How your customers see your reviews scores

  And you can be sure they will be influenced by your score

But first - how businesses see their reviews scores...

• 5.0 - too good to be true

• 4 - 4.9 - great

• 3 - 3.9 - OK

• 2 - 2.9 - best not look anymore

• 1 - 1.9 - reviews? What reviews?

Now - how consumers see review scores...

• 5.0 - brilliant - just what I need, I must use them!

• 4.8 - 4.9 - good enough that I won't need to check on their negative reviews before at least contacting them (but I will check them before parting with any cash)

• 4.5 - 4.7 - good, but I had better check what the negative reviews say about them, just in case

• 4.0 - 4.4 - I'll consider using them if there is no alternative and I have a pressing need for the product/service they provide

• 3.9 or less - really? There are businesses out there with scores of less than 4.0 that are still trading? Who is using them?

But seriously... 

  Yes, that's 74% of your potential customers reading between two and ten reviews before making contact - and if you have a negative review, or a score that's less than impressive, you can be sure they will be reading any negative reviews

Yes, seriously, this is how consumers use reviews scores - as a filter. And if they want to, in mobile search Google will automatically filter any business that scores less than 4.0 at the click of a button.

If you disagree with this assertion we strongly recommend that you get a handful of colleagues and/or friends together and ask them - and read this article (it has a great infographic, and, considering its nearly two years old, and the rate of growth in Google reviews since then has been exponential, you can probably revise all the figures upwards by at least 10%).