The question of how to increase sales is on the minds of most business and restaurant managers. Here, we're not going to give you tips and tricks: we're going to talk about the essential, the most effective lever, which too many restaurants neglect or forget to consider as they should... Online reviews !
In fact, if there's one strategy that's 100% guaranteed to boost your sales, it's this one! SEO, direct visits, e-reputation: discover all the beneficial effects of positive online reviews on your business (and how to multiply them like hotcakes)!
The Internet has revolutionized the way customers approach physical commerce. Even if all your sales take place in the real world (like most restaurants), having a presence on the web is crucial to realizing your growth potential. How can you do this? By activating two time-saving levers: social networks and, above all, customer reviews.
More and more, the decision to come to you is being made online. Customer reviews (and not just the positive ones!) play a major role in the decision to use a service. According to psychology, this is no stranger to social proof: a natural need for validation of a purchasing act by the rest of the group.
For this, all customer reviews are useful for generating direct visits to stores and restaurants. And not just on Google My Business: all sites where customers can leave a 5-star rating and a comment are worth considering!
For restaurants, these are mainly Google, Tripadvisor and, of course, La Fourchette. For all businesses, we're also interested in Instagram, Facebook and Yelp. And to make sure you don't get lost, there's also Fetchan ideal platform for centralizing online reviews. Put end to end, all positive reviews add to your customer satisfaction and generate conversions in the form of bookings and direct visits.
Positive online customer reviews are the royal road to getting your business listed on Google - and generating more sales. In fact, reviews and good ratings have a huge impact on your SEO. All you need to do is rank well on the most popular sites. We'll show you how.
The major online review sites are in the top positions when you search for a store, store, restaurant or service on Google. Thanks to them, it's you who gains visibility through their rankings of the best businesses.
But your site or booking page can also appear directly in the Top 1 on Google. More than any other site, it's the customer reviews on Google My Business that will really boost your SEO positioning. There's a simple mechanism at work here: in local SEO, ranking is heavily dependent on customer reviews. It's as if Google has decided to trust Internet users (more than you!) to know what you're really worth. As a result, good online reviews are a guarantee of visibility on results pages and Google Maps.
Another effect is that average Google reviews can appear under your site's name when it's ranked. This encourages visitors to click. A good click-through rate (or CTR) is another factor in being ranked first on search engines.
All of which means that 5-star reviews are an enormous asset when it comes to ranking first on the world's most widely used search engine. It's advisable to activate all possible levers to get your customers to comment and rate your restaurant or business, on Google My Business first and foremost.
First and foremost, don't lose any sleep over it... A few negative scores have a reassuring effect. Scores of 5.0 are considered suspect!
The golden rule for maintaining a high average is to keep your teams happy. This has been confirmed by all well-reviewed restaurants: happy teams at work, at the cash desk, in the dining room and in the kitchen, have a mechanical effect on the average scores of your online reviews.
Secondly, there are a number of techniques you can use to encourage customers to give their feedback online by showing that you care. One of these is to respond to negative reviews. To do this, it's a matter of urgency to monitor them with a platform that brings all your online reviews together on a single screen - and allows you to respond to them. This is also what Fetch offers, helping you to visualize AND respond to customer reviews.
And that's not all: there's a lot to be said for managing customer reviews online! We give you the rundown in the article opposite. 7 tips for boosting your positive reviews.
