and never get to hear from them again lolol

I think that most people will fast forward to the bad reviews, unfortunately. I if you have a bad review, and it is simply ridiculous, most people will ignore it anyway. What may be suspicious is lack of bad feedback at all, with loads of super positive entries. 

There are always going to be bad reviews for some companies. Try to personally respond to some of the reviews to clear up the issue. I think that word of mouth is hugely important.

Absolutely agree with you Barney (Hi btw - sorry been off busy on another project)

Its one thing to ask for a review but to be pestered for "average or usual" service is so wrong.

I only leave reviews if the service is incredibly bad or exceptionally good.

Oh no, I am probably guilty of trying to get reviews from customers! Only when their feedback has been excellent though. As a new business I was desperate to get some recognition and reviews do give you some credibility. I have found getting to know people by networking has helped too, as I guess your personality goes a long way...hopefully the right way!