Under Yelp’s Influence
How Positive Reviews can Boost a Restaurant’s Reputation by 19%
According to a study conducted by the University of California Berkeley, a slight half-star improvement in ratings can pull up a restaurant’s ratings by 19%.
This statement definitely has merit. People on the go looking for new restaurants to dine in search the Internet using their work computers or smartphones. They browse Yelp.com and look for restaurants with at least 3.5 stars. Once they see how many positive ratings your restaurant has, they’ll invite their friends or colleagues out to lunch or for dinner.
The above scenario demonstrates why businesses should take Yelp.com seriously. Entrepreneurs should keep an eye out for negative reviews, as those can pull down the ratings faster than gravity. You should also encourage customers who are delighted with your products and services to post their reviews on the site. This will strengthen customer relationships and bring new people to your restaurant.
How do you spruce up your Yelp.com page?
The first thing you should do is to complete your profile. Include all the relevant details and post pictures of your restaurants to make it immediately recognizable, especially on the local level. A business page complete with all the details is more attractive to look at and generates a positive image even before customers see the reviews. This makes visitors think that this business takes reviews seriously. Good presentation poses good advertising effects for your online marketing efforts.
Addressing comments and complaints is also very important. Pay equal attention to both as these can spell success or failure for your business. Thank customers who made positive reviews and immediately attend to complaints in a diplomatic manner. Doing so will improve your standing in the eyes of your customers. This makes you appear concerned enough to make things right between you and the irate client. Pandering to complaints, however, can backfire. If you don’t think the complaint is reasonable, then you can ignore the comment, especially when it concerns ‘that expensive price on a dish.’ Criticisms about bad service and product defects should be quickly seen to. These can cast a bad light on your business and damage your reputation.
Take your online presence on Yelp seriously. This website gets more or less 78 million unique visitors per quarter.
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