Reviews - and why they will matter more post-lockdown than ever before

We have learned a lot by being locked down and forced to be away from our day-to-day jobs...

• men don't need to change their razor blades nearly as often as they thought, not when the alternative is a twenty-minute queue outside Boots with people who might have Covid-19 and you can buy a RazorPit

• baking bread is really easy - and really rewarding. Here's one recipe that works wonders - don't forget the 'water in the oven' trick 

• reviews are really, really important

Needless to say, we'll leave you with the first two and concentrate on reviews.

Reviews drive business

We have crunched an awful lot of numbers in the last seven weeks and all of them point to the same thing: a business with a score of 4.5* or more on its own website and on Google with a good flow of reviews will get, roughly speaking...

• 20% more calls and

• 30% more clicks/enquiries

Don't just take our word for it. In the six weeks after every business joins HelpHound it receives one of the most critical Google My Business reports it will ever get, certainly from the point-of-view of reviews. Here is one such...

As most readers will know, every business - at every location - receives the above report monthly from Google. If you have trouble locating yours, please don't hesitate to ask for our help.

...and it shows whatever impact any uplift in score and reviews has had by comparison with the previous period. In this instance the business in question - an estate agency - had done nothing at all different to impact those numbers, no big marketing push and no external factors like an interest rate cut; in fact quite the opposite, the numbers are for July, a notoriously - usually - quiet time for the property market.

One small favour...

We are going to ask you - our clients - to do one thing once your business is open again: watch your GMB reports like hawks. If at all possible we would ask you to send us a copy, in confidence of course. We confidently expect to see some really startling numbers in the first three months, tapering down and stabilising thereafter.

And one final piece of advice

With many businesses seeing an initial surge of pent-up demand in the first few weeks and months it will be very important to look 'fresh' when searchers see your reviews, so a special push to get some post-Covid reviews will pay dividends. On your own site (partly because it shows in search)...

Many people think the stars - and rating - showing in organic search, above are a Google rating; they are not: they are taken directly from the business's own reviews hosted on the business's own website.

...and on Google.

*If your business has fallen below the critical Google score of 4.5, you need to focus on getting as far above that as possible as quickly as possible.